Best Day Ever!!

"Best Day Ever!!" was the title of Noah's YouTube video about today.  The video is at the end here and includes some pretty funny moments and some good footage of riding our bikes in traffic.

What made today so great for Noah?  Well, for starters, we told the kids that they could pick a day to miss school and do something educational with us.  Noah and Ellie picked today (Carter and Finn picked a day next week).  The older kids decided to take a bike ride to the Old Quarter and do some exploring.

As you can see from the map below, "taking a bike ride to the Old Quarter" is not an insignificant journey, about 18 km (11 miles) round-trip.

But in order for us to go on a bike ride, we all needed bikes.  Unfortunately we only have three bikes in Hanoi and four people going, so we needed to ride over to the bike shop and rent a bike for Ellie.  She got to (or had to) ride on the back of Libby's bike to get to the bike shop:

Lunch in the Old Quarter was at a beautiful restaurant called 4 P's.  We have lamented many times about the poor quality of pizza in Hanoi, but this was so good:

Following lunch we headed up to the Dong Xuan Market for some more of the cats that Ellie and Libby have grown fond of.

Here are some on display in Ellie's room:

Our last stop was the Christmas street in the Old Quarter, where we picked up a few knick-knacks and souvenirs:

And as promised, here's Noah's video about the day.  If you haven't seen it -- or even if you have -- it is worth watching.