108. St. Petersburg Pulkovo Airport
Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg is a modern airport that serves all of the city's air transportation needs. I don't think there are any outlying minor commercial airports like there are in many cities in the United States. It has a nice design and the standard array of shops and a few restaurants. It's definitely a minor airport by the standards of other larger European cities, but it gets the job done.
Pulkovo was my first taste of Russian bureaucracy upon my arrival at the end of April. The process to exchange currencies was quite silly and overly complicated. I was also required to pay duties on excess baggage weight, which involved me sitting around for 30-45 minutes while someone disappeared with my passport, and then I had to sign 8-10 pieces of paper.
The airport is a the extreme southern edge of the city, and slightly to the west of center. It's not too far from the city center, but not especially convenient to reach by public transportation. The most cost effective route between my home in the city center and Pulkovo is to take the Metro to Moskovskaya station, then transfer to a bus for the remaining distance. The total cost is about $1.50, but it involves 60-90 minutes and a fair amount of walking - not especially fun with a lot of luggage. Also, the Metro doesn't run between approximately 12:30 and 5:30 am, so this method does not work for late arrivals or early departures. In that case, a 25-minute taxi ride is needed. That's a bit more expensive (~1100 rubles, or $19), but faster and far more convenient.
For a city as large as St. Petersburg (roughly six million residents in the metropolitan area), the airport is surprisingly small: only a single terminal for all domestic and international flights. My speculation as to the reason why: most Russian people don't fly on a regular basis (at least, not as frequently as people seem to do in the United States), and many tourists arrive to the city via cruise ships from Moscow or elsewhere in the Baltic, rather than airplanes.
Pulkovo was my first taste of Russian bureaucracy upon my arrival at the end of April. The process to exchange currencies was quite silly and overly complicated. I was also required to pay duties on excess baggage weight, which involved me sitting around for 30-45 minutes while someone disappeared with my passport, and then I had to sign 8-10 pieces of paper.
The airport is a the extreme southern edge of the city, and slightly to the west of center. It's not too far from the city center, but not especially convenient to reach by public transportation. The most cost effective route between my home in the city center and Pulkovo is to take the Metro to Moskovskaya station, then transfer to a bus for the remaining distance. The total cost is about $1.50, but it involves 60-90 minutes and a fair amount of walking - not especially fun with a lot of luggage. Also, the Metro doesn't run between approximately 12:30 and 5:30 am, so this method does not work for late arrivals or early departures. In that case, a 25-minute taxi ride is needed. That's a bit more expensive (~1100 rubles, or $19), but faster and far more convenient.
For a city as large as St. Petersburg (roughly six million residents in the metropolitan area), the airport is surprisingly small: only a single terminal for all domestic and international flights. My speculation as to the reason why: most Russian people don't fly on a regular basis (at least, not as frequently as people seem to do in the United States), and many tourists arrive to the city via cruise ships from Moscow or elsewhere in the Baltic, rather than airplanes.
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