We are going to China this October visiting Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. We have 13 nights and have decided to spend the last 5 nights in Hong Kong. That leaves us with 8 nights to split between Shanghai and Hangzhou. What would you recommend? 3 nights Shanghai and 5 Hangzhou or 4-4? Where will we have more to see and do? An idea of your top recommendations for what to see and do, would also be appreciated as well as - of course - your favourite restaurants in these cities.

That's too much time in all three of those cities. Why not slot Beijing into the mix?

We have been to Beijing before and want to have a relaxing programme this time. But the cities are all huge so I cannot believe that it will be boring.

The most important advice I can give you is to avoid, at all costs, the first week of October. It is the National Holiday Golden Week and it is utterly unbelievable how crowded places of touristic interest become. That would take the idea of "relaxing" totally off the table.

I agree with a previous poster that adding Beijing would be a good call.

Why 5 days in HK? 2-3 days is sufficient. The highlights (for me) were:
- Star Ferries to Kowloon;
- discovering the best restaurants are not at street level a.k.a. look up!
- visiting Shenizen;
- Dragon's Back hiking trail.

We will avoid first week of October. I have heard about the Golden Week chaos and totally agree that such a week would not be relaxing.

We will not go to Beijing as we have been there before.

We have chosen to stay 5 nights in Hong Kong as it will be warmer there in October. We have a very nice hotel with pool (the Four Season) during these days, so we are hoping for some pool time as well as discovering the city, eating and shopping.

So if possible: Could you forget about the number of days, just tell me if I should spend more time in Shanghai or in Hangzhou?

2 days in Shanghai and one day in Hangzhou.
I think that Hangzhou is over-rated. Check suzhou and Nanjing while you are in that area to fill the time.

You make it sound like I should rather just stay at home.

In those 2-3 days, how much of it was spent in Shenzhen?

In post #3, you stated/implied that your goals are:

1) relaxing
2) not boring

Your proposed plan (remarkably) manages to fail on both of these counts.

I encourage you to think outside of the box a bit more and get back to us. If you provide us with info about your secondary/tertiary interests, we may well be able to help you craft a plan that nails your stated goals right on the head.

Sorry if I did not express myself clearly.

With relaxing I was thinking not too much moving around to different places, i.e. we would like to stick to only these three cities. In addition I meant that we want to have enough time to relax in our (very nice) hotels in addition to seeing some of what these cities have to offer in terms of shopping, culture and food. If there are for example four must see sights in a city, we would be happy to spend four days there, seeing one sight plus maybe the area around that specific building/museum/temple or whatever each day and then spend the rest of the time in the hotel (spa/pool etc.) plus go out for meals or a walk to see an interesting street, look at a nice view etc.

In terms of the kind of things we like to do, we love architecture, temples, shopping and markets. We love to wander around in interesting neighbourhoods, modern or traditional, and we are definitely foodies enjoying both Michelin star fine dining and great street food from around the world.

A perfect day for us could for example include getting up really early to see a local park where the Chinese participate in different activities or to visit a market looking at all the different products offered. Wander around there and have a local breakfast somewhere followed by a visit to a temple. Thereafter back to the hotel where we would relax in the spa or pool, read or even take a nap. Light lunch in the hotel. Late afternoon or early evening we would go out again. Visit an area where there are either traditional shops (chinese medisine, tea shops etc.) or a modern mall whereafter we would have dinner in a great restaurant in that area.

We have travelled a lot in Asia, but not been to these three cities and we thought it would be a nice trip for this autumn.

Hope this helps in terms of making suggestions for how we could spend our days in the three cities we would like to visit and to advice me in terms of how to split our 13 nights between these three cities.

One. Now I am curious, why do you ask?

+1

I'm wondering what the highlights of HK could've been when you only spent half of your time - one day - there.

But, if Shenzhen is in your sights again, I'd be glad to try and help if you have questions about it.