3 Days in Shanghai and Beyond

Three days: one to land, two to leave the city entirely

This is not the version that tries to squeeze the Bund, Yu Garden, and Tianzifang into three days, that’s the in-city guide’s job . This is the version that treats Shanghai as a base camp: one day to get your bearings and sort the practical stuff, then two full days riding out to two of the best short train trips in the country. If your two-day version of this trip only had room for Suzhou, three days is where Hangzhou gets added.

Book these before you go:

Day 1: land, get oriented, sort the visa and the money

At Pudong (PVG), Metro Line 2 runs direct downtown in about 60-70 minutes for roughly Y7-8; skip the Maglev unless it’s purely for the photo, since it stops well short of downtown anyway. Check your visa status before you fly: the 240-hour transit (55-plus countries, onward ticket to a third country required) and the separate 30-day unilateral waiver (no onward-ticket condition, but the United States is not on this list) are genuinely different schemes, confirm which one applies to you.

Spend the afternoon walking the Bund for free, then the French Concession, Wukang Road and Anfu Road, no fixed plan; the city’s official visitor portal has the current metro map if you want it before you land. Come back to the Bund after dark for the lit-up Pudong skyline, roughly 7 to 10pm. For dinner, Jia Jia Tang Bao’s xiaolongbao runs Y20-30 a basket and is worth the queue.

Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay with a foreign card before you land, both take international Visa and Mastercard via passport verification since 2023, and it’s increasingly the only way small vendors will take your money. Install and test a VPN before departure too, VPN provider sites are blocked from inside the firewall, so you can’t fix this after you land.

Day 2: Suzhou, the easy case

The fastest G-trains from Shanghai Hongqiao reach Suzhou in as little as 23-30 minutes, over 350 departures a day, second-class fares around Y21-40. Book through Trip.com or the official 12306 booking system , bring your passport as your ticket ID, and confirm you’re leaving from Hongqiao Railway Station specifically, not Shanghai Railway Station across town. Suzhou’s station sits close to the Humble Administrator’s Garden and the Lingering Garden; pick one and give it real time rather than rushing both in a single afternoon. Back in Shanghai by evening for dinner in the French Concession.

Day 3: Hangzhou, the one that rewards patience

Hangzhou is about 45 minutes each way from Hongqiao to Hangzhou East, second-class fares Y34-120 depending on the train, 300-plus daily departures. From Hangzhou East, Metro Line 1 runs straight to West Lake in another 30 minutes for Y5. Catch a 9:15am departure and you’re lakeside by roughly 10:25am, with return trains running until about 10:30pm, so there’s no need to rush this one back. West Lake is the trip that rewards sitting still for an hour rather than photographing every angle and moving on, which is exactly what Suzhou doesn’t leave you time for.

What this trip skips, and why that’s fine

Zhujiajiao water town is the easy fallback if either rail day gets rained out, about 70 minutes each way via Hongqiao Railway Station and Metro Line 17, roughly Y8 total, town entry free. Beijing and Xi’an are both a comfortable single train ride but need two nights on the ground once you’re there, not a same-day round trip, so they don’t belong on a three-day trip; that’s what the six and seven-day versions are for. Shanghai Disneyland is a full-day commitment that would eat one of your two rail days, skip it here specifically.