China · Shanghai
Plan your Shanghai trip
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01Your itinerary
02Where to stay
Former French Concession (Xuhui / Huangpu)
Best for anyone who wants to walk out of the door into the real cityLow-rise, tree-lined and residential, with the city's densest run of independent coffee, wine bars and small restaurants. Quiet at night, walkable by day, and connected to everywhere by metro lines 1, 7 and 10.
A converted lane-house boutique hotel near Anfu Road
The concession's small hotels are often single restored villas with a dozen rooms — the trade is character and location over facilities.
€€€A serviced apartment near Jiaotong University
The stretch around Hengshan Road and the university is leafy, cheaper than the Wukang Road blocks, and two metro stops from Xintiandi.
€€The Bund and Huangpu waterfront
Best for a short first trip where the view is the pointGrand colonial-era buildings converted into hotels, with river frontage and the Pudong skyline out of the window. Formal, expensive, and busy with day visitors on the promenade until late.
A heritage hotel in a 1920s Bund building
Several of the original trading houses are now hotels; a river-facing room here is one of the genuinely great city views anywhere.
€€€€A modern hotel just behind the Bund near Nanjing East Road
One block inland costs substantially less and puts you a two-minute walk from the promenade and on metro lines 2 and 10.
€€€Jing'an
Best for business trips and travellers who want everything a short metro ride awayCentral, commercial and extremely convenient — big-brand retail on Nanjing West Road, the temple, restored lane complexes, and an excellent restaurant density. Higher-rise and busier than the concession, but better connected than anywhere else in the city.
A high-floor international hotel near Jing'an Temple station
Lines 2, 7 and 14 all meet here, which makes both airports and every district straightforward.
€€€Lujiazui, Pudong
Best for the view from the room, and short stays built around Pudong airportThe skyline district itself: supertall towers, wide plazas, malls and river frontage looking back at the Bund. Impressive and immaculate, but the streets empty out after office hours and everything is further apart than it looks.
A high-floor hotel inside one of the Lujiazui towers
Rooms in the fifties and above face the Bund across the river; ask specifically for a west-facing room or you will be looking at Pudong instead.
€€€€Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.
03Tickets & tours
The Bund at dawn
A mile of colonial-era banking palaces facing the Pudong skyline across the Huangpu. The night view is the famous one; the six-a.m.
Tip Walk the west side too, not just the promenade. The former HSBC building at number 12 has an extraordinary 1923 mosaic dome in its lobby, and you can usually walk in and…
Yuyuan Garden
A classical Ming-dynasty scholar's garden from the 1550s in the heart of the Old City — rockeries, dragon walls, koi ponds and pavilions compressed…
Tip Buy a ticket for the garden proper and go at opening. By eleven the bazaar crowd has arrived and the narrow zigzag bridges become a queue.
Shanghai Tower observation deck
China's tallest building at 632 metres, with an observation floor on level 118 reached by one of the world's fastest lifts.
Tip Check visibility before you buy. If the top of the tower is not visible from the Bund, the view from it is not worth the ticket — go to a bar on the 50th-something floor…
Shanghai Museum
One of the great collections of Chinese art — ancient bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy and painting — split between the original People's Square…
Tip Free entry, but you must reserve a timed slot online in advance, and slots for the East branch go quickly at weekends. Book before you leave home if you can.
Wukang Road and the Former French Concession lanes
The best walk in Shanghai: plane trees, 1920s villas, converted lane houses, and the flat-iron Wukang Mansion at its junction.
Tip The crowd photographing Wukang Mansion is at one specific corner. Turn down Wuyuan Road or Anfu Road and it evaporates within a block.
Power Station of Art
A decommissioned riverside power station on the Huangpu converted into China's first state-run contemporary art museum, with the original 165-metre…
Tip Pair it with the West Bund museums along the same river bank — the Long Museum and Tank Shanghai are a short taxi ride south and make a full afternoon of it.
Jing'an Temple and Zhangyuan
An active Buddhist temple with a gilded roof sitting directly opposite a luxury mall, which is Shanghai in one photograph.
Tip The temple is best in the early morning when locals come to burn incense; by afternoon it is mostly visitors and the atmosphere changes completely.
Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, Hongkou
Housed in the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue in the district that sheltered around twenty thousand Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe, when almost no…
Tip Walk the surrounding streets afterwards — much of the pre-war housing survives, and the neighbourhood is one of the few in central Shanghai that has not been redeveloped.
Day trips from Shanghai
Suzhou
Twenty-five minutes by high-speed train from Hongqiao, and the best day trip in eastern China.
Day tripHangzhou and West Lake
Forty-five to sixty minutes by high-speed rail. West Lake is the landscape that Chinese painting and poetry has been referring to for a thousand…
Day tripZhujiajiao
A canal town on the western edge of the municipality, reachable directly on metro line 17 for a few yuan, which makes it the easiest water town from…
Day tripBrowse tickets, tours and activities
Skip-the-line tickets, guided tours and day trips, all in one place on Booking.com.
04Getting there & around
Getting around
Shanghai has the largest urban metro network on the planet by route length — over twenty lines and 800-odd kilometres — and it is cheap, clean, punctual and bilingual throughout. Fares run roughly three to ten yuan depending on distance. This should be your default for anything over about twenty minutes' walk.
Flights
Compare fares into Shanghai and pick dates that suit the days you planned.
Airport transfers
Book a private or shared ride from the airport so the first evening starts at your door, not at a ticket queue.
Car hire
Only worth it for day trips beyond the city — in town, the plan above works on foot and public transport.
Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.