This Is A Lake - A travel blog

Another year, another adventure: this time I came to Vietnam! I took on a direct Vietnam Airlines flight that turned out not to be so direct when, after more than 10h in the air, we received the news that visibility was insufficient in Hanoi. They diverted us to Da Nang (which added an hour on the plane), where we had to wait for Hanoi to clear up (another hour) and then we had to take off and fly there again (another hour). A three hour delay for a total of 14 hours on board! I was bouncing off the walls by the time I got off the plane. It didn't help that the selection of in-flight movies was awful... Once in Hanoi, I still had to queue to get my visa. The way it works is, if you live in one of a few countries (including the UK, Spain, France and Japan, but not the US) you don't need a visa for stays shorter than 15 days. Mine is 16 days, so I had to request a visa via my hotel, which I then had to validate at Noi Bai airport. You fill in a form, attach a picture, and fork ov

Last day in Savannah, last day of holidays... It's coming to an end, peeps! Allegedly we were going to suffer storms today, but while it was cloudy most of the day, it didn't rain at all, so we got to be outside as long as we needed. Our first task today was to walk the length of River Street, the avenue that runs next to the Savannah River. Unlike Broughton Street, which mixes locals and visitors together, River Street is strictly touristy. The shops here can't hold a candle to the ones in Broughton: here it's all about cheap souvenirs. As always, it was nice to see water, but like all of our previous destinations the coast here isn't much to look at. Industrial buildings, a massive tree tall enough for all those gargantuan freight ships to pass under, the occasional 20-storey big-chain hotel... There is a fun peanut store with loots of different sweet and savoury varieties that you can sample! All in all, it's the last walk you should take in Sav

'What a day! Today it was sunny and a balmy 28°C!! Inside a store I overheard the owner say he was from Florida and for him this qualified as "cool". Well, I live in Versailles, and for me this qualifies as August!! Our main mission today was to walk the length of Bull Street, a scenic street that runs North-to-South across the entire Historic District, all the way to Forsyth Park, crossing some of the most iconic Savannah squares in the process. Savannah has lots of small squares at the centre of each ward, with beautiful trees and normally a monument at the centre and lots of benches. It's refreshing to see benches everywhere; what with defensive architecture being par for the course now, in Versailles and Paris you barely can find a place to sit outdoors. The thing about these squares, though, is that they're all crazy mismatched in their names and monuments. Let me walk you through it: Johnson Square doesn't have a monument to Johnson, bu

Today we had to leave Charleston behind -I didn't get to take a picture of the pineapple fountain! I'll have to go back- on another gloriously sunny day, but before heading out to Savannah, Georgia, we stopped by Beaufort, South Carolina, at the behest of our guidebook. It's a small town on the coast, and against all logic it's pronounced "BYOO-fert", because reasons. Well, this section of the guidebook was clearly written by the same guy who recommended the awful Aiken-Rhett House, because it isn't that fancy. Bay Street, which is allegedly its main street, has pretty uninteresting stores and one bookstore specialised in local literature. We had lunch at a restaurant that wasn't anything worth writing home about, and then went house-watching. This, finally, is a beautiful thing to do there, if not completely worth giving up half a day in Charleston for. There was a neighbourhood of beautiful old houses, impeccably maintained, surrounded

We got off to a rocky start in Charleston last night when we landed at Charleston International (sigh) Airport and went to pick up our rental car. Turns out we had made a mistake in our reservation and booked the car to be returned one day early, and trying to make any change in the reservation resulted in a $400 price hike!! So we're stuck with the original booking and we'll have to spend our precious last holiday afternoon driving to the airport, returning the car, then going back into town, and then go to the airport again the next day for good... Always triple-check your dates, y'all! Today began equally ominously as it started to rain the minute we left the apartment, but thankfully it only went better from there: the skies cleared and the sun began to shine around noon, and Charleston is sooo beautiful! It's completely different from all the other Southern cities we've visited in pretty much every imaginable way. This, finally, is an actual city with walka

Today we had to get up bright and early, pack our bags and leave our rental house... We had a great stay here, so we were sad to leave, but we had all morning for ourselves, so we hopped in the car and drove to Nashville's Centennial Park to see the Parthenon. You read that correctly: Nashville has an exact, full size replica of the Athenian Parthenon. It was built in 1897 as a temporary feature of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, but it proved to be so popular with Nashvillians that they decided to rebuild it as a permanent building in the 1920s. It goes on, though: in 1990 they built a full-size statue of Athena inside the temple, like the original Parthenon had. It looks like they were really committed to being as historically accurate as it was possible back then: the sculptures were all made using plaster molds made directly from the original statues, which are in the British Museum of London. For those parts of the frieze that are missing, they based their desig

It was a gloriously sunny day in Nashville today, all the better for daytripping! Our first point of order today was to get in the car and drive to the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's plantation only about 20 min east of Nashville. Once on the grounds, they gave us the receiver for an audio tour and ushered us to a theatre. We saw a stocktastic video about the life of US President Andrew Jackson narrated by US President Martin Sheen (what? He is to me!). In stark contrast with Graceland, where Elvis' life was completely whitewashed -they don't even say how he died, just tell you the date- the Hermitage speaks about the controversies and deplorable things of Jackson's presidency a lot more openly and in-depth than I expected. Of course, they highlight his military victories, his temperament and his work securing rights for the common man, but also discuss how he had displaced thousands of Cherokee Indians in what became known as the Trail of Tears, his contempt tow