St Petersburg is pratically bursting with palaces to visit. But one of the most popular ones is Peterhof Palace, which isn't actually located in the city. Depending which method of transportation you take, it can take over and hour to get there. When we visited, we chose to leave it to one of our last days in the city, so we made sure we had time to see everything else beforehand. I can't stress enough how important it is that you look at their official website. Their opening times change constantly, and there are very random days for the palace to be closed on as well

During the high season, the palace itself is only accessible during certain times of the day, so plan accordingly. Online tickets are only available for entry after 6pm, other than that they need to be purchased at the ticket office on the day. We decided to visit on a Tuesday, since it's closed every Monday. However, I missed the part on the website that said it's closed on the last Tuesday of every month, which naturally is the Tuesday we chose.

The good thing about this story though, is that the palace gardens were still open! I've read quite a few blogs that say the palace gardens are more impressive than the palace itself, so although I would have loved to have gone inside, I was still very pleased to be able to walk around them. They were built to rival those at Versailles, so they are very impressive to see! You also save quite a bit of money by not paying to go inside the palace which is a silver lining. This is one palace you won't want to miss, even if you do just stroll around the gardens!.