[Visit Ph] Three Days Out of Manila, Part 1 of 3

Hello there! I´m back from my two weeks vacation in the Philippines!  It was a short break, and although I was tempted to cram those two weeks with trips around the islands, in the end, I decided I wanted it to be a very laidback experience, one that would allow me to enjoy the everyday moments with the family.

Of course, being travel-crazy Pinoys who wouldn´t stay put,  my family and I decided that  a short weekender  in Calabarzon would not be too much of a hassle, so that´s what we did!   Calabarzon, if you do not know, is the region just south of Manila made up of 4 provinces - Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Quezon.


Our Base: Ricarte´s Hill , Batangas via AirBnB
I rented a small vacation house in Airbnb in Nasugbu, Batangas.  It was the perfect location, since it was just 10 minutes away from Tagaytay city center, but it was far enough to be really peaceful and provincial.  The two bedroom resthouse with a wading pool and a kiddie pool was inside the owner´s mango farm, so the location was very rustic and full of trees.

    itsy bitsy spider in the garden

                             
The house was just big enough for the six of us, with two rooms, one with a queen sized bed and another with 2 double beds.  There were foldaway mattresses and extra pillows available.

The house itself was spic and span, the pools were cleaned daily and there are helpers who can assist you.   The cooking area itself is separated from the house by a few yards, but that´s okay.  We didn´t cook at all haha!  We did avail of their cooking services and had one breakfast and one dinner catered.  For breakfast we had garlic fried rice, tocino, tapa, longanisa and ham plus putok pandesal. For one dinner we had kare-kare, laing, inihaw na liempo, rice, leche flan and buko pandan.  The food while not stellar is full of that homecooked goodnes, like something an auntie would cook for you. For our three day stay inclusive of the two catered meals,  I paid only  250€.  Truly value for money!

Because our rented flat was right smack in the middle ofNasugbu and Tagaytay, we could, if we wanted, enjoy the beaches of Nasugbu and the cool highlands of Tagaytay.

We decided to forego the beaches and instead went on a trip to a hacienda in Quezon, visited a bee farm in Cavite and went around Tagaytay for some fun and food trips.  Details on my next posts!

Ricarte´s Hill Garden Resort
Book through AirBnB 
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A Spring of Tulips in Holland

Ah, spring!  The season of beginnings. The earth resplendent in a robe of colors, and for those of us who lived through the darkest of winters, spring means a sigh of relief, a promise of light.  Spring holds with its arrival the promise of rebirth, of beautiful blooms,  of nature being at its flirtiest.

It was my first spring in Holland.  And like most first-timers, I marked it with a rite of passage.  In Japan and Korea, spring is a time for hanami, the annual flower viewing custom to enjoy the pristine and ethereal cherry blossoms.  In Holland,  the gray landscape is cracked open by a carpet of unfurled bulbs.

    Tulips: From bulbs to blooms

Cochem, Germany: A Castle, A River, and A Fairytale Town

Warning:  THIS POST IS PREGNANT WITH PHOTOS!



Cochem, Germany is an insider´s secret.  Most people who come to  visit Germany target the bigger cities --Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden.  And that is understandable,  with limited time, we choose the cities with the biggest media mileage. What, in the age of social media, is deemed as  brag-worthy.  But Europe, being a traveller´s  dream,  offers so  many landscapes.  Just as there are different sorts of tourists  --backpackers, those in search of romance, those who want to hit all the iconic cities, those who want to forget--- Europe has  as many cities and towns to cater to every traveller´s preferences.    Last year, I embarked on a solo trip to Dusseldorf, Cologne, and Hamburg, and early this year I visited Berlin.  And how I enjoyed Germany!  Next to Spain, where I lived, it is Germany that made me feel so comfortable and safe -- the germans are unmatched when it comes to friendliness and  even in the big cities, it always felt safe to roam around alone.

And yet even though I enjoyed my past trips to Germany,  it was only when I went to the little town of Cochem that I was dazzled, so dazzled that I uttered with hope and longing,  ¨ I wish I could live here!"  

Mussels and Waffles and Laughter in Ghent

I am truly getting older.  My equally-single friends and I are now talking about mid-life crises, about (not) coming to terms with living alone, about past loves, hopes and frustrations.  The Polish friend and co-engineer, older by close to five years and prone to drama, sighs why the Lord has not blessed her, and enumerates her ¨misfortunes¨. By that she refers to her still being single, a few months shy of forty.  She then points to her perfectly okay figure and complains of weight gain, and points to her clear face and her little laughlines in despair.  We tell her, come on, B! You are so blessed! You´re still pretty and you have a good job, yes? And then of course, she talks about the enemies she´s made at the work site.  I think she really wants to anchor her life now with something, she wants to get rooted to a life and stop the traveling.   She is ready to buy a house, but she doesn´t know where. She just wants to not be alone anymore.

