The Tagaytay Experience

Clockwise from top left:Breakfast at Antonio's, crocodile with coins, Mikael the tiger(tigress?), outside Gourmet's, Nurture Spa waiting shed, me with 10-month old tiger cub

Went to Tagaytay with Val, Rory and Patrick during Holy Thursday. It was a fun trip, and was made even more exciting because there was little planning involved. It was an anything goes trip. Interesting things I learnt:


From Breakfast at Antonio's
1. When with Rory, bring a bigger bag.
Rory collects those things that restaurants have -- the one which they use to list down the food and beverages they offer. Oh that's right... Rory collects menus. :D

2. Breakfast at Antonio's does not only offer breakfast; they offer overpriced lunch selections too.

3. Roesti are stacks of potato pancakes which tasted more like potato chips. The waiter recommended the roesti with sliced beef sandwiched between roesti and topped with two sunny side up eggs. YUM!!!
4. The isolated mountain in the river is Taal Volcano. The Taal Volcano is a volcano within a volcano.


From Residence Inn Zoo
1. Be very, very careful about commenting on what other people are wearing. I loudly criticized about the Star-Wars costumes of the statue-people inside the zoo. See, Star Wars and zoo don't really go together. He reacted by scaring the hell out of us.

2. Mikael is the name of a tiger caged inside the zoo.

3. When Pinoys see small, artifical bodies of water, they will throw coins in it. Never mind that the bodies of water are where the crocodiles live. It certainly looked odd that there were coins beside the crocodiles. As Rory said, "Ginawa nilang wishing well yung tinitirhan ng mga crocodile."

4. I feel sorry for the sorry state that the zoo's animals are in. Rory observed that the ostriches had no sand to bury their heads in. And they have bare patches where their feathers should be. People (kids especially) heckled the big brown bear, who must have been stressed out by the noise the kids made. There were two monkeys forever chained to a steel rod for amusement purposes. Val saw that the eagles had little space to fly around. The goats ate with the zoo's resident rats. The llamas were heckled to no end.


5. I want to say that I feel sorry for the 10-month old tiger cub who was chained to the ground. But I had my picture taken with her, which would not have been possible if she was allowed to roam around freely. The cub looked menacing at first, but when her caretaker brought out her feeding bottle, she suddenly looked harmless. The crowd gave a resounding "aaaaaw" when she started drinking from the feeding bottle. :)



From Nurture Spa
1. Nurture Spa serves very good jasmine tea!

2. The P995 (plus 10% tax) they charge for spa services went mostly to the spa's ambiance. The massage was so-so. Didn't like the spanking part so much.

3. It was a full moon again! Coincidence ba that Val and I only get to go out when there's a full moon?


From Gourmet's Cafe
1. One can manage a restaurant business and not know how to take orders.
After we had been made to wait for 20++ minutes, a lady (probably the manager) approached us to ask if we were ready to order, then apologized because she does not know how to take orders. ??? Get paper. Write down diner's order. That's it!

2. Gourmet's Cafe's veggies are really organic. They don't put insecticides or pesticides. Which would explain the little green worm that crawled its way out of my salad.

3. Gourmet's Cafe is promoting their newest salad dressing -- the mango vinaigrette. And it's really good. I like my salad dressings on the creamy side, and the vinaigrette was creamy and sweet with just the right amount of tartness.

4. When dining with Rory, bring big bag.

5. If you want a good dessert from Gourmet's, please do not try their halo-halo. Have their blueberry cheesecake instead. The halo-halo sosyal was a very big disappointment.