Anyone been to Russia? visa questions.

It says you have to provide fingerprints if you want a visa for Russia, I wouldn't bother.

Have been to Riga, Tallin and St Petersburg.

The visa is a must for Russia and you have to go through the pain of applying for it(and paying for it).

You have made a good decision flying into St Petes it's much quicker and far less hassle than Moscow. You could take an internal flight to Moscow from ST.P without going through international arrivals at Moscow, should you decide to go there rather than Belarus, seems a shame to go to the trouble and cost of getting a Russian visa and not see Moscow.

For what it's worth St Petes is beautiful, I liked Riga but was a bit disappointed with Tallin.

Enjoy the trip.

Are you running the Marathon?

I've never been but I Moscow at some time.

If you're a UK national ( or EU ) and arriving by plane or train you have to pay up for the Visa. Only exception is if arriving by cruise ship.

Went last November to StP and it was about £110 altogether and also a lot of time spent printing filling and sending forms with photo. You need to get an invitation from a hotel in StP ( around £20) and then apply through forms printed off rfsglobal to the embassy in LON. As well as an anxious 10 days wondering if the passport would come back. And then another anxious 3 hours wondering if it was right because there's a three word photograph sized gap on the Visa where you'd expect them to have affixed your photo - but after pulling up a translator it says in Cyrillic it says 'this is genuine without photograph'.

It's just as bad for a Russian to come here though. So we both lose out on trade and tourism.

Many countries outside the EU with similar income levels to Russia have no visa requirements to go to RUS, and vice-versa.

I'm thinking of doing the marathon Leopard, yes.  My mate is doing 38 marathons in 38 weeks for charity his first is the Brighton marathon which I'm doing with him.  then he is doing a load of european ones and I said I'd try to do at least one, this looks like the best bet price wise.

thinking I might fk the russians off and go south to Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria then get a flight back from Sofia.  I think Ukraine is ok if you stay out west, will check though.

Do the Welsh one.

Talinn sounds like a place they visited in Star Trek

I've been to Talinn, Riga and Vilnius before.  Talinn was the nicest, Vilnius 2nd and Riga 3rd.  The food in Talinn was absolutely sublime and less than half the price of Helsinki or one of the scandinavian capitals.  My advice was, if you want to visit a baltic/scandinavian capital go to Talinn first.  It has everything Stockholm/Oslo/Helsinki has but so much cheaper.