Before answering we might need to know what you refer to as "safety" and why Griboedva 71 might not qualify. If you are from Chicago you live with more threats than you would ever find in St Petersburg so maybe there is a particular threat you are afraid of that we can address.

The chief safety risk is walking across streets avoiding being hit by a car but the hotel/hostel has little control of how you cross the street.

Hostels are found here but not many and those that do exist are pretty expensive compared to Europe.

The largest is St. Petersburg International Hostel

http://www.ryh.ru/ and quite large but not a great location or friendliest staff. Anerican ownership.

Your booking is in a hostel that is fine, no problems and in a nice area walking distance to major shopping area of Sennaya Pl.

There is a listing of many hostels at

http://www.hostels.com/en/ru.st.html but be aware that some of the ratings are hyped.

There is one I know of to stay away from, "Right on Nevsky", very dirty, noisy and a foreign manager who is unreliable and thinks any female arriving is fair game. A friend had a horrible experience there. She called me in the middle of the night to have me help find her an emergency replacement hostel and she ended up at NevskyHostel on Bolshaya Konushennaya with an excellent location, friendly helpful staff, quiet and very clean, completely the opposite from Right on Nevsky for a similar price.

Thanks Stan, i guess really i am worried of coming back to the hostel to find our things missing...but i think we should be ok. Thanks for your advice.

Any idea of what the best method of getting some train tickets from St. Petersburg to Moscow ahead of time? With school starting around the first would it be better to order these in advance? I’ve read two different things, one being that it’s worth paying all the markup to get the tickets ahead of time and also that we should be ok getting them 3 days before while in St. Petersburg? Do you know which is actually true?