พุชกิน

Understand

Formerly known as Tsarskoye Selo (Царское Село), the "Czar's Village", Pushkin is known for its numerous imperial parks and palaces.

Get in

Local trains run from St. Petersburg's Vitebskiy station (not the main hall, but the smaller hall for local trains to the right and around the corner as you face the main hall) to the Tsarskoye Selo station in Pushkin. A round-trip train ticket costs , and trains run at 15-20 minute intervals starting at 6:00am until midnight except:

- Leaving St. Petersburg, there is no train service between 10:00am and 12:00 noon on weekdays. The trains during that interval only operate on weekends and holidays; trains outside that interval run 7 days per week. Note that all local trains leaving the Vitebskiy Station stop at Detskoe Selo and Pavlovsk; this makes it a bit easier for non-Russian speakers, since you don't have to worry about which train to board even though different trains go to different terminus stations.

- Returning from Pushkin toward St. Petersburg, there is a gap in service between 12:30pm and 2:30pm weekdays, although trains do operate during that interval on weekends and holidays.

See

thumb|300px|Corner of the Amber Room inside Catherine's Palace

Eat

The Catherine Palace has a rather expensive cafe inside near the cloak rooms. A clean, reasonably-priced restaurant called "Italian Pizza" with a variety of good food - from pizza to hamburgers to salads to sushi - is located in the square in front of the train station. Facing the station, it is in the building to one's left; enter through the basement stairs. Open 11:00am until after midnight. Another pizza place (LEO Pizza & Grill) is located near the central cathedral, in the Gostiny Dvor (not to be confused with the proper one in Saint Petersburg), and it serves an even bigger variety of foods, plus a panoramic second floor and a children's corner.