My wife and I visited St. Petersburg (four days) and Moscow (four days) in June 2009 after contacting Alex Polenov (Alex's Tours & Travel) and making arrangements in both cities.

I had visited both Moscow and St.Petersburg (Leningrad) in the 1960s in the dead of winter and was eager to reacquaint myself with them forty years later and in a much more temperate season. We visited many of the standard and absorbing sights but also others that are off the beaten path, for example, the extraordinarily moving monument to the 900-day siege of St. Petersburg by German forces during the Second World War and a modern and somewhat iconoclastic Moscow sculpture by Mihail Shemyakin half a mile south of the Kremlin.

We were extremely pleased with Alex's assistance in every respect. Alex and the guides he arranged for us in both cities were deeply knowledgable in Russian history and contemporary life, completely fluent in English, and -- certainly the most important consideration -- extremely welcoming and pleasant companions. We will return.

Dr. Anthony Moulton, Atlanta, Georgia
mheischen@earthlink.net