Day 5 (Monday): Fly to St. Petersburg
"St. Petersburg is a city of hidden treasures," my guide Yelena Kirpitchnicova told me. She was not being hyperbolic. When the Revolution hit in 1917 and Russia's nobility fled the country, they stashed their jewelry and other valuables behind walls, wrongly assuming that they would come back to retrieve them. "We don't know what's still hidden in all the buildings they haven't yet restored," she said.

St. Petersburg conceals fewer of its sights than Moscow does, but for optimal sightseeing you still need a well-connected expediter and, on at least two of your four days there, a private car. Meet your guide and driver upon landing around midday at the St. Petersburg airport (the 11:15 a.m. flight from Moscow is a good option). As you drive past countless canals and parks and into the heart of the city, it will strike you as more picturesque, European, and pedestrian-friendly than Moscow. Get out of the car at the Strelka—a spit on an island in the Neva River that is a former port of St. Petersburg—to see the Rostral Columns (twin lighthouses) and to take in the views of the Winter Palace on one side of the river and the Peter and Paul Fortress on the other.

After lunch on the Strelka at Restoran (2 Tamozhenny; 7-812-327-8979; entrées, $15–$30)—order the pelmeni (dumplings)—continue to the city's birthplace, the Peter and Paul Fortress, built by Peter the Great in 1703. Check out its cathedral, which houses the tombs of every czar since Peter. (Its Imperial Prison, where famous rebels, from Peter's son to Dostoyevsky, were jailed, is closed for reconstruction until at least 2008.) Continue on to St. Isaac's Cathedral, once the country's largest, with room for 14,000 worshippers (eng.cathedral.ru). Feast your eyes on the 52 smalto mosaics and the iconostasis, with its malachite and lapis lazuli columns. If it's a clear day, climb the 300 steps to the dome's observation deck for great city vistas.

By now it should be about 5 p.m., so check into the Eliseev Palace—a 29-room hotel that is the former Eliseev mansion—yes, the same family whose gourmet food store you visited in Moscow (59 Moika Embankment; 7-812-324-9911; taleon.ru; for rates, see "The Basics"). A few years ago, masters from the Hermitage restored the mansion to its nineteenth-century opulence. No two rooms are the same, but rooms 410 and 411—the least expensive rooms with canal views—are the best value. Take a nice early-evening stroll up Nevsky Prospekt, the city's main boulevard, and turn left at the first canal (Griboedova). Since you don't need a guide for the Byzantine-style Church on Spilled Blood, stop by now (eng.cathedral.ru). Built on the spot where Czar Alexander II was assassinated, it is covered inside and out with mosaics of precious and semi-precious stones. Then stroll down the Moika Canal to the Kempinski Hotel Moika 22, just off Palace Square, for drinks or Continental cuisine in its modern glass-walled bar and restaurant on the roof (22 Moika Embankment; 7-812-335-9111; entrées, $30–$45).