St Petersburg with a teenager: viewpoints, arcades and the rules that catch you out

Most families plan a day in St Petersburg that would have worked when their child was seven: the Hermitage in the morning, a canal boat after lunch, a lot of looking at stucco. With a teenager that plan collapses by three in the afternoon. Between 12 and 17 a traveller wants to climb something, touch something and choose something.

Height works, with conditions

The safest bet is the colonnade of St Isaac's Cathedral, 43 metres up a spiral staircase. The ticket costs 700 roubles and there are no reduced tickets for the colonnade — a schoolchild pays the adult price. An evening slot runs from 18:00 to 21:30, with entry until 21:00, for 800 roubles. Inside the cathedral, visitors aged 7 to 18 pay 330 roubles.

The second viewpoint is the Lakhta Center observation deck on the 83rd floor, at 365 metres. With an audio guide it costs 1400 roubles on weekdays before 17:00, 1600 after 17:00 and 1800 at weekends and during school holidays; the schoolchild rate is 1000, 1100 and 1300. Rules matter more than the price: visitors under 16 are admitted only with an adult, and if you are more than 15 minutes late the ticket is cancelled without a refund. Security screening means no scooters, no food and no glass bottles.

Ignore the "legal rooftop tour" adverts. There is no permit in Russia for taking groups onto the roofs of residential buildings, and a sloping metal roof with no railings is not a place for a teenager.

Things they can actually do

The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines at 2V Konyushennaya Square is open daily from 11:00 to 21:00. A ticket costs 1250 roubles, 1100 for students and schoolchildren, 4400 for a family of two adults and two children, and includes 15 coins for 15 games plus a guided walk that starts every hour. There are 53 working machines and an analogue photo booth.

The Erarta museum of contemporary art on Vasilyevsky Island is open every day except Tuesday from 11:00 to 23:00, which makes it the one serious option late in the evening. A single ticket is 1500 roubles, 600 for ages 4 to 15, and the U-Space installations cost 300 roubles extra for a group of up to five.

Money and transport

A single metro ride costs 95 roubles with a token and 65 with a Podorozhnik card; a 90-minute ticket covering transfers to buses and trams is 106 roubles, and a one-day travelcard is 364 roubles. The state Pushkin Card, worth 5000 roubles a year for ages 14 to 22, is issued through the Russian Gosuslugi app, so visiting foreign families cannot use it.

Plan three stops, not five, feed everyone every three hours, and build in two hours when you split up and meet later. That decision saves the evening more reliably than any itinerary.