I believe I mis-led our faithful readers at the end of the last post. Our adventure to Hue had not yet started. We had a tour at the Sofitel Metropole. We got the tour since Jon was laying down a few gold bars for lodging each night. We had a wonderful tour guide who took us through the history of the hotel and the history of Hanoi as well. Our tour guide was a teenager during the bombing of Hanoi. As his father was in the government, he was sent to fight in Cambodia and hated it. Their (Jon's and the tour guides) shared thoughts on patriotism and unjust war were interesting to listen to, and Jon stayed and talked with the tour guide that afternoon after we went home.
During Linebacker II, the Metropole built a bomb shelter and Joan Baez recorded inside the shelter. The guests of the hotel would be down in the shelter from 20 mins to an hour a few times each night. It was tight, but still roomy compared to Vin Moch. The hotel personnel stood guard around the entrance (in the 70's, not this week). It was used as a wine cellar for a few years after the war, then cemented over with a lounge and pool on-top. They found the shelter a few years ago and it has only been open for a few months. There was a big push to forget about the hardships of the war rather than make them war relics so many things were cemented over and forcefully forgotten about.
When we got to Hue, this ensued:
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