First Itinerary in...

Today I received the first customized itinerary. I have to say I'm impressed. It covers just about everything I want and for about $600 less than I'd estimated. What surprises me is that they have me in St. Petersburg first, which I sort of always expected to be where the trip would end, but in reality I'll be flying home from Moscow. I don't know if that should matter to me or not. I have heard St.P is "my kind of city" and Moscow not so much. The other thing that is interesting is I only have 2 full days in Moscow. I am going to ask and see if I can get one more, since the Pushkin Museum and Tretyakov Museum, both "must sees" in my mind, have not been included and there is no "free" time in Moscow. Hmmmm. I suspect that is because hotels are dirt cheap in Moscow on weekends, and this itinerary has me landing in Moscow, not surprisingly on Friday night and departing Monday morning. I think I can squeak one more day out of this. I also asked for a proposed itinerary from another Russian travel company, just for the purposes of comparison shopping. This one though is looking for $220 just to put the proposal together, and their chosen hotels are the Ritz or Savoy. Methinks that's an indication that they're just a smidge out of my league. We'll see...