Day Trip into the countryside

Mom and I woke up early this morning to get ready for our trip to Hoa Lu and Tam Coc. We had our own private car which was an incredible luxury compared to my last experience driving to Tam Coc (squished in a bumpy bus for 3 hours with no air-con...). This time, we had an amazing tour guide that accompanied the two of us and our driver. He was quite an interesting guy... having served with the Viet Cong for five years and often working with American veterans doing tours through Saigon. He told some pretty intense stories, but was so positive about the current relations between America and Vietnam. So, mom and I had quite the history lesson during our two and a half hour ride into the countryside. He knew everything about everything (his family has lived in Hanoi for over 19 generations!) and was always ready with more information at very turn. Our first stop was at Hoa Lu, the original capital city of Vietnam over 1,000 years ago. Most of the city no longer exists, but a temple was constructed in honor of king Dinh who reigned for a whopping 12 years; We arrived in a slight drizzle which made the tour of this recently renovated temple (to prepare for the 1,000 year anniversary of Hanoi) all the more mystical. Pictures below-

Next, we drove through a maze of limestone rock formations into the city of Tam Coc. I had been three years earlier, but the city has expanded so much since my last visit. We sat down to a traditional Vietnamese lunch at a gorgeous restaurant with sweeping views of the landscape. The whole area specializes in mountain goat meat so I enjoyed a nice portion of that. Afterwards, we headed down to get into our little sampan with a very nice old lady and her son. The two of them then proceeded to paddle us down a river through limestone mountains, rice paddies, and caves. This gave me a good opportunity to practice my Vietnamese, and was pretty proud of myself for mostly accurate communication with the two boat rowers. I could go on and on in exquisite detail, but will instead post pictures because I'm feeling a tad bit lazy...