-Saint Petersburg-
-Moscow-
-Kiev-




 

"Guides have made a huge, HUGE difference in the success and enjoyment of my crazy trips to crazy places. That's why I believe in their value so much."

 --Ed Ryder
 

Having your very own private guide to show you around
is worth it.

Our customers have 24 hour access to a manager for any emergency they may encounter.

Memories to cherish await!

Contact us today for a trip consultation.
 

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Yes, we do assist cruise travelers!

But there is so much to see, and it simply is too much of a crazy rush
to see just a portion of what Saint Petersburg offers.

We recommend the more
adventurous way of visiting.

Be an independent traveler!

And stay longer!

We'll help!

Saint Petersburg is a vibrant dynamic city with so much to see and do.

There are many, many excellent restaurants and cafes. Lots of great shopping, and all kinds of evening entertainment every night.

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This is an American-owned tourist guide service.
We have been serving foreign visitors to
Saint Petersburg since 2002.
 

Here's what we do:

Our specialty is in providing highly qualified, fluent English licensed tour guides to individuals, couples, small groups and we are especially interested in serving members of the gay and lesbian community.

Our philosophy:

1. We take care of you.
2. We understand.
3. We strive to provide excellent value.
4. And we consider ourselves to be among the very best.

We all understand that your visit to Saint Petersburg may be a once in a lifetime thing, so we really do strive to do our best so that our customers will leave fulfilled, excited, and possessing memories that will be cherished. With us, our mantra is service, service, service. And we take our responsibilities to you very seriously.

Our guides are experienced with foreigners who have high expectations. We've served a wide array of individuals from around the globe, and I credit the smooth operation of our service to the very high caliber professionals in Saint Petersburg who work for me.


Advantages to hiring one of our private guides to show you around Saint Petersburg:

1. Comfort. One of our guides and a driver will be waiting for you - and expecting you - at the airport. When you're in a very foreign country like Russia, it's such a relief to be greeted by an English-speaker who becomes like an instant friend. That's what hiring a private guide is like - getting an instant friend. And that's a nice thing.

Your guide will accompany you to your hotel, let you get settled in, then give you a neighborhood orientation. Your guide will assist you with important things like: exchanging currency at a fair, "market rate" currency exchange place (the hotels often have the worst exchange rates), and purchasing bottled water and other snacks you might like to have in your room (drink and brush your teeth only with bottled water). The guide will show you some of the nearby places you might like to enjoy dinner at, and your guide will review the strategy for the coming days.

2. Low Stress & Maximum Flexibility. Our guides are hired by the day, and we consider a day to be 8 or 9 hours. We don't believe in charging different prices for each place visited, as many of our competitors do (it's more expensive, sometimes a lot more expensive). Once your guide understands your interests, he or she will make recommendations of what to see, and where to go. For some activities, we may need to purchase tickets in advance. But really, what you want to see and do, how long to stay, whether to skip or add a destination - it is all up to you. Since we have a highly flexible, easy-going, adaptable approach, often we can change plans at the last minute for a situation like bad weather. When bad weather comes in, your guide can switch to doing indoor things while saving the outdoor things for a better weather day.

And just by having a local person to help you, everything becomes so much easier. The language barrier, the absence of English signage, and the unfamiliarity of a huge foreign city becomes no big deal when you've got a guide to show you the way.

3. Efficient Use Of Time. Your guide knows the city. And your guide is going to whisk you from one place to another in a way you could not possibly duplicate on your own. You are going to see and do a lot more with a guide than without one. Since your Saint Petersburg visit may be once in a lifetime, and since your Saint Petersburg time is so precious, it really makes sense to have a guide with you every day.

4. Safety. Your guide knows where the pickpockets and purse snatchers like to work. They are much more able to sense a problem area that should be avoided. And they can deal with authorities should you be stopped for a document check.