Ah, the travails of being a thirty-something woman,  living  on her own in a foreign land.  I, for one don´t share her desperation yet. I still don´t feel old.   And, having come from a long talk  not too long ago with two Christian elders who fundamentally counselled me about my life direction, I am not worried at all about my life path.  But, B surely needed some cheering up so yesterday,  we went on a road trip to Ghent for a day of waffles and mussels and laughter.

Ghent is a city in the Flemish region of  Belgium, about  a two-hour drive away from my place in Rotterdam.  M, my college best friend and also former workmate of B, was our designated driver.

                                         Ghent is full of canals and ornate buildings
     

   A shop along the canal.  See the windows under ground zero.

My List of Things To Do in Madrid

    Lavapies: one of Madrid´s older, working class areas

For those who don´t know,  I lived in Madrid for two years until late 2014 when I got a seemingly better work offer in Holland.  I figured,  it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work in an environment where I can learn  aspects of my industry that I can never hope to get exposed to in my (then) current job.  So when 2015 came, I jumped ship and am now living in The Netherlands.

Eleven Things To Eat in Ilocos

It is summertime in the Philippines!  The streams on my facebook is filled with images of  our tropical brand of happiness!  Here I am cocooned, sweatshirt and all, watching the gloomy Saturday run its course, my mind miles away filled with a longing for...


Halo-halo - the quintessential Filipino frozen dessert

    (Image from nytimes.com)

Brunch at Baguio's Most Loved Restaurant

A last minute decision to make a side trip to Baguio on our way home to Manila from Ilocos found us  in Baguio's most loved restaurant for brunch. It's been years since we went up to Baguio, and despite the new restaurants popping up in the City of Pines, I wanted something familiar and comforting, like how Baguio is to me even after years of not visiting.

First we tried to find Star Cafe which to my memory was the best Chinese eatery in Baguio only to find out that it has closed.  Thankfully, my other favorite Baguio eatery, what many consider as Baguio's most loved restaurant,  is still standing tall. Like a serene and regal beacon  amidst the crazy commercial buzz that has overcome the once genteel Session Road.

Cafe By The Ruins is still as beautiful as ever.

                                 That bamboo canopy  at the al fresco dining area

Istanbul, Turkey: Kibbles, Kebabs and All Things Delish!

At the time I booked the flat for our  Istanbul trip, the only considerations  were that it was relatively cheap and should be near a Metro station.  I found one in Beyoglu, just a five minute walk from Taksim Square.  It turned out that Beyoglu is not only the city center of modern Istanbul,  it is also considered as the culinary center of the city with the most concentration of restaurants, bakeshops, cafes and bars.  Were we happy with our stay in Beyoglu? Suffice to say that we never went hungry in Istanbul!

Simit for Breakfast

                                Image from Simit Sarayi

Istanbul, Turkey: Bazaar Fever and Baklava

It is true. Istanbul, with its history, beautiful mosques and palaces, is captivating. 

Sultanahmet,  Istanbul´s old town will not let you down.  A day can be spent just walking around Sultanahmet.  There is no need to feel harried here since the great Istanbul structures  are located  close to each other.

                                          The Blue Mosque, Sultanahmet

                               Hagia Sophia, Sultanahmet

                                            Basilica Cistern, Sultanahmet

  

 In between these grand architectural and historical marvels are parks, open spaces, eateries and benches to sit on.

                                Green spaces around Sultanahmet

                

But here´s the truth.  What we enjoyed most about our trip to Istanbul were the bazaars and the delicious, inexpensive food.

We were in Istanbul for only three days, and because this was really more of a chill, explore leisurely and bond with friends trip we didn´t want to cram our schedule with so many activities.  But on top of our to-do-list in Istanbul was to visit its famous bazaars.



The Grand Bazaar

                               One of the five gates of the Grand Bazaar


The Grand Bazaar is the queen of indoor markets in Turkey.  Even the term grand seems to be an understatement,  it being a whopping 30.7 hectares complex of shopping and entertainment.  There are five gates and thousands of shops,  which for  a shopping connoisseur, must be heaven on earth.

Truth:  I was a bit scared about the Grand Bazaar.  I have been to  a souk in Fes, Morocco and was aghast at how rude and persistent the touts were.  I was afraid that like the souk experience in Morocco, my Grand Bazaar would let me down. It however turned out that the bazaars in Istanbul play to an altogether different melodic tune.

