Thursday, October 27, 2016

Tagaytay weekend trip

A few months ago, my friends and I were planning an out-of-town trip and the initial idea was to spend a weekend in Fontana. However, someone in the group wanted to try a place in Tagaytay that he saw on airbnb through this article. We had never gone to Tagaytay as a group before and the fact that place we wanted to try, a chalet overlooking Tagaytay, was very photogenic made it pretty easy for us to decide to go to Tagaytay instead and book this place.

Overlooking Tagaytay Chalet: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4927362

Thankfully, when we got there, the place looked just as good in person, if not better. The main room has four beds that comfortably fits 10 people. The living room is very cozy, with lots of comfortable seating and you can step out of the living room into the balcony for a closer view of Taal Lake.

Me at the balcony

A bit of a watch-out though, there's a long stone stairway from the entrance to the chalet so it may not be ideal for people with mobility challenges. You also end up a bit out of breath when you go up the stairs. Once we got settled in, almost everyone found a spot and took a quick nap (I couldn't sleep so I played solitaire). There's no TV here, the wifi connection is not very good, and the mobile signal is weak to none so this chalet is actually a very good place to disconnect and focus on just hanging out and enjoying the company of your friends.

Dining room and living room

One of the many memorable experiences we had actually happened even before we got to Tagaytay. I am not sure if I was just so excited to go out of town or I was just so engaged in conversation with the folks in the car that I somehow missed the Sta. Rosa exit. I didn't even realize that I missed it until I saw the exit to Canlubang and I started wondering, doesn't the Canlubang exit come after the Sta. Rosa exit? No one in the car seemed to notice that we missed our exit either and I just called it out when we got to the end of SLEX hahaha. This is the first time that this happened to me. As such, we took the long and pretty scary and relatively dangerous route from Talisay to Tagaytay.

We arrived in Tagaytay at around 1pm and we headed straight to Breakfast at Antonio's for lunch. I naturally ordered my favorite dish there, the Bacon Roesti. :) (Oh how I missed this dish!) Actually, all the restaurants where we ate are places that I have been to before. One of the people in our group wanted to try Chateau Hestia so we had dinner there. Then for lunch on Sunday, I suggested that we eat in Morielli's. I kinda felt like a food trip tour guide for my friends since I knew exactly where all these restaurants were. :)

Kitchen

Our evening was filled with fun and crazy card and party games, including Monopoly Deal, pusoy dos, Say Anything, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Taboo (but following the Tie One On scoring system), and 1-2-3 pass. Of all those games, Say Anything was the only game I played for the first time and it was interesting although you really need to know the rest of the people in the group. It actually reminded me of Dixit. I also realized that I have gotten better at One Night Ultimate Werewolf because I won in all but one round, whether as a werewolf or as a villager (I have also gotten better at figuring out what I end up being after all the card changes, because both times that my card was changed, I knew what card I got and was still able to win). By the time we called it a night after a very loud and animated 1-2-3 pass, my fingers hurt and I had all but lost my voice from all the shouting hahaha. Thankfully we the chalet is quite secluded so our noise didn't really bother any neighbors.
A trip to Tagaytay wouldn't be complete without pasalubong shopping. I pretty much knew what I wanted to get. We stopped by Rowena's were I got a box of apple tarts, a box of mango tarts, a bot of cashew polvoron, and a box of assorted cheese tarts. I made a very quick stop at Colette's to get buko pie (I still want to try Loumar's; maybe on my next trip). I bought a bottle of coconut vinegar from one of the many sidewalk vendors. And finally, I bought ube jam from Good Shepherd. I was hoping they would also have strawberry jam but unfortunately, it was out of stock yet again. I think the last time I was able to buy strawberry jam from Good Shepherd was back in 2011.

Tagaytay is really one of my favorite places to chill out. The fact that I got to enjoy the weekend with my friends, eat in good restaurants, and stay in a pretty awesome and unique place made it a very memorable trip. If you have the opportunity to try this chalet out, I suggest you do.

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