Hue

The next city we visited was Hue (pronounced whey, emphasis on the "h" - the way Stewie from Family Guy would say it). It was a long, beautiful, but miserable bus ride from Hoi An. Let me remind you, we had stayed up until 4am for St. Patty's Day festivities the previous night, and after only a few hours of sleep had to wake up to pack our bags and get on the road.

We (finally) arrived in Hue about four hours later, and went on a rickshaw tour of the city. We've done a few of these in other cities and they are so fun.

again with the crazy driving...eeek

Our rickshaw city tour ended at Hue Imperial City (the Citadel), where our local guide took us on a walking tour. It's an old fort surrounded by a moat, built by the French during their occupation and is now a tourist attraction.

After our tour of the Citadel, we went to the Thein Mu Pagoda, which is still a working temple today and the seven-story pagoda is the tallest in Vietnam.

 

 

Inside one of the buildings on the grounds is the car driven by a Buddhist monk who set himself on fire during protests against the anti-Buddhist government in place at the time in South Vietnam. It's hard to tell in the picture below, but the photograph on the wall behind the car was taken of this event.

The pagoda was right along the Perfume River and we had a gorgeous view of the sunset as we were leaving.

That evening, Bo and I had dinner on our own. His restaurant research paid off and we had one of the best meals of the entire trip at Xuan Trang. Nothing outrageous, just really delicious and classic Vietnamese dishes. Each city in Vietnam has their own version of pho and fried rice, and we both just loved the food in Hue. Their local beer, Huda, was also Bo's favorite of all the beers we tried in Vietnam. After this amazing meal we called it an early night and caught up on some sleep before heading out again the next morning.