a sunburn and a bottle of wine

When we came down for breakfast in Da Lat, the Hotel owner had laid out this banquet of a spread. There was dragon fruit, pineapple, passion fruit, watermelon, tomatoes, avocados, laughing cow cheese, baguettes, yogurt and fried eggs. There was even vegemite, marmite, and some peanut butter. The peanut butter was all the way from Metaire, Louisiana. He also had made his own passion fruit juice, which was heavenly. We ate really well, and then decided to walk around the city and see things for ourselves rather than taking a tour.

We walked along the lake to the Da Lat flower gardens. There were so many beautiful flowers, some that I recognized and some that I didn't. I took an awful lot of pictures. My favorites were the many kind of orchids. In Vietnamese, "lan" means orchid. There were some funny plant sculptures of different animals, and there was also a sculpture garden of stone sculptures. It was so lovely and the morning was nice and cool.

We walked all the way around the lake and got lunch at a restaurant downtown. After lunch, we decided to return to a small bakery where we had gotten pastries the night before. The lady working in the bakery was so sweet and let us sit in the store while we ate. I got this delicious pastry that has white raisins and potato chunks in it. It tasted a little like a King Cake.

We spent the afternoon at the Crazy House. A Vietnamese architect who studied in Moscow designed this structure, and it truly is crazy. It doubles as a hotel at which people can stay, and I think the woman who met us at the front said that the architect still lives there. Each room has a different theme: kangaroo, bear, bamboo, ant, termite, tiger, etc. The kangaroo and the tiger both had light-up red eyes, and it was creepy as all get out. I would not want to stay in a room and have that thing staring at me.

We went to tour Bao Dai's summer palace, which was more or less like touring the White House. Bao Dai was the last emperor of Vietnam around the time of World War II. What was interesting about our tour there was that two Vietnamese guys our age approached us in one of the rooms. We were talking with them about school, where we went and where they went and about how old we all were. One of the boys had very good English, but the other one didn't seem to speak any English, though I did notice the quite one subtly taking pictures of us on his phone.They were on holiday from school and with a group of other students. Once the other students found us, it was game over. They all wanted to take pictures with us. They asked for our e-mails and our phone numbers (we don't have phones). I have never experienced anything like that before. Unfortunately, the three of us were so flabbergasted by the whole thing that we didn't get a picture with one of our cameras, but if the guy every e-mails us, maybe we can get him to send us the picture.

We walked around some and then got dinner at an outdoor cafe. This cafe had artichoke tea, which was very delicious. I didn't expect to like the taste, but it was really good and soothing. After dinner, we split a bottle of DaLat wine at one of the terraced cafes in the city center. We also walked past the bakery one last time for a coconut pastry before heading back to the hotel entirely content and sunkissed.