I've visited Moscow and Saint-Petersburg with my mother by the end of May and beginning of June 2004. We purchased a package in Switzerland whereas the accommodation, the visits and excursions as well as the private tour guides and drivers for each city were included. Our local guides, Elena in Moscow and Olga in Saint-Petersburg, toured us in Portuguese and that was a very good surprise because we were expecting a French speaking tour guide! In Moscow, we've particularly enjoyed the Red Square, the Cathedral of St-Basil the Blessed, the Lenin Mausoleum, the GUM, the Kremlin, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the excellent performance of "Boris Godunov" opera (Modest Musorgsky) at the Bolshoi Theatre (the concert hall, the sceneries, the costumes, the music, the voices, the chorus, everything was just perfect!). Elena also showed us some underground famous stations and that was quite exciting to take the Moscow metro. We have also visited Kouskovo a few kilometers outside of Moscow. There we've discovered the Cheremetiev Palace, the park, a Swiss chalet, a Dutch house and the "Orangerie" with a big collection of Russian and foreign ceramics. In Saint-Petersburg, besides the "white nights" (daylight all day long), we liked very much the state Hermitage and Winter Palace, the Palace Square and the Alexandre column, the Admiralty, the monument of Peter the Great (the bronze horseman), the Isaak Cathedral, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the cruiser "Aurora", the rostral columns, the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, the Cathedral Smolny, the Nevsky Prospect, the Russian Museum as well as Pavlovsk which is located outside of Saint-Petersburg. We know that there was much more to visit but unfortunately our week in Russia was quickly gone and therefore we had to go home. As a conclusion, we really enjoyed this trip and encourage any of you that might be interested in such a visit.