After being a week in Hanoi and visiting lots of interesting places, I wrote a list with the ones I had visited and what was the highlight in each of them. Hanoi is enormous so I am pretty sure that is probably I am forgetting some amazing place although I have been taking profit of all my time in the city.

So let’s go!

Hanoi is a city, as a Vietnamese one, full of temples so I suggest visiting as many pagodas as possible so each of them is completely different from the others. The most known are:

• Hoe Nhai Pagoda (1010-1225): is one of the largest pagodas in Hanoi.
• One Pillar Pagoda. Ly Thai Tong wanted to gratitude the compassion goddess for having a child when he thought he maybe would not have any progenitor. That why he wanted to build a pagoda in her honor.

  

• Temple of Literature (1070) an incredibly complex which contained the first university in Hanoi and also the most well-known writers in that time. Nowadays there is a pagoda and a garden with lotus flowers.

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  Ho Chi Minh museum: where you can know about Ho life and also the moment when the French colonization finished and Vietnam’s victory with the independence proclamation. It is said it costs 30000 VND and that you cannot take photos but in my case, they didn’t tell me anything about the ticket neither about taking photos.

• Ho Chi Minh mausoleum (1973-1975) an enormous building made of marble close to Ho Chi Minh museum contains the body of the Vietnam’s leader. I couldn’t get inside althought I went two times: one of them it was already closed and the other one it was friday (they don’t open on monday and friday).
• St Joseph Cathedral (1886). This Neogothic cathedral reminds the colonization époque when French people came to “protect” Catholic missionaries. Is ubicated in the French neighborhood also full of patisseries and restaurants that break the scheme of Hanoi in all his essence. 
  

  St Joseph’s Cathedral

  

  St Joseph’s Cathedral

I also highly recommend to walk and get lost through the Vietnamese streets and taste his gastronomy in the streets, is so nice and also very cheap. It isn’t worth to pay for a restaurant because they are not going to do it as natural and economic than in the roads.