Shanghai, Suzhou & Hangzhou: 6-Day Itinerary

Yu Garden 豫园

Last entry

16:00 — the 16:30 figure is when the garden is cleared, not when you can still get in

Ticket

¥40 in peak season (1 April to 30 June and 1 September to 30 November) and ¥30 in the low season (1 July to 31 August and 1 December to 31 March)

On a passport

a passport works at the window. ⚠️ The garden is small and the bazaar is not — budget an hour inside the walls and treat the rest of the block as a separate, free, much later-opening thing.

Getting in

Metro Lines 10 and 14 stop at 豫园. ⚠️ The station is named for the bazaar it sits under, not for the garden gate — the ticketed garden is a few hundred metres further in, past the crowds most visitors mistake for it.

Full Yu Garden guide

The former French Concession 上海法租界

Hours

the streets are open at every hour; shops and cafés set their own, and the lanes are at their best late morning to early evening

Ticket

Free — it is a district of streets, and nothing about walking it is ticketed

On a passport

the plane trees are the attraction and they cost nothing. ⭐ The value here is a whole afternoon of walking rather than any single address, which is why it survives a rainy day better than the towers do.

Getting in

Tianzifang is beside 打浦桥 on Line 9. ⭐ But the Concession is better entered on foot from the east and walked west — the point is the streets between the landmarks, not the landmarks.

Full The former French Concession guide

Pudong observation decks 陆家嘴观光层

Last entry

21:30 at Shanghai Tower — the 22:00 figure is when it closes, not when it stops selling

Ticket

Shanghai Tower's floor-118 deck is ¥180 standard, ¥190 in summer and ¥199 on public holidays

On a passport

⭐ The useful thing nobody writes down: you are standing IN the skyline, so you cannot photograph it. The picture everyone actually wants is taken from the Bund, across the water, for nothing.

Getting in

Line 2 to 陆家嘴 puts all three towers within a few minutes of each other on the elevated pedestrian ring.

Full Pudong observation decks guide

Suzhou Classical Gardens 苏州古典园林

Booking

Required — opens up to 7 days ahead, real-name. The Humble Administrator's Garden is the one that actually sells out — reported three days out on summer weekends and across the May and October holidays. Lingering and Lion Grove are easier but still worth two or three days in peak season.. the Humble Administrator's Garden about three days ahead on peak weekends; the other three usually same-day on a weekday.

Last entry

admission stops 30 minutes before closing — 17:00 in summer, 16:30 in winter. That half hour is the one people lose.

Ticket

each garden is ticketed separately: Humble Administrator's ¥80 peak / ¥70 low · Lingering ¥55 / ¥45 · Lion Grove ¥40 / ¥30 · Master of the Nets ¥40 / ¥30, plus a separate ¥120 evening ticket at the last of them

On a passport

A passport is both the booking document and the entry document — the gates scan it directly, so there is no window exchange and no paper ticket. That makes these among the EASIEST major sights in China for a foreign visitor to enter, which is worth saying plainly because the opposite is usually true. The friction is upstream: the official channel is a WeChat account, so book on a travel platform in English if you would rather not use it.

Getting in

Metro Line 6 (opened 2024) stops at 拙政园苏博 — named for the Humble Administrator's Garden and the Suzhou Museum, and within a 5–10 minute walk of the garden, Lion Grove and the museum alike. From Suzhou Railway Station it is Line 2 to 观前街 then one stop on Line 6.

Full Suzhou Classical Gardens guide

Pingjiang Road 平江路

Hours

the street itself is open at all hours; shops and the visitor point run roughly 09:00–21:00

Ticket

Free — the street costs nothing; only the boat and a few courtyard sub-sites are ticketed

On a passport

The hand-rowed canal boat is about ¥40 a head for a roughly 40-minute loop and is the one paid thing most visitors want. ⛔ That ¥40 collides with two garden admissions and with Panmen's day ticket — it is a boat fare and nothing else.

Getting in

runs south from the northeast garden cluster along a canal, so it is the natural afternoon after a morning of gardens rather than a separate trip.

