Baguio Trip

May 1 to 2, 2005

This was a sort of an impromptu vacation. Jojie and I were supposed to go to Candon for a meeting there but it got cancelled. At the last minute, we were told that he has a meeting in Pangasinan instead and since his meeting is early Monday morning, we decided to spend a night in Baguio. :)
We went to the Victory Liner station in Cubao early in the morning hoping to catch the first bus out. To our irritation, fully booked sila until mid-morning! Grabe naman pala ang Victory Liner. So Jojie and I went to their branch in Pasay since the dispatcher in the Cubao branch said that we'd be able to catch an earlier bus there. Anyway, to make a long story short, we were able to catch a bus and we arrived in Baguio around two o'clock in the afternoon, just in time for our check-in at Hotel Veniz, our favorite Baguio hotel. :)

Since we were pretty hungry by the time we were able to check-in, we went straight to Veniz Grill where there's yummy Mongolian Barbecue. :) Syempre pagkain muna! Hahaha!

After eating, we went straight to... where else... SM City! :) I love SM Baguio! I love its architecture and the fact that its not airconditioned. I enjoy lounging in the veranda and just enjoying the Baguio view. Although some of our friends think it's a bit silly to travel six hours just to go to SM (and if truth be told, we also find this sily :)), who cares? :)

We went around the mall. Since I had to email someone, I went to find a net cafe while Jojie played games in the arcade. Before I met up with him again, I passed by Booksale and bought Dreamcatcher, a book by Stephen King. I figured it’ll help me relax. After that, we just fooled around by taking pictures and eating choco rocks in the veranda. Kakatawa si Jojie kasi binabato niya yung mga nasa baba kasi raw bato yung kinakain namin! :)

Early Monday morning, after the hotel breakfast buffet (pwede na pero mas masarap yung last time), Jojie and I proceeded to Victory Liner where he had to catch a bus to go to Pangasinan for his meeting. I proceeded to Seattle’s Best in SM to wait for him.

Once in SBC, I ordered Moccha Javakula and just passed time reading. After a couple of hours, I walked back to the hotel, buying manggang hilaw at bagoong along the way. This is what I love about Baguio… the streetfoods! This is the only place where I can buy binatog and mais and manggang hilaw anytime I want. Haaay! Yummy!

When Jojie arrived, the news was not so good, his meeting didn’t go very well so we decided, so as not to totally waste our time here, to extend our trip. So instead of checking out and going home, we decided to stay another day (actually another half-day since we had to check-out at 12midnight so Jojie can go to the office). Yipee! :)

The first thing we did was… you guessed it… eat Mongolian again! Hahaha! After which we took a cab to Camp John Hay. We just asked the cab to drop us anywhere and luckily, he dropped us near the miniature golf course. Where we played the whole 18 holes. Jojie won by 9 strokes. We didn’t really compute it using the par-par scores coz we didn’t know how! Hahaha!

After our miniature golf game, we had merienda at Chocolate de Batirol just beside the miniature golf. Batirol, we learned, is a 19th century blender used to mix hot chocolate. We ordered bibingka at tsokolate… ang yummy!!!!

After eating, we went around the restaurant and took several pictures. Ang ganda nung lugar. It was actually a garden with nooks and tables. Ang ganda talaga. :)

After eating, we walked around John Hay. We would have had more energy to cover more ground if only my husband didn’t think of this really silly way to tire himself out. He wanted me to catch a picture of him airborne so he repeatedly jumped and I repeatedly had to take a picture of him until we got the perfect shot.

After about thirty jumps, we got it! :) It was worth all the trouble just seeing my honey happy to get that perfect airborne picture of him. Yun nga lang, after all those jumping around, pagod na siya and he wanted to go home na! Hahaha! So we took a cab back to the hotel and settled in for the night.

Pero syempre, hindi dun nagtatapos ang istorya. About 7pm, my ever-hungry handsome hubby wanted to eat again so we went down to Veniz Grill again and ate eat-all-you-can Mongolian Barbecue for the third time in two days! :)

We checked out at midnight to catch a bus back to Manila. It was a short yet a very romantic and sweet vacation. :)