from $7,695* per person	11 Days	Year-round
Boutique accommodations		Exertion level: 4
Operator: Geographic Expeditions		18 people max

One hundred seventeen years and two dynasties have passed, but Lord Curzon’s praise still rings true: “the Oriental irregularity and bizarre beauty of Moscow, an Eastern exotic transplanted to the West, an inland Constantinople, a Christian Cairo.” The heartbreakingly charming onion-dome churches of Suzdal and Vladimir, jewels of the Golden Ring, places that encapsulate Russia’s hold on the imagination. St. Petersburg, “silent, lonely beauty,” Lillian Hellman called it. And Tsarskoe Selo, the almost unbelievably extravagant home of the Tsars, “the completest triumph of barbarous taste that I have seen,” harrumphed Sir N. W. Wraxall.