St Petersburg tours

what is the best way to pay for tours in St Petersburg with independent companies, is it with roubles or credit card or US dollars?

I would think this would be arranged ahead of time with whomever you are arranging your tour with.

We paid in advance by credit card and that made it very straightforward. I can recommend SPB. We did St Petersburg and Berlin with them.

Check with the tour company. They may not all accept the same payment methods.

If you have a credit card that reward you with airline points or cash back, without an international transaction charge, by all means use it. We are using TJ Travels for our 3 days in St. Petersburg and by using our Chase Sapphire Reserve will earn at least 700 points we would have lost by paying cash.

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We paid in advance by credit card and that made it very straightforward. I can recommend SPB. We did St Petersburg and Berlin with them.

We also used SPB for StP and Tallinn and highly recommend them. Their prices were quoted in USD and they accepted both US currency and credit cards. However, if you used a CC I seem to remember that they had an additional fee; and since the charge was in Rouble, your effective cost was also a couple of percent greater due to the foreign exchange.

Note: even if you have a credit card with no foreign exchange fees, there is still a conversion cost due to the difference between bid and ask rates.