Hotels

 

Moscow

We stayed in the Hotel Peking, located along the main street of Tverskaya Utilitsa, about 1.5 miles from Red Square. We stayed in a renovated room which was nice. The satellite TV had 2 English speaking channels (Discovery, BBC world). The room was soundproof, and the bathroom was spacious. Everything was clean. Overall a good facility

 

St Petersburg

We stayed at Hotel Sovetskaya in St Petersburg. It is located about 1.5-2 miles south of the city center, on the Fontanka river. Our experience was interesting. When we arrived, we discovered that the hot water was not on. We were told to wait until 5pm. At that time the hot water was running. We had no problems with hot water afterwards. We later found out that maintenance on the water pipes requires shutting down whole areas of the city at a time. We met some American students who had no hot water for more than 3 days!

 

The room was comfortable. The bathroom was somewhat small (comparable to European standards). The only English TV channel was BBC world. The curtains on the window did not fully block out the light, but we had sleeping masks to help us get rest during the start of the white nights! Our room had a nice view looking over the Fontanka river.

 

Each morning we had a plentiful buffet breakfast included with the room. Unlike the Peking, the rooms were not soundproof, but hall noise was light. Additionally the hotel is huge (over 1000 rooms?), making the lobby very crowded and smoky. Overall we had a fair experience - adequate for tourism, but certainly not the lap of luxury.