FAMILY PICNIC @ TAGAYTAY

We had initially planned this to be our treat for Inang’s birthday but she doesn’t want to go on the exact date of her birthday since she wanted to have a small salo-salo at home for her friends and relatives who may be coming over to visit. So the event was held on my birthday weekend and it became my birthday treat instead! Well, the day before I was busy doing Kaye’s project and then cooking chicken/pork adobo plus carbonara for our baon. We left immediately for BP after we finished cooking and eating our own dinner. Upon arrival at BP, we did more cooking including the rice so that it was already quite late when we all finally slept.

The next day, we were up early at around 3:30 am so that we could all take our baths and pack our baon for the picnic. There was a bit of a problem because the van we rented thru Ega was late. It turns out he was still sleeping and definitely had a hangover from a drinking session last night, oh no! The question then running thru everyone’s minds was - could he even drive at all???

But thankfully, he was OK after awhile and we were able to leave at around 5am. Well, the trip going to Tagaytay was supposed to be short (about less than two hours if coming from our office at QC) but this time, however, our trip took us more than three hours. It turns out that Ega’s van wasn’t functioning properly and it overheated in the middle of the expressway…WTF?!? Good thing, it was able to run after just a short while or else we’d have to pay a fortune on PNCC’s exorbitant towing fees! Then, Ega doesn’t also know the right exit to take, so we had to wait for them and they ended up taking a more circuitous route after wrongly exiting at Alabang.

Finally, we arrived at the Picnic Grove and we settled in on one of the big cottages there. We started to serve the prepared food so that we can all eat breakfast na of adobo, rice, boiled eggs, and the carbonara. There was also puto (biko and kutsinta) or bread with cheezwhiz and tuna spread. After eating, the kids went off for some horse-back riding. The others decided to explore and hike around the place to shed off what they had just eaten. The kids wanted to ride the zipline but the fees increased this year and so most were hesitant to just drop PhP400.00 for just a few minutes of thrill. Oh well, I would’ve wanted them to have that experience but I don’t have any more to spend since I already spent a lot on gasoline and the food. So, the kids just decided to while away the time playing on the grass. While the oldies just lounged around the cottage or slept on the wooden stools. Good thing I bought a heavy blanket so they had something to lay down on.

After the kids (and even some of the grownups!) had their fill of the horse, they had pictures taken with a huge live snake and then again had wacky shots with Taal lake in the background. Afterwards, they went back to the cottage and had some lunch. Our lunch was inihaw BBQ and hotdogs (courtesy of Allan) and the inihaw bangus which I bought from Vanmicks the other day. After eating, the kids just played on the grass and took pictures. They also tried to fly a kite but I wasn’t sure if the kite was sub-standard or if it was the kite-flyers fault. The adults meanwhile continued resting – some on the grass, while the others stayed in the cottage. It was indeed a very nice way to spend the day – just resting and enjoying the nice cool weather of Tagaytay. Even if there wasn’t much to do, the kids still had fun playing with each other in the very wide open area of Picnic Grove. While the adults just sat in their own corner to chat. We decided to leave early at around 3pm but as luck would have it, Ega’s van won’t start again…oh dear! This would surely be the last time we’ll borrow his van. It’s such a trip bummer! Instead of being able to visit more places like the Residence Inn zoo, the Pink sisters convent (for Inang) and People’s Park, we ended up just visiting Maryridge convent for their ube and buko pie pasalubong and the fruit stands to bring home some fruits. Oh well, I hope next time we’ll have better travelling provisions so that we’ll be able to enjoy more what Tagaytay had to offer.

