As the coach has just crossed the Prenn Pass, I wake up because the sultry and suffocating atmosphere in the midst of the burning summer sun seems to suddenly disappear, leaving only a feeling of coldness between the space of pine forest and the surrounding flowers. I have not fully awoken due to the change of a strange climate, suddenly I hear the joyful shout of a passenger in the delegation: We have come to Da Lat already!
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I am now really awoken, all the uneasy and tiresome feelings seem to vanish. Looking through the door of the coach, I catch sight of the city of fog appearing on the hillside slope with thousands of old pine trees nestling behind the rows of European architecture beautiful houses. The pine canopy seems to be ethereal in the early morning mists laden with sadness, silence covering over the roofs, and the ancient villas on both sides of the road. Hitting my eyes now is a city with no traffic lights, all the T- junctions, the crossroads from the top of the pass to the hotel where I stay share one roundabout in the middle of the street. The streets go around each other in low and high tier, bending around the hillside. Beneath the old pine trees are the houses standing precariously on the hillside, undulating and hidden behind the shadows of the trees.
Đà Lạt is also known as the city of flowers, which are blooming splendidly on both sides of the pavement of the streets in the city center. Flowers spread out along the divides of several roads leading to the entrance of the city, flowers spread around romantic Xuan Huong Lake and flowers growing on the fence of beautiful houses on the hillside.
Flowers here are planted around the house, flowers climbing the wall, brilliant beside the window frames that push the fragrance to flow into the house. Da Lat Flower Park is a flower paradise, where flowers are planted everywhere, flowers twisting around the fountain, flowers are arranged into a most giant portal in Vietnam.
Night is the time when Da Lat becomes cold and there is a bit of summer fine rain. Under the light of high-voltage lamps, Dalat Flower Market shines with romantic colors of many flower species. Roses, the flowers representing the beauty and power of women, are of many different varieties such as velvet, white, blue, pink and tỉ muội roses. Each flower has its own shade, and distinct look but all are beautiful and fragrant. Lily is not as beautiful as roses, but it keeps in her the particular charming and different aroma. Carnation, Colombo flower, honest and truthful, are springing straight as a gentleman. Statice (limonium), alyssum flowers are simple and rustic, used as the base to enhance the beauty of other flowers.
Đà Lạt has some flowers which are not sold in florist’s or markets, but it is a source of endless inspiration for artists to create poems or songs. They are the apricot-like cherry blossoms, Mimosa ... the charming flowers are used by artists to compose in such songs as: Mimosa, from where you come? Whoever has come to the land of peach blossoms ... In November, the wild sunflowers bring to the traveler a sobbing nostalgia, with the blaze of yellow color flooding the hillsides. When spring comes back, the apricot-like cherry blossoms bloom everywhere of the city, as if they are announcing the coming of the New Year and all sadness and sorrows of the passing year will soon vanish.
Dalat residents are known as friendly and hospitable people. The people here are always conscious to keep, nourish and care for Dalat so it is more and more beautiful, and tourists to the city of thousands of flowers are merged in the romantic and poetical space with the cold mist, with thousands of flowers showing off their beautiful colors and the green pine forest that the wind blows its murmuring through their canopy.
(By Quang Hoa)
