A woman of strength ~ Happy Paint Party Friday ~

Hello!

Lovely to be linking up to PPF once more after my bloggie-break.

My entry is a stylised sketch of Chrissie Foster - a woman of great strength and courage. 
I don't have any permissions to speak about her life here,  but I will say I was inspired to draw her:

sketched using pencil, watercolour, inkpen 

Thank you for your interest... if you'd like to see lots of beautiful art

click on the icon below

The Note Cafe, Hanoi (Post #2 - Vietnam Travels 2019)

Hello!

Another few lot of pics from our recent holiday.

It's funny how things happen that, when we look back, we can see it sometimes was because of a chance meeting in some way or another.

We have lovely memories of a gorgeous little cafe, just around the corner from our hotel in Hanoi.

I wanted to mail some postcards to our loved ones one morning, so I popped out for a walk.  I asked directions from a friendly girl standing outside a small cafe... as it happened, the mailbox was just a couple of doors down from there.  She invited me to come in for a cup of coffee on my way back.  I thanked her and said that when I was next passing with my hubby we would both come in.

A pic to show you the lay of the land and what I'm talking about:

The Red arrow is our hotel room.  Yellow is the post office and Green is The Note Cafe.

The foreground is the path around Lake Hoan Kiem

So began lots of happy visits to this little cafe.  

Ok, we knew we weren't any more special than their other customers but they had the knack of making us each feel special and that just made our holiday even more enjoyable.  

This is the greeting we were given every time we came in:

The theme of their cafe was to leave a note/read a note and it certainly caught on.  

Their cafe premises consisted of many floors - each of which are covered in notes from people all over the world.  

I'm a natural sticky-nose, so couldn't resist (along with everyone else) taking photos... here are some:

good on you Ashley :D)

We were including the celebration of each of our birthdays in our trip and on one particular day it was my dear hubby's.  I'm a blabber-mouth as well lol, and this note came with his cake:

We  always enjoyed our seats at the window.

The lake is just over the road.  We were never far from it!

On another visit they invited us upstairs.  I'm a bit sooky in stair climbing but couldn't resist, so up we went.  This is what we saw:

... even Teddy was 'noted' !! 

 oooh those cakes!

we left a note each too... right on the edge of the door

I'm keeping this photo of the stairs because now, back in Australia, if I feel I can't do stairs anymore I have this to remind me that I jolly well can !!

~ Cheers now and thanks for your visit ~

some 3 months later... but back again (Post #1 - Vietnam Travels 2019)

Hello!

It was lovely reading those beautiful messages full of happy thoughts and wishes from each of you... thanks so much 😊

During my break from blogland, we went away for a holiday, something we hadn't done for quite a while and was thoroughly enjoyable because it was so well planned.  By that I mean it was leisurely and totally at our own pace.  Thanks for that goes to my Dear Hubby who organised everything.

I'd love to show you some of our holiday snaps:

Hanoi, Vietnam.  Our hotel room balcony which overlooks Hoan Kiem Lake.  

Having previously been to Hanoi, we knew exactly where we wanted to stay this time around.

Early evening drinks, overlooking another section of the Lake.

Another lake view.

It's a beautiful flat paved walk all around the lake with so many activities to see.

Oh I loved the fresh fruit breakfasts, and took great pleasure in making sure I didn't miss out on anything!

There were two types of sticky rice for breakfast - quite different flavours... one was coconut and the other had a red bean in it.  

Mass plantings of the Peace Lily were everywhere.... obviously had been prepared for the previous month's North Korea-United States Summit in Hanoi

One of the many coffee shop treats that we enjoyed amongst the hustle and bustle of Hanoi.

Back to the lake!  From Fridays to Sundays the area is closed to traffic and the whole area is open for the people.  So many locals - whole families would come and, of course, lots of tourists. 

I'll leave it for now and start popping around to catch up with everyone.  There are lots more photos ... lol, so be warned!  

Thanks for stopping by and cheerio for now.

Sue x