One day a week of the academic program is set aside for travel to local sights of social, cultural, and historical significance. All excursions are conducted in Russian. Academic year and semester participants are required to attend at least eight excursions per semester; summer participants are required to attend at least four.
Resident directors arrange all excursions and accompany the group; Russian faculty, host families, and tutors also routinely join American students.
Moscow weekly excursions include the Bolshoy Theater, Kremlin, the Red October Chocolate Factory, Sergeyev Posad, Novodevichy Monastery, Tretyakov Museum, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Yasnaya Polyana, and the Museum of Russian History.
St. Petersburg weekly excursions include the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Dostoyevsky Museum, Mariinsky Theater, Piskarovskoye Cemetery, Pavlovsk, Petrodvorets, and Yusupovsky Palace.
Vladimir weekly excursions include the Golden Gate Museum of History; Uspensky Cathedral, Suzdal, Dmitrevsky Cathedral, Vladimir Museum of Art, meetings with local journalists, and visits to public schools.
At approximately mid-semester, resident directors arrange a seven-to-ten-day trip outside the host city. Summer participants travel as a group at the end of their program. RLASP groups have recently traveled to Kazan, Nizhni Novgorod, Rostov-na-Donu, Sochi, Suzdal, and Yaroslavl. Groups do not travel outside the Russian Federation.