5. We care. Our customers are hugely important to us. So for this reason, all our customers get a 24 hour emergency phone number that they can call at any time to speak with my lead manager Sasha about any issue or situation. Sasha is extremely impressive and capable. He is a master at bribery and he solves all problems. It's not likely you would face an emergency, but if your guide is not with you and you need him, this guy is the heavy artillery for any problem.


Recommendations:

1. We do not recommend a cruise ship visit. These ships stay for just 2 or 3 days and everything becomes a crazy rush. It is much better to arrive by plane or train. Plan on staying in Saint Petersburg from 5 to 9 days. This is enough time to relax and savor the pace of life here. Saint Petersburg is a vibrant, dynamic city with so much to see and do. It is a city rich in history and art. Beautiful architecture is everywhere. There are wonderful vistas along the canals and the Neva River. Saint Petersburg has so many excellent restaurants and cafes, and so much interesting shopping. It's a very impressive city, and you'll be glad you decided to spend a few extra days here.

2. We know a lot about Saint Petersburg's hotels. I have personally inspected the rooms in more than 140 of them. Lena has also visited a large chunk of hotels. Our hotel reviews can be found here.

3. Apply for your Russian tourist visa at least 4 weeks before your departure date (we will provide more details about this).


How To Begin:

We communicate by email. There are many details involved and we like to be certain that all of these important details are communicated and understood. Because we really don't want to have any miscommunication involving your important trip. (Our experience has proven that email communication is best.)

Please say hello to Lena by emailing her here:

gayfriendlyguides@gmail.com

Lena is in charge of handling all of our customer email correspondence. She knows a great deal about her city and its attractions. She is a holder of numerous museum licenses. She is extremely fluent in English, Spanish and Russian. And she is an expert at helping people with visiting her city. Lena loves all people. She's very nice. So tell her about your trip ideas.


Our Story:

I'm Ed. In June 2000 I visited Russia for the first time with a Russian language study group from West Chester University (located in suburban Philadelphia). Wow... Saint Petersburg blew me away. I almost couldn't believe my eyes.

A guide was waiting for me at the airport, thanks to the recommendation of a friend. He accompanied me and the other students to our dormitory. I dropped off my things and then began immediately exploring the city with my guide. This was incredible. My guide showed me so much. He introduced me to so many people. I was having so much fun. After 4 days I felt like I could navigate this city on my own if I wanted to. Meanwhile, the other students - who were all younger than me - were only just beginning to explore. For all that time they had stayed at the dormitory just playing cards. The difference between my experience and their experience was huge!

I made so many friends during that 5 week visit. One of them was a business consultant, and she became my partner in this business. Thanks to her, we developed great infrastructure with management, best of the best guides, and excellent connections with a pool of independent drivers who met our stringent criteria.

Part of our reasoning for starting the service was that:

1. We thought the service was needed.

2. We saw the huge preparations underway for the city's giant 300 year birthday celebration, which was to take place in May 2003. In our opinion, all of these restored buildings and monuments, revitalized squares, and attractive new pedestrian streets were very conducive to improving the city's tourism appeal.

3. And we expected the city's hotel infrastructure would one day improve and a larger base of western-style hotel rooms would also encourage tourism growth.

I visited every single Saint Petersburg hotel during the winter of 2001/2002. There was not even 100 hotels back then. Most of them were "soviet crappy" operated by unhappy people who conducted themselves with pathetically lazy indifference. I saw old, dated, musty rooms. Mold on the bathroom ceilings. Cheap, plastic soviet clocks from the 1970's. Lumpy beds. Dirt and stuff on the carpet. Ancient-looking little televisions. Things like that. The few good hotels were expensive. But since that time there has been enormous growth in new hotel development in Saint Petersburg. Enormous! And now there is quite a large selection of comfortable new hotels to choose from.

Along the way, we watched the arena of competition in our specialty become very crowded. Our ordinary advertising methods had lost effectiveness. And recently it finally dawned on me that so few service providers are actively courting the gay and lesbian travel segment. In our early years we did have have one gay pair that drove me crazy with overwhelming emails, but besides that, we have very much enjoyed our gay and lesbian customers. Truly, we've served some really nice people.

