Just got back from a 13 night trip to SPB and Moscow, which we did independently without any tour groups or guides bar doing the "Free Tours" in SPB and Moscow, both of which I highly recommend and posted as such on Trip Advisor ....had a great time in both SPB and Moscow. Visited all the usual tourist places during our 13 night trip. Having a smartphone with GPS and google maps came in really handy esp. in Moscow where the signs were only in Cyrillic. Found working out which exit to take from the Moscow subway the hardest as we could not read the signs, and had to take any random exit, and then go from there with the GPS.

Moscow was my favourite of the 2 cities mainly because of the buildings and history but SPB wasn't bad too. We flew into LED (St Petersburg) and out from DME (Moscow), and caught the high speed Sapsan train between the 2 cities (4 hours).

My highlights: Church of the Spilled blood, Catherine's palace (and Amber room), canal cruise, Peterhof in SPB; opera at Bolshoi, Red Square, Kremlin Museum (and Armoury and Diamond Fund), St Basils and GUM at night and Gorky park on a sunny afternoon in Moscow. Found that the younger Moscovites could usually speak a few words of English when we got lost (eg no GPS signal available); the only surly ones were the government bureaucrats selling palace / museum tickets....no we can't sell you the 12 noon tickets for Catheine's palace at 1155am....come back at 12noon!!

We travelled independently with my 75yo mother and felt safe at all times both day and night in both cities. We were told tourists numbers were down 40% in Moscow due to the Ukraine crisis, and there were hardly any American tourists in Moscow.

If you have any doubts about going to SPB and Moscow, don't...GO!! ^Happy to answer any Qs and I'm sure other posters will chip in as well.