Rainy day in St Petersburg: three hour-by-hour plans with tickets, hours and almost no street walking

Short answer: when it rains all day in St Petersburg, stop making a list of places and build a single chain instead — one long indoor stop in the morning, lunch inside the same building, one metro ride, one more stop until closing time. Three ready-made days below, with real prices and opening hours.

Plan A: the museum centre

Start at the General Staff Building on Palace Square at 11:00. The ticket costs 700 roubles and the fourth floor holds the Impressionist collection. Have lunch in the building, then cross Palace Square — 300 metres, the only street walking of your day — to the Winter Palace. A ticket to the Main Museum Complex costs between 500 and 1200 roubles depending on the time slot; evening slots are cheaper. The museum opens 11:00–18:00 on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, and 11:00–20:00 on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Mondays are closed. Children under 14 enter free on any working day; visitors aged 14 to 18, students and pensioners enter free every Thursday. See our Hermitage visiting guide for the details.

Plan B: for people who have seen everything

The Russian Railway Museum sits about a hundred metres from Baltiysky station and the Baltiyskaya metro exit. It opens 10:00–18:00 Thursday to Monday and 12:30–20:30 on Wednesday; Tuesday is closed. A weekday ticket costs 500 roubles, a weekend one 600 roubles, a family ticket 1200 roubles on weekdays. After lunch take the metro to Moskovskie Vorota and walk to Grand Maket Russia on Tsvetochnaya Street — a vast model of the whole country, open daily 10:00–20:00, 980 roubles for adults and 720 roubles for children aged 3 to 13. If you still have energy at six, Erarta on Vasilievsky Island stays open until 23:00 every day except Tuesday; entry is 1500 roubles.

Plan C: with a child

The aquarium at 86 Marata Street, next to Pushkinskaya metro, opens daily 10:00–20:00, with the box office closing at 19:15. From 1 September to 31 May an adult ticket costs 900 roubles, a school child 700 roubles, a child aged five to seven 400 roubles, and under-fives go free. Seal training sessions run Tuesday to Sunday at 11:30 and 17:30, shark feeding every day at 19:00. Have lunch in the mall food court, then ride two stops on the red line from Pushkinskaya to Baltiyskaya and finish at the railway museum. Two stops, no transfer, no rain.

How wet is it really

Local climate records give St Petersburg 173 days of rain a year plus 117 days of snow. September and October are the wettest months with twenty rainy days each — more than June or July. The city gets 180 overcast days a year and only 21 clear ones. In other words, a rainy day here is the default, not bad luck, which is why our month-by-month weather guide matters more than a forecast.

Getting between the stops

A single metro ride costs 95 roubles with a token or a bank card, and 65 roubles with a Podorozhnik travel card. A 90-minute ticket costs 106 roubles and covers one metro ride plus unlimited surface transfers. A one-day pass is 364 roubles, three days 701 roubles. Two rides is all any of these plans needs. Skip the bridge openings — navigation on the Neva runs only from 10 April to 30 November — and skip the St Isaac's colonnade, which costs 700 roubles with no discounts and shows you nothing but cloud.