Exploring Manila

Day 2: After a good nights sleep, which ended with me waking up a 5:00 in the morning because it was 5 in the afternoon back home, I embarked out on a day of adventure in the city of Manila. But before any exhausting exploration takes place I find it helpful to eat a good breakfast. With that in mind I wandered over to the breakfast buffet to eat of a traditional Philippine Breakfast. As I approached the food table I found several unique and interesting breakfast options. Sure there was the regular danishes and croissants to choose from but among the usual hotel breakfast regulars I found some truly unique dishes. Such as cheesy mashed potatoes, coley flower with a tomato sauce on top, and a creamy linguine mixture. As I ate of these savoury dishes I felt as though I was partaking of an age old "south pacific" breakfast tradition unknown by the western world. After finishing the meal and talking to one of the hotel guest I found out that I was actually partaking of and age old "western" tradition of eating of last night's leftovers from supper. Guess I shouldn't take myself too seriously. It was good, I'm not complaining. With the leftovers in by belly I set out for the U.S. console to go over a few plans for my voyage later. After that it was onto Manila. And after going to one of my favorite places in the world yesterday, the Mall, my companions decided to go to one of the "happiest" places on earth, the grave yard. WHAT IS UP WITH THIS TRIP!!! Actually, the best part was the getting there. We left the hotel in a cab and started out twords the American Cemetary, it's a memorial for all U.S. soilders killed in the Pacific, but on the way to the cemetary our cab stops pumping out A/C and I think replaced it with heat. What am I doing in the Philipinnes in a car with the heat on? So, with the temperature outside being like 100 degrees and the temperature inside being like a billion degrees we decided to get off on "who knows where in the world" street and try to get another cab. You know the street, it's by the Kareoke Bar that's open at 11:30 in the morning. Anyway, after standing there for 10 minutes being serinaded by some guy in the bar we finally get another cab whose driver seems a little unsure about where the cemetary was, so unsure that he had to get out of the car to get dirrections. Isn't it their job to know, what's going on!!! Anyway, we get to the cemetary, look at the memorial and it goes the same way that all memorials go. Quiet, alot of dead people, and not too much fun. But really my expectations were not that high to begin with. So, with the mood set we went to the next logical destination after such a somber scene in the Philippines.....TGI Friday's. What? You expected somewhere else? Don't you do these things on vacation? At this point I'm just taking in the memories. I travel twenty plus for....to eat at.....and why? Anyway, afterward I actually convinced our escort to go a little out of his box and take in some of the sights. We started off with a exploration of the Intramuros. The Intramuros is basically a walled city, built by the Spainards during their occupation of the Philippines, that was pretty much destroyed during the closing days of WWII in the battle of Manila. The walls of such city still remain in good condition and you can walk atop them and get some pretty nice views of the old canons on the wall, the adjacent park, and the Intramuros golf course...huh? Just roll with it. There's a church inside the city that my companions wanted to explore that is really quite remarkable looking from the outside. But maybe the most interesting thing about the church is that it's been rebuilt 6 times due to fire, earthquakes, and WWII. One of my companions said "you would think they would get the hint". Really that sums the whole thing up. After the Church we took a walk down Anda St. which according to the Lonely Planet travel guide "is a good street to wander". Has this guy ever walked down Anda St. Not a good street to wander, in fact you kind of want to to get off of Anda St. as quick as possible. The book is a little off and actually sometimes seems to have something against the Philippines. If you would like to see what I'm talking about check out the "My favorite quotes from Lonely Planet" feature on my blog. After getting off Anda St. we proceeded to walk on top of the wall over to Rizal Park. Rizal Park is a park dedicated to the Philippine national hero Dr. Jose Rizal who was executed there by Spanish colonial athorities in 1896. It was a nice park with many monuments to different Philippine heros and there is a very large monument to Jose Rizal that I took a picture with along with the other Japanese tourists that were there. Also to top off the day one of the locals wanted a picture with my group of Americans. When asked where we were from the my other two companions said France and Austraila to try to throw the guy off, I told him I was from Rhode Island because I knew he would never know where that was anyway. So, the day ended with a somewhat calm Taxi ride home. What tomorrow brings I have no idea but it will without a doubt be interesting.

Philippine Marc