5 Days In St. Petersburg: The Ultimate Winter City Break

If you take the same train we did from Moscow then, after arriving at your hotel and having some lunch, the afternoon is probably fading away. However, there is still time to get your first glimpse of the city! We recommend taking a stroll down Nevsky Prospekt, the main avenue in the city. Go down to Palace square where you will be awestruck by the enormous Hermitage museum/Winter palace. If you’re lucky, there will be a beautiful sunset which you can enjoy down by the river Neva.

We had planned our trip with the intention of seeing an ice hockey match. The atmosphere in the SKA stadium was electric and one of the best we’ve experienced! It is definitely worth planning ahead and booking your tickets in advance for this one.

Walking the city

On your first full day in St. Petersburg, we really recommend beginning with a tour.  Whether you follow a self-guided one, or, as we did, the ‘free tour’ (where you tip your guide at the end), it’s really helpful to understand some of the history in order to make sense of the monuments and great buildings.  We found it particularly interesting to compare with Moscow, where we had just come from.

St. Petersburg, founded in 1703, is a relatively young city and is distinctive for its mix both Russian and European architecture. This is definitely something that strikes you as you walk around the city! Another interesting point is that, unlike Moscow and older Russian cities, there is no central square and Kremlin. This all makes sense when you consider that Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg effectively from scratch to be his “window on Europe”.  The city was planned to be elegant and spacious, with long avenues, and people were told to move to the new capital and build new homes. On a map you can see the strategic importance of the city’s position: the city really does ‘look out’ onto Europe.

On your walk round the city, enjoy the great cathedrals, St. Isaacs, Kazan and the Savior on Spilled Blood, and keep in mind which ones you’d like to revisit later. Watch at the riverside for the 12 noon canon at the Peter and Paul Fortress over the water. If you’re there in winter as we were, then the river Neva will likely still be frozen. However in summer the bridges go up at night time to allow boats to pass, so you have to be careful not to miss your last ‘bridge’ and get stuck on the wrong side for the night, a quirky element of life in St. Petersburg !  Head for lunch at No. 1, a chain of canteen style restaurants for cheap food that’s hot and tasty! 

Marvel at the incredible exterior of the Hermitage/Winter palace, and decide on which day you wish to explore it. A word of warning - it is huge and would take more than a day to cover it all! Take a moment to look up at the Bronze Horseman, a monument commissioned by Catherine the Great to Peter the Great (the city’s founder). The inscription reads ‘From Catherine to Peter’ and emphasises her connection to Peter and, thus, legitimacy as ruler. Head back to St. Isaac’s Cathedral and go up the tower before it closes (5.30 pm) for stunning views of the city at sunset.

Peter and Paul

Begin your day on the other side of the Neva river, starting with the Aurora cruiser. This museum is a fascinating reminder of St. Petersburg’s history, as it reportedly fired the first shot on the Winter Palace during the October Revolution.  The boat is impressive from the outside, especially as we saw it, set into the frozen river. It costs 700 rubles (400 for students) to go into the museum. It is well-maintained and contains detailed explanations of the cruiser’s history, though unfortunately not many in English. If you’re especially interested in naval history (or have a good understanding of Russian), then it’s worth going inside, but if not, perhaps just view it from the outside.

Walk along the river and perhaps stop for lunch. We found it difficult to find somewhere in this area, however did stumble across Yakitoriya which does great Japanese food. Continue walking along the riverbank until you reach the Peter and Paul fortress. This was where Peter the Great laid the first stone in the building of the new city of St. Petersburg. It’s free to enter and well worth a look around at the cathedral and tombs. There are some incredible views, especially in the late afternoon as the sun goes down and bathes the frozen river in beautiful pink-orange hues. Walk around the fortress and you should see many people crossing the frozen river Neva on foot! Plenty of people were doing so when we were there. It’s an amazing experience at sunset, not to mention a much quicker and more direct route back to the hotel!

Head out for dinner - we chose the Literary Cafe for a traditional meal. Enjoy a show at the Mariinsky theatre, whether it is opera or ballet - this is a wonderful, authentic experience! Buying your tickets well in advance is really important for famous shows like Swan Lake. However we managed to get good value tickets for a one act ballet a few days in advance, and really enjoyed the atmosphere at the theatre!

Day trip to Kronstadt

There are countless possibilities for day trips from St. Petersburg, and if you have the days in your itinerary then it’s well worth doing more than one. Popular excursions include the royal residencies outside of the city, such as Peterhof. However, in winter, the famous fountains are closed, so we thought it was best to save this for a return trip in summer. Another good option could be to visit Tsarskoye Selo. Of course in winter, the buildings are still as impressive as at any other time of year, and probably a lot quieter!

For our day trip, we decided to visit Kronstadt, the city on Kotlin island, which is connected to the mainland by a road. Even the journey there, if you’re making it the adventurous way on public transport, is quite the experience. We recommend the following route: take the metro to Beregovaya, exit via Savushkina St. exit, cross the road to the bus stop called Tourist Street and then take the bus 101. The ride takes about an hour.

Kronstadt itself is an unusual place, and staggeringly different from St. Petersburg. Consider their two different purposes: St. Petersburg as a city of luxury and entertainment, and Kronstadt, with its significant strategic position, as the fortress to defend the capital. It still has quite a serious, naval feeling to it, totally unlike St. Petersburg. ! The Naval Cathedral is a popular tourist site, however, and rightly so, as it is truly beautiful. We recommend walking around to get a feel of the place, especially by the waterside where you can see an impressive array of naval ships all frozen into the water!  We had a very nice lunch at a cafe nearby, and it was cool  to be out of St. Petersburg doing something a bit different!

After getting the bus back, and stopping for a warming coffee and cake,  we then went to the Shadow Museum. This is a truly wonderful and interactive museum, and a guide takes you round it all and explains the intricacies of the artwork. Some of the art they create is truly mind-blowing, and many of the shadows relate to St. Petersburg or its famous citizens.

Delve into the Hermitage museum

Today, tackle the Hermitage Museum! This is really a marathon, so we recommend not trying to see everything, but rather having a look at a few exhibitions on the map that interest you. The Winter palace state rooms are definitely worth seeing. How long you spend all depends really on your stamina for museums! The exterior of the Winter Palace was originally pink, and then a dark red during soviet times. Now it is a minty green, similar to that of the Malachite room (another that is worth visiting!).

In the afternoon, visit Smolny Cathedral, which is very beautiful and has a different interior to other churches in St. Petersburg.

For dinner, we recommend trying a Georgian restaurant, a cuisine which is very popular in Russia. We ate some delicious Khachapuri cheese bread, garlic chicken curry and a nutty beef curry.

Tell us your thoughts on our 5 day St. Petersburg itinerary! Want to learn more about Russia? Take a look at our Moscow guide!

Don't forget to check out all the key information you need to plan this trip and our photo gallery for St. Petersburg!