Your experience of Russia will depend very much on where you choose to go. While our Itineraries chapter can help you sort through the multiple options, the following should also provide a clearer idea of how best to spend your time. In short, those interested primarily in Russia’s cultural and architectural highlights, and those whose need for creature comforts is high, should stick to European Russia, which is all of the country west of the Ural Mountains.

Friendly Belarus is a country with few traditional attractions to offer tourists. The best way to enjoy Belarus is to sample city life but spend as much time as possible in the countryside or in small towns, getting to know the locals. Some parts of the country retain a haunting beauty, especially when fields of birch groves are interspersed with wooden villages that seem frozen in 19th-century isolation..