Hanoi

Our hotel is located in the old quarter of Hanoi, which is a loud location, but very central. Our morning walk lead through the small alleys of the neighborhood. Each alley, each part of a street is dedicated to a certain profession. The street of the gravestone makers takes us to the court of mirror shops, which leads to the carpenters alley, which is followed by the passage of the shoeshops which is bordered by the lane of the merchants who scratch their left ear with their right hand. There are lots of people sitting on the streets on small chairs just chatting, smoking and drinking tea or doing nothing.
This short video I took at the spice shops.

Following Lonely Planet recommendation we ended up in a cafe. Pho Co is reachable from the backyard of a silk shop. You go all the way in, then you order, then you go up the tricky stairs all the way to the fourth floor. And there it goes. The best view on the Hoan Kiem Lake from the rooftop. After a couple of minutes out coffee arrived. Oh yes, we are in a coffee culture country. Caphe trung nong is a Vietnamese coffee made with sweet whipped yolk. OMG. This was a surprise. It's like drinking tiramisu!

This:

 resulted in this:

After tanking full energies we went to see the "Hanoi Hilton" which is the nickname to the Hoa Lo prison built by the French and was later used by the Vietnamese to jail captured American pilots.

We were then meandering around the lake, visited the Ngoc Son Temple and the Huc Bridge.

According to the legend the emperor who defeated the Chinese in the 15th century got a golden sword from heaven to do the job. But once he was done a golden turtle came and took the sword away into the lake, destroying the only possible physical evidence to the story. Aha, right. That's a tricky one.

In the evening we were walking and eating around the St. Joseph Cathedral.