Coffee and lanes

Shanghai drinks more coffee than almost any city on earth, and the former French Concession is where it happens: plane trees, low apartment blocks, and a café every thirty metres, most of them good.

The route

Start at Wukang Road. The Wukang Building — the flat-iron block that photographs like a ship's prow — is the landmark, but the street behind it is the reason to come: 1920s and 30s apartment houses, balconies, laundry, bicycles, and a wide pavement that people actually use.

Walk east into Anfu Road, then Fumin Road and Changle Road. This is the densest stretch: independent fashion, vintage shops, tiny galleries, coffee. It is not a museum district; it is a neighbourhood that happens to be very pleasant to walk through. Give it three hours with no plan.

Coffee, specifically

Two addresses worth planning around, both near Taiyuan Road:

• O.P.S. CAFE — Lane 177, Taiyuan Road. Tiny, seasonal, menu written on a board; the drinks are closer to cocktails than flat whites.
• Captain George Flavor Museum — 236 Taiyuan Road. A roaster run by a World Brewers Cup champion; sit at the bar and order a filter.

Elsewhere, the local chain Manner is everywhere and genuinely decent for the price — the North Bund riverside branch has the best view of any chain café in the city.

Two stops to end on

Tianzifang, off Taikang Road, is a maze of shikumen lanes converted into studios, shops and small restaurants. It is crowded and commercial, and still the best place to see what a lane house actually looks like inside.

Then, if you have the legs, M50 on Moganshan Road — a former textile mill along Suzhou Creek, now a sprawl of galleries. Weekday afternoons are quiet, and the creek-side walk there is one of the underrated parts of the city.

Notes

• Weekday mornings are the sweet spot: cafés open, lanes empty, light good.
• Most places open around 10 and close by 7; a few stay open for the evening crowd.
• Cross under the elevated road at Wukang Road and you are in a different, rougher-grained neighbourhood within two blocks. That contrast is the walk.