January 24, 2015.  This morning we set off to see the Citadel, where the Mandarins lived,  it has six miles of walls and us surrounded by a moat.  Lots of the buildings are gone but they are slowly rebuilding the complex.

We then continued on to Thien Mu Pagoda.  One of the items there is labeled as a relic.  It's the car that the monk who self immolated in the square in Saigon in 1963 used to drive there.  He was a monk from Hue.  I'm sure you remember the picture of him in flames that graced all the magazine covers.  The car is in great condition and is in an open front garage.  Our guide pointed out the picture of his heart.  It did not burn like the rest of him.

From there we got on a boat to cruise the river to the next stop.  The Perfume River is very large, much bigger than the Snake.  Some of the men in the group bought shirts and pants on the boat.  Stella noted that we just putted along until no one else bought anything.  Then they revved it up.  We had a vegetarian lunch at a monastery that was very good.

Off to the next stop, a temple that had 126 steps to the top.  Eileen counted them.  Beautiful mosaic tiles on all four walls.

We had taken our laundry to dinner last night so it would be ready for pickup today.  A young woman picked it up at the restaurant.  There were about 8 of us that had bags of it.  She stuffed it on a motorbike around the driver and in between them and rode off.  We picked it up on the way back to the hotel.  Mine cost $4.50 to get it done.  I'm just hoping that my blue jeans aren't bleached out to white.  Stella said she had visions of two young Vietnamese women wearing hers for a picture, one in each leg.  We howled over that image.  That's something we have not seen - anyone overweight here. They are all tiny and thin.  Diet and physical labor will do that.

When we got back, we decided to eat in the restaurant here.  Dinner was on our own tonight and we just wanted to relax and not go anywhere.  There were 19 members of the tour doing the same thing when we sat down to eat.  No one wanted to face the city it seems.