Accommodation
Thanh Lich Hotel
On arrival, transfer on your own to the hotel. The room is available around 2 p.m.
Your guide will pick you up at your hotel around 8:30 am to start off our exciting day early. The first stop is at the Imperial City, built in 1804 under the first Emperor Gia Long. It’s also known in Vietnamese as the Forbidden Purple City, a term similar to the Forbidden City of Beijing. Our next stop is the Thien Mu Pagoda, which is Vietnam’s tallest pagoda. It has an iconic status in Hue and it is known as the unofficial symbol of the former imperial capital.
Then, you will start your food tour by sitting on a cyclo, passing Phu Xuan Bridge to the other bank of the river. The first stop is an authentic local restaurant in a small street, you will taste some fancy rice cakes such as Banh Beo, Banh Nam or Banh Ram It. Then, continuing around the Imperial citadel, you will make a second stop for a very special pancake: the Banh Khoai which you will dip into a local sauce. After passing another bridge, your cyclo will slowly leave the Imperial Citadel area and head for a small street where you will stop in a famous Bun Bo Hue restaurant, where you will sit on stools. After tasting the signature dish from Hue consisting of tasty noodles with beef and a slightly spicy sauce, you will make another stop after a few hundred meters in a famous cake shop. Your last stop of the day will be in a riverside coffee shop with beautiful views of the perfume river.
After the food tour by cyclo, you will continue your excursion to the Tu Duc Tomb which was completed in 1867. Walk around the extensive gardens filled with huge stone temples and structures, rivers, and a reflection lake imagining what splendid life was lived here by the faithful Tu Duc court.