using US dollars in ST Petersburg

I've been told that its okay to pay for our tour in SPB with US dollars, and that the dollars should be relatively new and in good condition, but I've not seen anything about denomination - I'd hate to carry a stack of 20s - is there any problem with 50s or 100$ bills?

They are very happy with $100 dollar bills

Denominations are never a problem. No coins and bills in good condition are the usual requests. If you need change tho, you might indeed get it in Rubles.

Denominations are never a problem. No coins and bills in good condition are the usual requests.

If you need change tho, you might indeed get it in local currency when traveling.

The tour operators prefer 'crisp' US Dollars. Don't have to be right off the press, but not in 'bad' condition. And, as has been said, the denomination is of your choice. We paid with 6 nice 'crisp' $100 bills.

We did spend some US Dollars at one of the vendor carts and we got back US Dollars as change. That may not be usual, but it worked for us.

Cheers

Len

People in many foreign countries are very funny about accepting dollars, particularly high-denomination ones if they have any tears, bad creasing, writing or marker pen stains, for fear of counterfeits.

There are ATM's in the cruise terminal to withdraw roubles and bureaux de change all round the city. I prefer to pay in roubles, but after the 50% devaluation against the dollar, maybe people there now prefer to take hard currency instead of their own! I know tour agents like Denrus and Red October do.

We are planning to pay with a credit card with no foreign transaction fee. Seems like a good alternative to walking around with over $3,000 in cash for our group of 8.

We are planning to pay with a credit card with no foreign transaction fee. Seems like a good alternative to walking around with over $3,000 in cash for our group of 8.

The tour company has to pay a fee for your use of a credit card (like every place you use your card), so many of them give a discount for cash USD

We had no problem using whatever dollars we had to pay for the tour and in souvenir stores. They wanted rubles in the Hermitage cafe only. We had none, but it was no problem either. Our guide offered us some rubles and we put it on the bill in the end of the tour to return the sum in dollars. We did not want to use credit card, because some of our friends told us there was a lot of card fraud in Russia. Well - it was two years ago. Maybe the situation has changed by now.