Hangzhou 5 Day Itinerary (No Tourist Traps)
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Five days is the 4-day itinerary plus the Silk and Tea museums and the Six Harmonies Pagoda, the last of Hangzhou’s honest core rather than padding. Being direct about it: Hangzhou alone rarely fills much more than this, and from day 6 on, most travelers get more out of a Suzhou or Shanghai pairing than another Hangzhou-only day, which the 6 and 7-day plans build in. Shorter on time, the 2 and 3-day plans cover the lake-and-temple core alone.
Book these before you go
- A timed Lingyin Temple + Feilai Feng slot, via the Alipay or WeChat mini-program, 1-7 days ahead, daily caps apply.
- Alipay set up before you fly, with a foreign card linked, and a VPN installed before you leave home.
- A West Lake-area hotel, compare rates on Booking.com .
Day 1: West Lake and a Longjing tea village
Walk the free West Lake causeways: the Su Causeway (1074, Su Dongpo) and the Bai Causeway (822, Bai Juyi, a different builder roughly 250 years earlier). Boat to Three Pools Mirroring the Moon (¥55-70). Afternoon in Meijiawu or Longjing tea village, free to wander, tastings ¥10-80 a cup, Mingqian grade if visiting in early spring (picking season March-May). Close at Leifeng Pagoda (¥40), a 2002 rebuild over the 975 CE original, which collapsed in 1924.
Day 2: Lingyin Temple and Feilai Feng
Free since 1 December 2025, but only with a mandatory timed reservation through the Alipay or WeChat mini-program, booked 1 to 7 days ahead, daily cap in place, so lock it in before you land. Founded 328 CE; Feilai Feng carries 300-plus Buddhist rock carvings, including the well-known laughing Maitreya. Give it a full half-day.
Day 3: Hefang Street and the Grand Canal
Hefang Street (free) for Dongpo Pork, Beggar’s Chicken, and West Lake Vinegar Fish; Louwailou, on the lake since 1848, for the sit-down version. A Grand Canal night cruise from Gongchen Bridge in the afternoon or evening (around ¥100). Hangzhou is the canal’s southern terminus, with its own separate UNESCO listing from 2014, distinct in both site and year from West Lake’s 2011 designation.
Day 4: Xixi Wetland
An 11 sq km urban marsh, a genuinely different pace from the lake-and-temple circuit. Central zone free; quieter east and west zones around ¥80.
Day 5: The Silk and Tea museums, and the Six Harmonies Pagoda
Morning at the China National Silk Museum, free, the largest silk museum in the world, tracing a trade that goes back to the Tang dynasty. Follow with the China National Tea Museum, also free, for the fuller context behind the tea village you visited on day 1. In the afternoon, head to the Six Harmonies Pagoda on the Qiantang River, a separate site south of the lake, not to be confused with anything on West Lake itself: ¥20 entry, another ¥10 to climb it, worth it for the river view. This closes out Hangzhou’s honest sight list; treat a sixth day here as a repeat rather than new ground.
Know before you fly
China sits at US State Department Level 2, driven mainly by exit-ban and arbitrary-detention risk tied to business or legal disputes, not street crime, which is low; ordinary sightseeing carries very little of it. The bigger day-to-day friction is the language barrier, a translation app earns its keep, plus the near-cashless Alipay/WeChat Pay system and a Great Firewall that blocks Google, Maps, and WhatsApp, so a VPN installed before you leave home is worth more here than in most cities.
Is 5 days too many for Hangzhou?
Not if you spend it on the full honest list: West Lake, a tea village, Lingyin Temple, Hefang Street, the Grand Canal, Xixi Wetland, and the museums plus Six Harmonies Pagoda genuinely fill five days without padding. It does become padding past this point, which is exactly why the 6 and 7-day versions of this itinerary lean on Suzhou and the water towns rather than inventing more Hangzhou-only sights.
| Day | Focus | Rough cost per person (¥, excl. hotel) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Lake causeways, Three Pools boat, tea village, Leifeng Pagoda | 150-200 |
| 2 | Lingyin Temple + Feilai Feng (free, reserved) | 20-40 |
| 3 | Hefang Street, Grand Canal night cruise | 130-180 |
| 4 | Xixi Wetland (central zone free, east/west zones ~¥80) | 0-80 |
| 5 | Silk Museum, Tea Museum (both free), Six Harmonies Pagoda | 30-50 |
One concrete tip: set up Alipay and install a VPN before you fly, and reserve the Lingyin Temple slot the moment your dates are fixed. Both are five-minute jobs at home and half a lost day if left for arrival.