Hue….. a little city sightseeing, Imperial city that is!

The capital of Vietnam was moved in 1802 from Hanoi to Hue…… and the Forbidden Purple City was used by the kings until 1945….. although they were under the French from just 33 years after they built the Imperial city.


However now the Citadel is mainly destroyed…. the destruction was somewhat  by the Vietnamese themselves during the Tet offensive in 1968 as the Viet Cong used it as a bunker and that made it a target for US bombers.
Our guide actually spent his summers market gardening in these formal gardens and lived in this particular house when his grandfather was the caretaker for the palace in the 70's!!!!  Not bad!

It was still very interesting to explore it, despite its lack of buildings, only 10 of the original 160 buildings remain…. and  to see just  how immense it is/was….….

and to appreciate somewhat how it might have looked when the kings resided there…..
…. the gates were definitely left standing…….

After one enters the main gate one walks over the Golden Water bridge…..

and is  then faced with the Palace of Supreme Harmony…….

then one can go to visit the Pavilion of Splendour

This particular gate…….

 ….. had amazing detail…….

serpents were of course everywhere….

some of the remaining buildings were not in good condition…..

the turtle does seem to be a favorite animal…...

we are happy to see the end in sight…… it is 2km by 2 km and we had gone from one side to the other and had meandered from side to side…….

We also visited the Perfume Pagoda…..

lots of life size guardians of the temple….

and a very different Buddha! Looks as though he is on his cell phone!

We saw the same type of turtle stele that we had seen in Hanoi….. this apparently relates the history of the Pagoda.

…we would have liked to have come in one of the dragon boats …..…..

We did have a great dinner later on at the MGallery hotel in their Le Parfum restaurant..
We opted to eat on their garden terrace overlooking the Perfume river which was fantastic……

as was the food……

We can absolutely recommend!!