TRAVEL BY TRAIN FROM MOSCOW TO ST. PETERSBURG. HOW TO BOOK TRAINS IN RUSSIA

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The train journey between Moscow and St. Petersburg is the best way to travel between the two most important cities in Russia, or that is what we think. Especially if you do it on a night train, and if you squeeze us, even better if that night train is the historic one, like the famous Red Arrow. In this article we will tell you how our experience of train trip between Moscow and St. Petersburg Y how to book trains in Russia (without going crazy).

We start with the second part, which will be the first in chronological order. There are some agencies and platforms They offer their services to book train tickets quickly, but charging a commission. If you google there will be several ... These were the ones that we traste:

//trains.realrussia.co.uk/
//www.russiantrains.com/es/
//www.russianrail.com/

But we prefer to do it directly from the official website of the Russian railways. So we are going to tell you about the process of booking a train ticket in Russia from its official website:

1. Enter your Web: //pass.rzd.ru/main-pass/public/en

2. Register a new account, where you will have your profile and access to your reservations.

3. Select journey, in this case Moscow - St. Petersburg, and you will get all trains, with schedules and different types. Then we tell you more about the train types. Take a look and choose which one suits you (by schedule, if you want day or night, if you would like to go on a historic ...). Once you know which train you are going to take, you must choose the type of ticket What do you want (the class). You will get a dropdown with the wagons available (CAR Nº X), the number of places available and what each of these wagons includes with the symbols (air conditioning, sheets, food ...).

5. Select the wagon and the seat / bunk number you want.

6. Continue the reservation process by adding your information and add so many passengers as necessary (with the ADD PASSENGER key). The seat or bunk selection It is a strange thing: as for the bunk beds, there are upper (above, cheaper) or lower (below, more expensive). You must include the filters and the range of seats (for example "same compartment" and "bunk beds above" and between "98 and 100"). In the end, the bunk beds that match your selection are automatically added.

7. The last step is make the payment and you will have the ticket that you can download at Pdf format and print. That will be the valid travel document.

If your ticket includes food, once the reservation is made from the platform you can change the type of food: we leave it in standard because we did not know how to decipher the others ...

There are so many trains daytime in the seat (in this case, we recommend fast trains “САПСАН”), such as trains nocturnal in bunk (first, second, third class ...). Inside the night trains, you will see that there are different categories: the trains "Premium"They usually include some food, and extras such as travel package, air conditioning ...

As for the historic trains, you probably know how to recognize them for the price (much higher), than what we see, are these:

№ 032А "Лев Толстой": Leon Tolstoy
№ 054Ч "ГРАНД ЭКСПРЕСС": Grand Express
№ 002А "Красная стрела": Red Arrow

We prefer to save a little money and take advantage of better schedules, and we went to the № 006А. And the experience was great. The train was marked as Premium, so some surprise we would expect: upon entering the cabin we had some bottles of water and a bun for each passenger, as well as a travel kit (with earplugs, wipe, slippers of those of hotel and I don't know what else). In addition the bunk was comfortable, they leave the sheets on top for you to do it yourself, yes. They also leave a small towel.

The only thing we would change would be the bunk type. We went in upper (we are a few rackets and that was the cheapest), but after the trip we see a lot more comfortable bunk beds below and we believe it is worth paying a little more for them. You have all the floor space to leave things, you will not drop the papers on top of the one that sleeps below (which scared it stuck) and you will not pass the damn ones to go up the mini stairs.

As for the boarding process, It is very simple. The train left from Leningradsky Station (Leningradskiy Vokzal) and we arrive as one hour in advance. But you can arrive with half an hour without problems. First you have to pass the bags through a detector to enter the station, and once in the Hall, look at the exit panels. Look for the train number (in our case 6A), the schedule and the destination. And they will put you from what platform it leaves. The platforms are just after the station, after passing through a large lobby. It has no loss. Do not go up or down stairs. It is all simple.

You will have to go through a further control to access the platform, but nothing complicated: check your ticket and passport. Ready 🙂

Before getting into the car, there will be a well-uniformed worker who will have to show you the printed ticket and will give you the OK to upload. Find your compartment, make your bunk bed, connect to the train's WiFI (Yas!), Get Netflix and ... travel! Meanwhile the reviewer That will check your passport and your ticket. It won't bother you until half an hour before you arrive 😉

That said: if you are looking for the best way to go from Moscow to St. Petersburg, we recommend the train. Much more comfortable than the bus and the plane, right? If you need more information about how to book trains in Russia... here we are 😉