                                  The beautiful painted walls and ceilings of the Grand Bazaar

First, the Grand Bazaar is an indoor market housed in a spectacular structure.  The ceilings are curved and intricately painted.  And while there are touts all over the bazaar, these were not the pushover types I´ve encountered in Morocco.

As they say, anything you need, you´ll find at The Grand Bazaar.

                                            Silk Scarves and Pashminas
                                         
                                         

                  The kid on the left has the most beautiful  bone structure I´ve seen!

                                Blings

                                Turkish tea sets

                               Ottoman style figurines

                                Turkish lamps

                                            Carpets and Beddings

The key to buying success at the bazaars is to haggle hard, something that we Filipinos, veterans of Divisoria and tiangges, are good at.  The sellers will  often give  high initial prices.  If you stand your ground and maintain your indifference to the item they will eventually lower the price into something more palatable.  Case in point, a friend successfully haggled for a silk hand embroidered beddings set from an initial price of 1500 liras to  only 300 liras (about 6000 PhP).

One can spend a day at the Grand Bazaar and still not see half of the stalls. There is however a sort of camaraderie /symbiotic arrangement between the stall vendors: Once you enter a shop and buy something, the seller would most likely gently recommend you to another shop selling other types of wares. One can also easily ask the seller for their recommended shops and they´d happily point you to a shop of their friend or relative. I feel that as long as you have great haggling skills, this setup bodes well for shoppers who might otherwise be overwhelmed by the vastness of the bazaar.

One good thing about the sellers in these Turkish bazaars is that they do not resort to hard sell.  They are pleasant and solicitous even if you don´t buy anything from them.

The Spice Bazaar
The Spice Bazaar despite being one of the larger bazaars in Istanbul is tiny compared to the  Grand Bazaar.  And that´s sort of a good thing.  It is still the centre of spice trade in Istanbul with stalls upon stalls offering spices, dried fruits and teas.  Perhaps to cater to tourists like us, there are also stalls offering jewelry, leather goods and cheap yet pretty souvenirs.

Cinnamon, Saffron, Curry Powder, Paprika and strange unfamiliar spices are spread out in a tapestry of colours

                                           Dried fruits and vegetables, teas and  more
         

                               Teas and spices

                                All sorts of olives

Walking through the Spice Bazaar, one is offered free tastes of all kinds of goodies : teas, turkish delights, olives, candies, dried fruits and such.  It´s not a bad thing to try the goodies and not buy anything .  The touts don´t force you to buy and truthfully most of the goodies are delicious!  But apparently the prices of these goodies are about 20% higher if you buy them inside the Spice Bazaar building.  Outside, in little alleys crisscrossing the main bazaar building are where most locals get their spices and sweets, so that´s where we bought our stash of nuts and sweets.

Lokum and Baklava at Hafiz Mustafa 1864
Every little corner in Istanbul has a sweets shop selling Lokum (Turkish Delight) and Baklava

                                Halva

                               A Baklava Shop

Before coming to Istanbul, I searched the web for  a bakery where we could have great Turkish sweets and  saw  the great reviews for the century old traditional bakery Hafiz Mustafa.

 As luck would have it, our rented flat was just a few minutes' walk from the Hafiz Mustafa shop in Taksim Square.  So on our first night, after dinner, we dropped by the shop for desserts.

This well known Turkish patisserie  is a beautiful yet chaotic place. It is always full of customers but because of the gilded gold walls, the beautiful soft lights, the mountain of sweets on display,  and the pleasant service offered, this is a not to be missed experience in Istanbul.

Here are some of the goodies on offer at Hafiz Mustafa. Prepare to drool!

                              Dates filled with nuts

                                         Turkish Delights

                                         More Turkish Delights

                                         Chocolate and Nut-filled Turkish Delights

                               Baklava in various forms

                                More Baklava!

                                Rice Pudding

                               

                        Our desserts: Pistachio Baklava, Chocolate Baklava, Lemon Turkish Delight and tea

All the sweets were delicious. The pistachio baklava while rich wasn´t as overly sweet as we have feared.  I personally liked the lemon turkish delight just because I love anything lemon flavoured but the truly unforgettable treat for us was the chocolate baklava.  Rich chocolate flavoured flaky pastry interspersed with caramelly sweetness and the nuttiness of pistachio.  It was a baklava like no other.  

At about  15€ for our orders, these are not cheap by Istanbul prices, but still reasonable considering the hefty servings and nice ambiance. Plus the fact that our leftover sweets were packed prettily in a bag for us to take home.

                                Our doggie bag of scrumptious sweets

Coming up next: Turkish Kebabs and All Things Savoury