We were early pioneers in offering guide services to English-speaking visitors, and now we are going to be pioneers again by strictly focusing our marketing efforts on the serving gay/lesbian travel segment. My two managers are on board completely with us becoming very gay-friendly. And they are going to make certain that we will only give assignments to guides and drivers who are "on board" and sensitive to the needs of our clientele.

Part of my reason for the shift in our customer focus is I want to get our guides more work, so that they will be more successful. But I'd also like to be able to set an example with our business so that down the road - maybe in 2009 - I can loudly say "Look, we went gay-friendly in a big way and it made a huge difference in our business." I'm going to wake some people up. It's going to be an eye-opener for a lot of smart business people. With your patronage, that day is going to happen.

We would really like to have you as our customer. Please email my associate and good friend Lena for more details about how we may assist you. She would be delighted to be of service. And you are going to love Saint Petersburg!

I've lived 7 months in Saint Petersburg, 1 month in Moscow, 5 months in Ukraine visiting impressive cities like Kiev, Odessa, Lviv, and Dnepropetrovsk. Out of all the places I have been to in the former Soviet Union, Saint Petersburg is by far the best and most interesting. Saint Petersburg is going to be very exciting for you! And it only takes 4 to 6 weeks of preparation to visit. So give Lena an email. From the east coast of the US she is 8 hours ahead. It should not take more than 24 hours to receive a reply from her. If it ever takes more than 24 hours, let me know so I can figure out what the hold-up is. Sometimes spam filters hinder our communication with customers.

Thanks very much for considering us! And please, if you can, tell some friends that there is a gay-friendly tourist guide service in Saint Petersburg.

Ed Ryder
Russian Guide Network, Inc.

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Customer feedback:

Just wanted to drop a line saying how happy we were with Sasha. First, let me say my wife, Carol, and I were not even sure if someone would be there when we left the ship in St Petersburg, coming from NY, there are so many scams who knows what is real or not. We were in hopes of someone to take us to the most popular places and hopefully understand his broken English. so, when Sasha spoke English as well as I do and knew so much about everything from the paintings in the hermitage and Russian museum we were thrilled. He took us places we didn't expect to go and knew all the history about everything. When the day and a half was over and we were back on the ship, the three other couples who were at our table talked about what they did on the cruise tours. We saw so many more places and did so much more it was unbelievable. What is really crazy is that we spent less money for the guide and driver than they did, and that includes our visas. we would recommend your guide service with Sasha anytime.

Thank You
Carol & Artie

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Hi Ed,

Thanks to your entire team for providing exceptional service from start to finish on our recent two day tour of St. Petersburg, Russia. While planning our itinerary for our Baltic Sea Cruise I was very unsure of how to plan our two days in Russia. I was very hesitant to book the tours offered by our cruise line but I was also nervous about getting Russian visas and using a service not affiliated with our ship. We flipped a coin and decided to risk it with your service. It turned out to be the highlight of our entire vacation and one of the most amazing experiences of our lifetime.

Lena provided excellent communication and good advice. Andrei made getting Russian visas easier than getting our passports renewed. Our driver, Mikilai, provided a clean, comfortable car, was always on time and friendly. Our guide, Veronica was terrific. She navigated us through and around crowds with ease, took us to the best places to shop and shared her vast knowledge of art, history and culture. She was great a tailoring the tour to our specific needs, like taking us to a Russian version of Starbucks, arranging a private canal tour when traffic congestion meant we might not make it to the water, and finding us clean bathrooms without long lines. We were able to see more in two days than most people see in two weeks and we were still able to enjoy a cup of coffee or Russian beer and talk about daily life. It was an experience that we will never forget.

Our sincere gratitude,
Wendy & William

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5/12/2008 6:35:02 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time

More customer feedback can be seen on our old website here

Saint Petersburg
is a very exciting city!

A city loaded full of incredible architecture.

With so much history.

 

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