03-06-2026 Walks

Slept in the night until about 11:00 (<>) and got back to sleep around 1:00. I slept off and on (no long periods of lying awake) until just before 6:00, when we got up and headed to a local sit-down café for breakfast. Omelet and bread, pain au chocolat, along chocolate croissant, and two coffees for about $12. It was excellent and really hit the spot for me, since I had basically had one meal the previous day. After breakfast we stopped at a market and got some snacks for the weekend. Then we walked around, trying to find us an ATM (successful), and back to the Airbnb. Ann had a gastric issue on the way back, but she found a café that was open. When we got back we rested while she took some Imodium and gave it time to take effect. In the late morning we walked over to the Imperial Citadel, which served as the military headquarters for North Vietnam during the war and also has a long record as a place of central importance in Vietnamese history going all the way back to 1000 CE. The grounds were fairly extensive, and we walked throughout the place. Then we started walking back to the Airbnb and happened upon the south Train Street area just as a train was rolling through. We walked into the row of shops after it passed and stopped for a drink there. This is a crazy place, hard to believe it still exists, given the danger of trains rolling through lines of people close enough to touch the sides. No trains came through as we sat there. We kept walking back, found a banh my sandwich shop near the Airbnb, and I had a light lunch (delicious and refreshing). We walked back to the bakery from the morning, walking along a street with a concentration of hardware shops, got a baguette there, and headed back to the flat for a rest break. After the break we walked over to an open market in a couple of buildings, lots of clothes and nothing of interest to us. We decided to try and have dinner out, went to a Vietnamese place not too far away, with vegetarian options. Food was pretty good, prices were great. There was a dude at the table behind Ann who, as near as I could figure, was on an escorted date, trying to chat this young woman up. She didn't seem too interested in the whole thing. And he was wearing sunglasses in the restaurant. Would love to know the whole story here. After dinner we walked back over to the lake, which was supposed to be set up for activities on the sidewalk around it. All we saw was an awful band playing instruments slightly out of tune and too loud. So we walked over to Beer Street, where it was still early, stopped at a clip joint for a beer and a glass of wine, and people-watched. We walked a little further north, and the bars at the north end were dead, again likely because it was early. From there we walked back to the flat, taking a detour through a nearby night market that was hopping. Back to the flat for a quiet rest of the evening before going to sleep. According to my Google Maps timeline, on this day we walked about seven miles, and that sounds a little low. It was over 20k steps.