TAGAYTAY: Our family’s fave weekend getaway [March 1-2, 2008]

Twice a year or at times even thrice (if my Dad is feeling generous), our entire family hies off one long weekend to spend some time together in a totally relaxing place out of town. One such favorite place we often retreat to is a big house on Rodeo Hills, Tagaytay. Aside from its cool weather (definitely a plus), the house is quite spacious that allows our entire clan to fit in – no matter how many we were!!! (This time around there was only 27 of us, around 6 families. But during last year’s holy week I guess we were around 40 – 10 families with lotsa, lotsa kids, truly a raucous affair!) Sounds crazy, huh? But to tell the truth, the house only had three bedrooms, but it can accommodate all of us easily since they had many cushions – around 15. And they had wide open spaces, particularly the veranda surrounding almost the entire 2nd floor which allows just anybody to grab a cushion and sleep outside. No need for an electric fan either because as I said, the place had its own natural air conditioning. We only need to bring our own sheets and beddings, if you don’t want to freeze your ass off.

And as is our usual routine whenever we go to Tagaytay, we don’t usually wait for them (my Dad and Tita - coz he still plays golf in the morning while she goes to the market to buy enough food to tide us for the weekend). Instead, we go ahead (since we have the car, uhm this time the CRV was lent to us) so we can take in some sightseeing of our own and eat their ever famous bulalo for our lunch. This time, we had my two sisters as our co-passengers (coz my eldest kid had work) and we picked them up at their house at past ten. By the time we were at the SLEX, my husband and Keith were already hungry (not really surprising!) so we stopped over at the Shell select station to buy some hotdogs, candies and junk food to tide us over till we reach Tagaytay.

By 1 pm we arrived in Tagaytay and we decided to eat at this bulalo place near the Tagaytay rotunda where my husband ate with some officemates a couple of years back – The Diners. The restaurant itself was not spectacular – a little more like an improved version of the carinderia – definitely no view of the Taal volcano here because it’s smack in the middle of the city. But their bulalo tasted better than the one we had last year at that overlooking resto (whose name and taste is quite forgettable!) Even the other dishes we ordered tasted great – the inihaw na pusit, crispy fried tawilis, and ensaladang talong. My sisters and I agreed to split the bill and we ended up paying about 170 or 180 per person – quite cheap!...considering how full we all were. We were all quite satisfied with the food that we ate and our entire dining experience would have been quite satisfactory if not for the haughty attitude of the restaurant’s crew – especially the ladies taking our orders. They are the front liners of the resto and they should be more courteous to people coz their snobbishness really is a turn-off. Good thing we were already hungry at the time, so we didn’t decide to just leave and look for another place to eat. Definitely, it’s not a place we would recommend to others if only because of the discourteous staff.

After eating, we wanted to work out a sweat to taper off some of that totally fattening food we all ate, so we visited the picnic grove. My youngest sister also wanted to have her pics taken with the Taal volcano as background (for her Friendster account). So off we went to walk about a thousand steps - we paused by a bridge to have our pics taken; a halfway viewdeck – to have more pics taken; a hanging bridge where we had to walk slow otherwise we might fall off until finally we reached the top where we were able to get a truly breathtaking view of Taal. The spectacular view and the cool fresh air that greeted us at the viewdeck was so worth it! It seems no matter how many times I’ve seen Taal, it still never ceases to amaze me.

When we’ve had our fill of pictures with Taal, we left for the house. But before getting there, we chanced upon a sign just past Splendido and before Rodeo Hills that said Sonya’s garden… and I told them that I’ve read about how pretty the place is on the internet and so we decided to make a detour to check it out. And we weren’t disappointed!!! Just check out the pics and you’ll see how truly made for relaxation and comfort the entire place is …there were pretty flowers everywhere in various colors and arrangements… the relaxing lull of water fountains, the smell of roses and freshly baked bread, and very pretty nooks and crannies to lounge around in, have tea or coffee or even sleep… well, we didn’t get to do that because we didn’t have that luxury of time. Heck, we didn’t even have the budget to savor the smell of all the organic and backyard-grown food that was wafting from their kitchens or to sample the therapeutic massage services of their spa. We just contented ourselves with taking picture after picture after picture in every cozy corner of the place and with buying their bread at the bakeshop/panaderia and some organic beauty items at their country store. I would’ve wanted to buy their soaps but alas I didn’t have any money left… maybe next time coz surely Sonya’s garden is one experience you’d want to experience completely – it will definitely be on my list of places to come back to if I had more money to spare or if my daughter decided to have a garden wedding in the future (very far future, that is!)