Full Pingjiang Road guide

West Lake 西湖

Hours

No gate and no opening hour — the lake, the shoreline path, both causeways and the lakeside parks are open and free at any hour, day or night. Only the ticketed sub-sights inside the scenic area keep hours of their own.

Ticket

Free

Getting in

Metro Line 1 straight to Longxiangqiao (龙翔桥) with no transfer — the eastern-lakefront station, a short walk from the Hubin waterfront where most visitors first reach the water.

Full West Lake guide

West Lake 西湖

Hours

No gate and no opening hour — the lake, the shoreline path, both causeways and the lakeside parks are open and free at any hour, day or night. Only the ticketed sub-sights inside the scenic area keep hours of their own.

Ticket

Free

Getting in

Metro Line 1 straight to Longxiangqiao (龙翔桥) with no transfer — the eastern-lakefront station, a short walk from the Hubin waterfront where most visitors first reach the water.

Full West Lake guide

Lingyin Temple & Feilai Feng 灵隐寺·飞来峰

Booking

Required — opens Slots open 7 days ahead, released daily at 08:00. Same-day booking does not exist, so the earliest possible visit is tomorrow. Choose a morning (07:30–12:00) or afternoon (12:00–17:00) slot — but the morning slot actually admits until 13:00 and the afternoon one from 11:00, so they overlap by two hours. Daily caps: 35,000 weekdays, 50,000 weekends, 65,000 public holidays.. Public holidays — and the lunar 1st and 15th, when Chinese visitors come to burn incense — clear within minutes of the 08:00 release and need the full 7 days' notice. Weekends want about 3 days. Weekdays are rarely the constraint; a day ahead is enough.

Last entry

17:00

Ticket

Free

On a passport

Foreign passports ARE accepted — the booking mini-program lists passport alongside the mainland ID card, and the document type has to be switched to Passport by hand. Carry the physical passport; photographs and photocopies are refused. ⚠️ At the gate the official wording is "scan your document at the turnstile", but travellers consistently report the turnstiles are built around the mainland ID card and face match: the staffed lane is the reliable route and clears in 3–5 minutes when the booking already exists.

Getting in

From the Hubin lakefront: ~10 km (Amap-routed 9.9 km / 28 min, 2026-08-04), because no road crosses West Lake and the drive swings right around its southern end. The straight-line gap is only ~4 km. ⚠️ The widely-repeated "20 minutes from West Lake" is NOT simply wrong — it is unlabelled: from the lake's NORTH-WEST shore (Yue Fei Temple) Amap routes 3.67 km / 11 min, and our own west-lake-hangzhou page correctly prints ~20–25 min for that origin. It is the EAST-side hotel strip, where the reader is, that costs half an hour. Say which shore, or the two pages read as contradicting each other. ⚠️ On WEEKENDS and public holidays, 08:00–17:00, taxis and ride-hail are barred from the Lingyin area outright: the app reassigns the drop to an outer car park — 西溪路608号 to the north or 小牙坞 to the south — from which a ¥2 shuttle covers the rest. ⚠️⚠️ BOTH ARE OVER 4 km FROM THE GATE (Amap-routed 2026-08-04: 西溪路608号 4.49 km / 10 min drive, 3.19 km / 43 min on foot; 小牙坞 4.24 km / 8 min drive, 57 min on foot). An earlier version of this note said the shuttle "covers the last stretch in 3–5 minutes" with a 10–15 minute walk as the fallback; that timing belongs to the LAST hop, not this one — the 灵隐路32号 transfer centre is a 605 m / 8 min walk from the gate. Do not tell a reader they can walk it. Weekdays carry no such restriction and a car reaches the gate.

Full Lingyin Temple & Feilai Feng guide

Longjing Tea Villages & the China National Tea Museum 龙井茶村·中国茶叶博物馆

Last entry

Both museum branches stop admitting shortly before close; plan the museum for the early afternoon, not the late one.

Ticket

Free

Getting in

⚠️ There is NO metro in these hills — this is the single most useful access fact and the reason a tea-village morning eats more of the day than people plan for. Taxi or DiDi up from the lakefront is the default.

Full Longjing Tea Villages & the China National Tea Museum guide