If you have one free day and two famous names on your list, this is the way to see both without rushing either. Your guide collects you from the hotel lobby, the car does the forty kilometres between the residences, and the tickets are already in hand when you arrive.
The order is deliberate. Peterhof comes first, while the fountains have only just been switched on and the paths are still quiet. The Catherine Palace comes in the afternoon, at the entry slot reserved for you.
Morning at Peterhof. About an hour’s drive west along the Gulf of Finland brings you to the Lower Park, laid out for Peter I from 1712. Its 147 fountains still run without a single pump: the water falls by gravity from springs twenty-four kilometres away, through a canal finished in 1721. You walk down past the Grand Cascade and the gilded Samson, along the Sea Canal to the shore, and past the trick fountains that soak anyone who steps on the wrong stone.
Lunch. A break at a Russian restaurant around midday, paid on the spot.
Afternoon in Pushkin. An hour inland is Tsarskoye Selo and Rastrelli’s Catherine Palace, its blue-and-white facade stretching 325 metres. Inside, the Golden Enfilade leads to the Amber Room. The original panels disappeared after 1945; the room you see was recreated over more than twenty years and reopened in 2003.
Back by evening. The car returns you to your hotel at around five.
Travellers with limited time in St Petersburg who want both imperial residences in one go, families who would rather not manage trains and timed tickets themselves, and anyone who prefers to spend the day looking rather than queueing.
Your guide will meet you in the lobby of your hotel
Skim across the Gulf of Finland by Meteor hydrofoil in forty minutes, then walk Peterhof's Lower Park with its 147 fountains. Boat and park tickets included.
A three-and-a-half-hour drive through the centre, ending on Hare Island where the city was founded in 1703, with entry to the Romanov burial cathedral.
A private two-hour walk through the Mikhailovsky Palace: a thousand years of Russian art, from medieval icons to The Ninth Wave and Repin's Barge Haulers.
Visit the Konstantinovsky Palace at Strelna, a working state residence that hosted the G8 and G20 summits, by car with a guide and entry arranged.