After yesterday’s long day on a tour, we decided to have a more relaxed affair today.

The morning started with a late breakfast on the roof top of the Classyc Hotel looking out across the Old Quarter.

We then decided to use the morning to organise our return trip to Bali in early September. We will be meeting up again with our daughter Amelia and her friend Meg for a 2 week stay in Canggu. We had flights to book from Hong Kong to Denpasar and an onward flight up to Shanghai. This is a brief return to the beach before we continue our journey ‘north’ in Asia and stops in the iconic big cities of Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo from late September through to November.

Organising flights and accommodation is harder than it sounds and requires a lot of research. We use Skyscanner and Booking.com for the majority of our travels as they provide the most comprehensive list of options at the best prices.

By early afternoon we had organised our plans for Bali as well as accommodation in Japan, for when we meet up with friends in Tokyo in October and travel to Nagano and Kyoto.

With the need for some fresh air and a coffee we went for a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake and passed a number of monuments to the history of the city, the first relating to more recent communist revolution and the latter is the Turtle Tower, dating back to the 1700’s.

We then found our way to Trang Tien a retail street with high end shops and also the home of Kem Trang Tien ice cream shop, a city institution since 1958.

This part of Hanoi is the true centre of the Old French Quarter and houses the original opera house, the Hanoi stock exchange and the iconic Metropolitan hotel (now Sofitel Legend), along with French stores such as Hermes, selling the most beautiful silk scarves.

The boulevards and old chateau buildings truly give a unique feel of old colonial France.

After a brief period of rain, the sun came out again and the humidity levels rose, which meant it was time for a break and a cool smoothie drink in one of the corner cafes. We sat there for half an hour or so watching the Hanoi traffic and people go by.

Returning to the hotel mid afternoon, we headed to the roof top pool to enjoy the sunshine and chill. We’ve covered a lot of the city since we returned a few days back, so today has been good just lolling around!

This evening we headed out to dinner at a place called Pizza 4P’s a recommendation from a Dutch couple we met on our food walking tour. The place was very cool and urban and the food did not disappoint. Probably the best pizza we’d had since we left the UK and the salad relish made the meal a real standout. This was also helped by a cool accompanying BIA beer called Mikan for Andy and a Sapporo for Michelle.

Andy had never drank anything like it before, but said it tasted like a mix of IPA and pale ale.

After the meal, we went for a wander around the busy streets to take in the buzzy sights and sounds.

Tomorrow will be our last full day in Hanoi & Vietnam before we fly down to Bangkok on the 9th and on the 10th to Beijing.

As some of you may be aware the Chinese have restrictions on accessing Google, WhatsApp and sadly Jetpack which supports this Blog so if you don’t see any updates from 10th to the 31st August that’s the reason why. Once in Hong Kong it will be business as usual when I hope to be able to recall our activities over this 3 week period.