Two Days in Shanghai - Access Shanghai

A wide panorama of the Pudong skyline from across the water — Photograph by Balon Greyjoy, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Two days adds the other bank, the museum, and the architecture that most visitors walk past without seeing.

⚠️ Book the Shanghai Museum before you fly. It is free and it still sells out, and it closes one day a week.

The plan

Day 1 — The one-day plan: Bund, Yu Garden, Nanjing Road, People’s Square, the Concession.
Day 2, 09:30 — ⭐ The Shanghai Museum on your booked slot. Two hours, and spend most of it on bronzes and ceramics.
11:30 — The Urban Planning Exhibition Centre on the same square, for the room-sized model of the whole city. An hour here makes everything else legible.
13:30 — ⭐ The ferry across the Huangpu — a working commuter service, a couple of yuan, and the best approach to Pudong there is.
14:00 — Lujiazui: the circular elevated walkway between the towers, which is free and gives you all three of them. Decide at the foot of the Shanghai Tower whether the air is clear enough to pay to go up.
16:30 — Back across, then north to the Garden Bridge over Suzhou Creek and the terrace behind Broadway Mansions — the view of both waterfronts at once, for nothing.
18:00 — Walk south into the lanes around Laoximen for shikumen still lived in, then dinner.

The round bronze-vessel form of the Shanghai Museum above its steps — Photograph by Fumihiko Ueno, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

⚠️ There are now two Shanghai Museums — the original on People’s Square and a much larger one in Pudong that opened in 2024. They are different collections with separate reservations. Make sure you booked the one you meant.

A residential lane with laundry strung overhead and bicycles against the walls — Photograph by Daniel Case, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

What this plan is built around

Not a list of sights, but the constraints: ⭐ your payment app has to work before any of this does; the Shanghai Museum and the China Art Museum are free and still need an advance reservation with your passport; most museums close on Monday; and the metro stops between about 22:00 and 23:00, which is hours before the restaurants do and is the one deadline that actually strands people here.

The steel Garden Bridge over Suzhou Creek with Broadway Mansions behind — Photograph by HLBB75 at English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Other lengths

1 dayOne Day in Shanghai 3 daysThree Days in Shanghai 5 daysFive Days in Shanghai

Checked on 6 September 2026. Reservation requirements, closing days and entry rules change — confirm before you travel. All sixteen sights, one page each, in Landmarks & Sights.