Oh look, a man draining the blood from a beheaded turtle!

Yes, that is one thing we saw today on our big giant walk around Hanoi. It was quite gross but weirdly compelling. The main question was : what the Dickens are they going to do with all the blood? It turns out that turtles are quite the bloody animals. Another great fact to add to the list of useless information stored in my brain.
Believe it or not, turtle death was not the highlight of the first full day here. We had a fairly late start and had a decent breakfast in the place we're staying-Fin was overjoyed that it was an unlimited buffet-and then we set off to find the Temple of Literature. We found it ok, but so had seemingly ALL the high school students in Hanoi. There was some kind of massive graduation ceremony so, instead of marvelling at the beauty and wonder of the place (it was very beautiful and wonderful), we mainly just watched Vietnamese teenagers throw their hats in the air.  A warning to all female Western travellers: Vietnamese girls are tiny and beautiful, so expect to feel like a big, clumsy, giant whose facial features were randomly selected from a pile of  'unused' ones and then thrown onto your face from about 10 metres by a blind man with no arms.
Afterwards, we had a big long walk around the French quarter, which is really interesting and filled with beaucoup de Françaises. For lunch, we found a little street stall and I munched on some tasty ribs, and Fin went for tofu. Oh ribs, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways... well, 3, as that was how many I had. Needless to say, they were gone in about 10seconds, down into my belly. Yehhhhh. The meandering (also known as getting totally lost) continued after lunch and ended with a coffee up above the streets. Oh yeah, and Fin had a flipping delicious sandwich. He said that he's going to have one for every meal from here on in. I don't believe him.

Congratulations for getting to the end of this post-you should be proud of your perseverance!