Itineraries

Plans built around what is shut

Every plan on this site is written backwards from the closures, because that is what actually breaks a day in Hanoi. Three fixed points govern everything:

• ⛔ The mausoleum is mornings only, is traditionally closed on Mondays and Fridays, and shuts entirely for several weeks most years. It goes first in any day it appears in, or it does not appear at all.
• ⚠️ The food stalls sell out. Breakfast before eight, lunch before one. A famous bún chả at three in the afternoon is a shutter.
• ⭐ The Old Quarter closes to traffic from Friday evening to Sunday night. If your trip includes a weekend, that evening is the one to keep free.

How long you have

• One day — the lake, the Old Quarter, the cathedral and the French Quarter, on foot, with bún chả in the middle and bia hơi on a corner at six.
• Two days — add the Ba Đình morning: mausoleum, One Pillar Pagoda, citadel, Temple of Literature, in that order because of the closing time.
• Three days — add the Ethnology Museum and West Lake at sunset, or take the third day out to Ninh Bình.
• Five days — Hanoi properly, plus one overnight: Ninh Bình or Ha Long.
• Seven days — Hanoi, one bay or one karst valley, and the night train north towards Sapa, which is the trip that changes what people think Vietnam looks like.

The longer plans reach outside the city, and those journeys — with rough times, the right station and what each one costs you in hours — are set out in Day Trips & Nearby.

⚠️ Two things that ruin a schedule

The weather is not one thing. Hanoi's summer is hot and violently wet; its winter is cold, grey and drizzly in a way almost no visitor packs for — mưa phùn, the fine rain, can sit over the city for a week. Spring and autumn are the reason people say Hanoi is beautiful.

Traffic is a time of day, not a distance. Twenty-five minutes across the city at eleven in the morning is an hour at half past five.