We’re finally starting our own travel blog! We’re kicking off with our roughly planned,
impromptu family road trip to Baguio last November 1-3. I will include our travel tips mostly at the end of each post or blog series. This will include helpful tips for families, "kidsentials" (kid essentials), help for autism families and other things that might be useful.
My wife already told me before that she wanted to go to
Baguio and although we allotted time for the road trip, the dates weren’t exactly
fixed due to several “other circumstances”.
Also, much of our planning time was spent on the other major family travel we had
for 2016 (we’ll post all about it in another entry) so we had no clear
itinerary nor any accommodation bookings.
Yet there we were AGAIN, just packing our stuff and hitting
the road with a “come-what-may” mindset (Yep! We did this before haha! It was 2
years ago and we’ll post it in another entry). Although we are a family with an autism child, we have had a lot of DIY travels in the past which pretty much went well. I guess our kids just got used to these kids of things and even our special one learned to appreciate them.
We decided to bring the car instead of taking the bus because one, we’ll
be in charge of our own time, and two, we get to go where we want to. We also decided to hit the road early morning
so that we could enjoy the scenery that we wouldn’t get to see if we traveled
at night. We’re aware that we might
reach Baguio at night but we always enjoy the road trip itself because after
all, the journey should be a part of the destination!
So off we went through NLEX (North Luzon
Expressway), SCTEX (Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway) then TPLEX
(Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway).
Being city dwellers, the kids enjoyed the greens and fauna rarely found
in the city.
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| This way to... |
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| We never get tired of trees, wide open fields, blue skies and mountains |
Our
rest stop was at the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag. Most Catholic Filipinos prefer to do this
stop when travelling North. After praying at the basilica, we decided to have
our lunch there and also bought Pangasinan’s famous fish sauces, boneless
bagoong & patis, before going back on the road.
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| Our rest stop... |
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| Lighting candles at the shrine |
It
is my first time to drive to Baguio and as suggested by our close friend, we
took the longer Marcos Highway route instead of Kennon Road mainly due to
safety reasons. The scenery at Marcos
Highway was actually quite good with a glimpse Lingayen Gulf at certain points.
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| Err.. I thought that way? (there was a detour for those going to Marcos Highway when we went there) |
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| A glimpse at certain points |
We
could tell we were near Baguio because we could see houses and other structures
at the sides of the mountains, though there were portions which weren’t quite
pleasing to the eye as some parts were densely populated by the houses. It seemed that building of houses were not
regulated and the result was not that good.
It also looked quite dangerous especially during earthquake. Don't get me wrong though, there are a lot of beautiful places in Baguio that's why there are many people who keep coming back to this place.
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| Houses for trees? |
It was almost dark when we got to downtown area and we have
to find an accommodation fast. There are
lots of cheap accommodations but we were looking for the one with parking area.
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| Marcos Highway - the roads are wider at curved sections |
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| the "are we there yet?..." cliché |
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| Finally! I think we're here! Are we?... |
Lesson learned: a number of accommodations around the
Burnham Park area do not have parking spaces so planning ahead (which we barely
did haha!) is highly recommended. After
trying several hotels we found in Google, we finally settled with Holiday Park
Hotel. Another lesson learned: It is
much easier (obviously, haha!) to look for hotels at daytime as we found out
the following morning that there were several hotels with parking spaces along
some of the roads we passed through that night.
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| Err....... (downtown area) |
Holiday Park Hotel (http://holidayparkhotel.com.ph/) isn’t really bad, it was
quite nice actually. It’s not 5-star accommodation
but it’s sufficient and the staff were very helpful and courteous. We got the Deluxe Twin Room and it was big
enough for the 5 of us. It had that
“old” room scent but it was clean. They
had hot and cold shower. The room rate
was PHP 2,200 per night and included breakfast for 2. Another good point of this hotel is its
proximity to restaurants, convenience stores, the Burnham Park, market and
other places of interest. These places
are just within walking distance. So
after settling in our room, we just got out and had dinner at one of the nearby
restaurants then bought some other stuff we need at 7-11.
I will post our "kidsentials", help for autism families and other tips for this travel at the end of Part 2.
(continued at Part 2)...
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