Hue

Arrived here about 5.15pm and were met by people from the hotel we were staying at thank goodness because the light was changing and it was just getting dark. What a great wee hotel. Thanks for the recommendation Shells. We are on the 5th floor so a great view from the window. We showered and then headed out to get something to eat, using a map as our guide to navigating the streets. Thanks to some lovely locals we were steered in the right direction when we wobbled from the path. hot and sticky tonight but plenty of activity on the streets because we have come at festival time. For the benefit of the girls, we ate at a little cafe that had pizza! I had a chicken curry and Terry sampled crunchy noodles and seasonal veges. All very tasty but quite embarrassing when the fatties from New Zealand had such a lot of food on their table. This was made worse when my large beer arrived. Ah well, very much needed to combat the heat. Desperate for a glass of wine though but it will have to wait until France. We had a wander around some shoe shops and around the streets to see what was happening in the festival. A lot of light shows lit up the bridge and specific scenic viewpoints. There was street theatre and I met a lovely girl from Hue who walked and talked with us for a while.
The second day was spent walking around the Citadel in the old city. What a fabulous place and so big. Again we wandered around without much of an idea of everything we were looking at except for an introduction video that told us the emperor used to live there with his wives and children and a few concubines on the side. Ella and I had an elephant ride which was pretty cool and we fed it at the end. I nearly shoved the sugar cane up its trunk until I realised it grabs the cane with it. Could have been ugly. We hightailed it back to the hotel to check out ready for our next adventure which is the overnight train to Hanoi.