6 posts tagged “travel”
Finally got the pics off Dad's camera. It's pretty boring if all you're gonna do is wade in a pool for 10 hours. You gotta mix it up! If you've watched the original blues brothers and saw the scene where Jake and Elwood were being rushed by what seemed like an entire country of SWAT team guys, that's how many cannonballs we did. It was ridiculous!
Also, all throughout the day, we played "grab a random person and throw him into the pool". This lasted for a couple of minutes, until some of the people we were calling out for just gave up running away and threw themselves into the pool (resistance is useless)!
Then, when we got tired of doing cannonballs and throwing people into the pool, we tried synchronized swimming and/or diving (we're not going to argue semantics here now, are we?).
Then There Were Games
Ate Ria came up with some games. Games that if you do not have the perspective and humility, would erode your soul and crush your ego. In other words, awesomely fun games.
Here's a [crappy] video of above:
The next game was another one for couples - The Egg Race! Couples had to rest an egg between their cheeks and go around a track. First team to get all 5 couples back wins.
Monday was a holiday, so we took a swim trip with some friends and family to Doña Salud Resort, a small hot spring pool resort in Calamba, Laguna. We packed our lunches and got our towels and left the house at 8 in the morning.
My new job basically has to do with booking reservations for Holiday Inn and other affiliate hotels all over the world. This Saturday, we took some time to tour the local Holiday Inn to see what it's got.
Yesterday we happened to be on our way to Batangas, south of the capital, and we stopped over at this coffee shop along Aguinaldo Highway in Tagaytay called Bag of Beans. BoB is basically a coffee shop, bakery, and a garden restaurant all at the same time. They serve pies, steaks, and coffee. And the coffee, of course, is the focus of this particular post.
We've gone past Bag of Beans many times on our previous trips through the area, so this time we decided to check it out. We parked just in front of it and checked out the shop, before heading down into the dining area. Here's the cool part: The dining area is an outdoor garden situated below the shop that you can see along the highway; it's accessible through the pathway beside the shop that leads you a little bit down the side of the hill that the shop and the highway itself is situated on.
The garden dining area is very pleasant and conducive to having a relaxed conversation over coffee or tea. You can choose between uncovered wooden tables with benches, covered booths, and tables situated right beneath blooming foliage. It's really suited to the weather; imagine yourself drinking a hot cup of coffee, with the cold air lightly blowing through the garden, kicking up some of the fallen leaves on the ground.
It was, however, drizzling, so we had to go into a covered dining area. We ordered lunch - steak and fries - and of course, coffee.
Bag of Beans serves homegrown coffee, straight out of Amadeo, Cavite. While they sell whole beans and blends of more variety at the shop, they only have the Barako and the drip varieties available á la carte. First up, I ordered their Barako coffee.
The BoB Barako is a bold coffee that has a medium body, a sharp citrusy taste and earthy undertones. I just didn't like the fact that as it cooled, it started tasting more and more burnt. Not cool.
The regular Drip Coffee that BoB served me was a slightly more pleasant experience. A coffee with light body, a similar but slightly milder citrus flavor, subtler earthy undertones, and a clean finish. It retained the same characteristics as it cooled. It's a less intense though much more pleasant experience than that of their Barako variety, if you will.
Both coffees served to me were dark roasts (gotta admit that I thought that all dark roasted coffees would have stronger flavors... figures, guess I'm still a n00b), of Liberica and Arabica beans, respectively.
I guess it's a trait of the majority of coffees produced here in the Philippines, this strong citrus flavor. It features prominently in Figaro's coffee, which serves only coffee from local producers, as well as from Starbuck's Kape Vinta Blend. I hate both of them. That's not to say it's a bad kind of coffee, I just have a preference for coffees without that certain characteristic (which is why I also don't like coffees from Sumatra and Sulawesi, albeit to a lesser degree). Despite that, I can still appreciate such coffee, as long as it doesn't taste burnt.
On the whole, the experience of dining and drinking coffee at Bag of Beans is pleasant. I would say that the coffee tastes pretty good (if you prefer the kind of coffee they serve - just OK for me), the food is good, the environment is fantastic, thus, overall, it's a winning combination.
Here are some more photos for you scope the place out.
You can't tell by how crappy my digicam is (low ISO rating - meaning it sucks at low-light shots), but it was a beautiful, sprawling ground full of interconnected malls (though not in the same manner as Glorietta and Greenbelt). There was Serendra, which was more of a dining-oriented cluster, just right across Market! Market! (which, btw, looked like the bastard love child of Rockwell and a Divisoria mall), which was in it's own right, a pretty good mall. However, the mall that impressed me most was the Bonifacio High Street (I swear I've got that name wrong in some way) strip mall.
It's rather new, so there were still a few shops here and there that were under construction, although most of the shops were already open to the public. The mall had a sprawling, well-manicured lawn that separated the two lengthy rows of shops (I believe said rows could be characterized as being similar to 3 street blocks). It was awesome. I would really love to hit the place again during the day. The water features added a really nice charm to the place; People were sitting on the grass reading books, lounging around with pets, playing guitar, and then... there were these really cool exhibits.
I so want that Vespa.
Anyway, the girls looked around some shops while I went along right before dinner (I'm used to such punishment - I swear my Mom goes OCD whenever she shops). We chowed down at Mann Hann at Market! Market!. If I was gonna pig out, this was the time to do it. I ate three platefuls of rice (dammit, why'd it have to taste so good?) along with some beef, sweet-n-sour pork, soup, and veggies. I was so full I had a hard time walking!
Afterwards, we hit the strip mall again to look at some more stuff, then Maridol bought some doughnuts at Krispy Kreme (I hate you, you taste so good) for her siblings.Despite being full, I was handed a free doughnut... and I obliged. I shot over to Starbucks for some coffee to help me digest all that unhealthy stuff I ate.
After all that, they dropped me off somewhere near my house, walked home and called it a night, with full knowledge and expectation of the following day's likely gift of explosive diarrhea. Yet I slept satisfied.
I seriously have to get a better digital camera. These pictures suck!
Hey, Gretch - send me a message if you wanna get the downloadable file for the MRT fight video.
Last week we spent the summer in the mountains. Baguio City, to be precise; the so-called "Summer Capital of the Philippines".
I vividly remember going up there frequently as a child, sleeping in th e back seat of our car for most of the six-hour trip from the metro. I remember loving every part of the city on the mountain tops: The beautiful parks, the cold mountain air, and the neat little trinkets you can buy just about anywhere (as a child I wasn't aware of this... but the indigenous people of this region have a fixation on a certain phallic appendage, apparently... making them out as souvenirs as ashtrays and whatever novel item to sell). It was a beautiful place to take a vacation in.
That said, Baguio City is now a shithole.
Graffiti and ad posters on the cemented mountainsides (paved to prevent further rockslides), the incredibly polluted city proper, trash everywhere in the once beautiful parks... it's sad.
But it's not all lost.
If you want to enjoy Baguio and it's scenic attractions, you still can. Just steer clear of the city proper (unless you need to buy something). Head for Camp John Hay instead. Or if you know a friend who has a house mountainside, go visit them. What we did was rent a floor of a transient house somewhere near the outskirts of the city.
So what does one do in these mountains? Click the pictures for descriptions (I haven't figured out how to put captions below 'em yet... huh).
Next time, I wanna check all the little mom-and-pop restaurants and cafés hidden around the city's nooks and crannies.
My Groups
-
Coffee Updated: 2 hours ago
-
pinoy Updated: 6 hours ago
-
It's all about food & wine Updated: Yesterday