Exploring Dalat

Dalat was a resort for the French in the colonial era, and we could tell why – the wonderful weather! Didn’t get out of the 70s during the day, but sunny.  The views were great too – we loved being in the mountains! That is the view from our own rooftop at the hostel.  Dalat is known for many things but this photo shows why it is considered ‘Petit Paris”.

The day after our motorcycle adventure we decided to walk around town and see what we could find. Right outside of our hostel was a large cathedral.  Vietnam has been the first place that we have seen christian places of worship.

We kept walking into a park. It was filled with flowers! We could easily see why Dalat is also known as the “city of flowers”. Every few years it host a large flower festival which we sadly missed by a few weeks.

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In the middle of the city is a large lake. It seems as if the busy city life is centered around this lake. It is stunning and we were able to eat lunch close to the lake.

After lunch we walked around the lake. We were surprised to see the city fall away by the other side of the lake. We found a zen garden to explore.

Chris liked the trash bins that looked like spacemen

Dalat is also known as the “city of love”. It is the most popular place for vietnamese to honeymoon domestically.  Since we are on our honeymoon and in the city of love we thought we should take some “honeymoon photos” while in the zen garden.

On the far side of the lake was two interesting looking buildings, very modern and colorful. We went to check them out. Once we arrived we determined that it was actually a shopping mall, movie theater and restaurant.

Trying to figure out what these places were we stumbled on some interactive artwork. All the teenagers were doing it… so of course, we had to as well! We had some good laughs goofing around with the artwork.

The last stop was a bar called 100 roofs. It was a crazy design like a maze through a multistory building with colorful lighting. However, when we first arrived there were no lights on at all as part of Earth Hour. It was quite intense trying to find your way around a maze of a bar in the dark!

• City
• Vietnam