Hue-y

Hue was beautiful, I really wasn't sure what to expect for the festival, but we sure had fun. We arrived on Friday and wandered around the town which was lit up beautifully and decorated all over. Large water lillies and horses were hanging from the street lights, but we couldn't find any kites! Apparently the kite part of the festival is no longer important, but it is still a celebration.
We drove for hours to get there, and went through a looooong tunnel straight through a mountain, it poured rain up through the mountains, but our driver is pretty cool and we arrived safely. We went into our hotel (2 stars) and were amazed with how gross it was. Now I usually travel with my family and they tend to get decent hotels... this was not. Under the bed has not been swept in years, there was water damage all over the walls, which smelled like mold, and there were cigarette burns in our sheets. We made the best of it by throwing our sheets in a corner, getting new ones from the front desk and hoped for no bed bugs.
We had a little mishap on our first night; we were following a map of the city and tried to go in to the square (where all the action was) through the first entrance we found. We were a little confused with the looks that the security guards in green uniforms were giving us but continued on. One guard put his hand up and commanded us to "STOP". Apparently we were trying to sneek in on the private communist party and they did not appreciate it at all. I was scared that we were going to get in big trouble, but we were just escorted out and directed towards the "citizen's" entrance.
We walked around for a while, saw some beautiful buildings, sat on some cannons, went home no problem.
The next day was beautiful, we went on a boat tour, stopped by an old "king'" tomb. (Quotations marks are there because it is quite possible it was a woman pretending to be a king, which I think is wwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cooler) haha. We also went to a Buddhist meditation place which was really beautiful too.
Anyways, next weekend Da Nang?