By four pm we were already at our ‘house for the weekend’ and surprisingly despite all the places we’ve already visited, we were still the first to arrive. The others slowly trickled in as night settled in and we all feasted on bbq chicken and pork, chicken tinola, and pork binagoongan for our dinner. After gorging ourselves with all the delicious food (esp the bbq, my aunt will kill me if I don’t mention her famous bbq!) we chatted the night away – just talking about old times and doing our usual bashing of others who weren’t around (sorry guys, it’s your fault for not coming!!!) It was way past midnight when they started singing (coz they were also getting quite drunk with all the drinks they consumed!) and I took that as my cue to go to bed (coz I can’t really sing!)

The next day, I was up early again to indulge in one of my favorite past times – taking pictures of sleeping people in crazy positions (he,he,he check out my latest collection!) We ate breakfast in a while and since we all decided not to go to the beach, we just retreated to our own fave nooks of the house and do our own private things – the aunts continued with their chatter; dad was at his laptop at a spot in the veranda outside his room (the only place with a signal!) to check out the daily news and his emails; my stepsister and his husband were watching DVDs (their fave past time!); the guys played cards; the kids ran around and played in the slide in the yard; I brought the laptop but I didn’t get to use it coz my sister was playing Luxor. Good thing I also brought a book and so I was able to retreat in my own little corner to read in peace.

After lunch, the kids were once again getting restless –they grew tired playing outside and with the laptop so we decided to take them out to visit the new zoo near Mendez – Paradizoo. We got lost a bit going there coz the signs were quite confusing. But after a few hits and misses we finally got there. Entrance fee was a bit steep at PhP 199 for adults and PhP 149 for the kids but the tour took more than an hour and we were able to see unique animals (not quite your typical zoo) and experience first-hand life on a farm - so it was quite worth it…We even had a tour guide who explained to us little bits and trivia about the ten-hectare farm/ranch.

First animals we encountered were the miniature horses just after the restaurant and souvenir shop which the kids can actually ride (but did not coz it’s costly at Php 150 for only a few minutes). We continued with the tour instead and saw varied kinds of exotic animals which the guide said were imported from different parts of the globe. There were dromedary camels (with one hump) from Australia, some Kalahari goats (which we can pet and feed with all the grass readily available), dorper sheep which the guides showed how to milk (we can actually milk them and even the kids had fun feeding a baby sheep from a bottle). There were also fallow and russa deer, alpacas and llamas, fierce racing greyhounds (just too bad there was no race scheduled for that day so we didn’t get to see them in action), race horses and miniature ponies. We also visited a butterfly farm (my third for the year), a bee farm, an organic garden (with lettuces, tomatoes, carrots, even strawberries harvested and sold at the resto near the entrance), a fish pond where one can actually catch fish with a rented rod for PhP 100 (but you have to pay for the catch if you like to take it home otherwise it goes back to the pond), an orchid garden, a mushroom growing facility, a piggery where we saw Big Brother’s Peggy and her piglets, and so much more.

All in all, it was truly a very different but still fun experience because it wasn’t regular zoo animals in cramped cages that we saw but farm animals in wide open spaces. But what made the experience unique was the fact that it allowed visitors to interact and experience first-hand the kind of life in a farm. The ones who conceptualized this type of zoo should really be commended because they were able to give us – both kids and adults – a truly unforgettable experience… plus, if the kids still wanted to see more regular zoo animals, they offered a visit to the Residence Inn zoo – for free! (I guess, it’s already part of the Php 199 package) And so off we went to visit the other zoo where we got to see the regular animals like tigers, monkeys, a scraggly lion, different crocs and lizards, snakes, large fishes and birds, eagles, even a porcupine, etc.

It was about 4 pm already when we returned to the house and the kids were bursting with stories to tell of their various encounters with animals we saw in the two zoos we visited… they regaled the oldies with their stories as we ate spaghetti and cake. After a while, it was time to go home and bid goodbye to this wonderful place that we have come to call our very own ‘home away from home’… till next time!!!