Road trip to Ilocos

Calle Crisologo

We make it a point to take one local trip every year, specially for the kids. This year it was a road trip to Ilocos. It was going to be a long trip and I prepared them  by telling them it was going to take as long as a plane trip to Hawaii-- ten hours. At 6 and 8 years old, I thought they were going to get cabin fever and complain at one point in the middle. Surprisingly, they didn't! They each had a load of books in the car, and in between snoozing and reading, it was a very pleasant road trip for all of us.

I didn't realize that the sites in Ilocos are far apart, We made our homebase in Vigan and just drove up north each day and then came back. Not a good plan.

At the poolside of Sitio Remedios

If I were to do it again, I would spend one day in Vigan, stay the whole day and night--maybe two- there, then the next evening move on the Sitio Remedios for a day or two also. Then I would end the trip in Laoag and fly home from there. That way you'd be going only one direction and not lose to many hours driving back to Vigan for the night.

A beautiful local antique table

In Vigan, the most interesting thing for me aside from Calle Crisologo, was the visiting the restored ancestral home of Bonito Singson. Glad I took the suggestion of my brother (Bonito's friend) to just cold call him and introduce myself. He graciously invited us to come over for a look-see. He is totally into the details of interior design and he very tastefully updated the home where he lives.

The usual sites of the area--the Marcos house in Paoay, the lighthouse at Cape Bodeajar, the windmills in Bangui and the beach at Pagudpud are all worth visiting. All very picturesque. Photographers would have a heydey here. Just take a look at the shots from my point-and-shoot.

View from Cape Bodeajar Lighthouse

Bangui Windmills

Start of Calle Crisologo

On the way home, we stopped in Pangsinan for lunch. We wanted to have lunch in a nice local restaurant and since we had no idea where to go, the choices were limited to quick-service joints and  chain fastfood place. I'm so glad we didn't succumb to our hunger. I quickly went online on my mobile phone to search for "Pangasinan  restaurant" and good reviews came up for Matutina's, a restaurant on the side of the Highway. It was packed but we were able to get a table for 10 in the "porch". The reviews were spot on, everything we had was delicious.

Crispy Shrimp of Matutina's

Coffee and the Untrained Palate

Latte at Philippa's in Armadale, Melbourne

I've never been a big coffee drinker and only ordered an occasional cappuccino whenever I had lunch with the girls. Then Starbucks came to town together with all the other coffee shops. And because it became a hang out and a meeting place, I got used to having cafe mochas. That tasted good. Finally I settled on Cafe Latte because I really do like a lot of milk in my coffee.

But it was in Italy a few years ago that I became a coffee-drinker. They would serve a cappuccino with breakfast at the BnB we were staying at and it gave me a giddy feeling the whole morning. I couldn't decide whether it was the coffee or just the excitement of being in Italy. Maybe it was a combination. I began to look forward to breakfast because of the coffee. I now know how people can be addicted to coffee and understand when they say they're zombies the whole day without their morning coffee. It's a legalized drug!


Cappuccino in Rome


In Australia, they people take their coffee very seriously. Coffee here is all espresso based and even the smallest shop will have hard-to-beat coffee. And whoever gave them their names is a marketing genius. I remember my cousin ordering a "Flat white please..." and I remember thinking "oooh, what is that?!?"  She laughed and said "it's regular coffee!"  Then there's a short black (a single shot of espresso) and a long black (an espresso topped off with water) too.




Cappuccino at Vue de Monde Bistro, Melbourne

I still order lattes which is similar to a flat white but with more milk. A flat white comes in a cup and the latte usually in a glass.  I think the small-cafe glass is stylish, even if not very practical. In Australia, I looked forward to having coffee every morning and afternoon too. I think the best I had on the trip to Melbourne was at Caffe Brunetti-- rich, smooth and velvety. 



Latte at Caffe Brunetti, Carlton

I also learned just recently that you're not supposed to stir a cappuccino before you drink it--something to do with the microscopic bubbles. In Italy at breakfast, I'd always stir the whole thing. It all tasted the same to my untrained palate.


But now I finally know what people mean when they say the coffee is so good in Italy. I think it's just as good in Australia. It's probably not such a good habit to take up, after having stayed coffee-free for so many years. For a someone who doesn't drink coffee regularly, I'm now craving and dreaming of the coffee I had in Melbourne, and wondering where I can get a really good cup in Manila.

A Melting Moment

I came across these cookies when I was first went to Sydney almost ten years ago. They were in almost every coffee shop and snack shop and in many restaurants too--always in jars near the cashier, meant to be an impulse buy. Of course I always bought one. Two shortbread cookies with cream in between, they were so good! I would look forward to having one after lunch or an afternoon coffee (tea?). My cousin who lives in Sydney was surprised I was so thrilled with something so ordinary. Of course I know the shortbread cookies that come in a tin, or a box (Walkers?)--but these always looked so tempting. How can anyone resist?


I'm familiar with chocolate chip cookies in a jar, but not shortbread cookies named "melting moments". In other places they were called "soothing moments" or something similar. It's probably a British thing? I've only been to London a couple of times and I didn't particularly notice them in jars at the checkout counter there.


Another thing i noticed in Australia then was the toasted sandwiches which were toasted on George Foreman type grillsl. This was ten years ago and before paninis became common in the States. (Paninis in Italy were hardly the toasted sandwiches we know paninis to be. I remember seeing paninis in Italy laid out in trays--a few slices of salami folded inside ciabatta-looking rolls, sitting out there for at least a couple of hours. They were hard!) I usually like my sandwiches on toasted bread, and I remember being pleasantly surprised when I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich from a kiosk in a Brisbane mall and it was a hot toasted sandwich. Simple grilled ham and cheese. Yum!

So probably very ordinary to the mates down under, but toasted sandwiches and melting moments made quite an impression on me! And I haven't started yet with the coffee...

Rainbow in Yarra!

I've never been this close to the end of a rainbow! 

When we actually got to it, it was at the entrance of Chateau Yering. What a 
beautiful place! I would've wanted to try this place if only for one 
night (had we had that extra night!). Good thing we didn't too because 
it was quiet expensive. It's a"Historic House" hotel that is part of the
Relais and Chateau group of hotels. Of course I still asked to see the rooms.

I love "period" rooms and bathrooms

I liked all the furniture in the sitting room!

There are just so many options to stay at the Yarra Valley that
if ever I went back, I would still explore the other little bed and
breakfasts around the area. I don't even mind transferring inns
everynight so I could explore as many of them as possible!

I love beautifully designed hotels and I observe every little
detail down to the baseboard and the cornices. Of course I take home all
the amenities like the shampoos and conditioners. I also take the
stationery that's in the desk and also the little notepad beside the
bed. I actually read in some travel magazine about the author "stealing"
these things. It's hardly stealing if it's meant to be consumed anyway. I
wouldn't want to use slippers someone else has used. So it they are
sealed are unused, I take them home. At least I remember the hotel long
after I've left it!

I Love Cheese!

Actually, I do love cheese, but the main reason for this post is that I think I finally learned how to download my photos to Flickr (free space), and then link the photos here back to the photo on Flickr so that I don't use up my allowable download space on Blogger. Hmmm..

But I think there still should be a better way to drag and drop the photos instead of cut and paste between two URLs? I must be doing something wrong. Will practice with more..

Beautiful Balgownie

We stayed the night at the Balgownie Estate. The suite was very well appointed, it made us want to stay in and watch DVDs all night. But of course we ended up having dinner at the vineyard restaurant called Rae's, where I had this really delicious appetizer which had watermelon and goat cheese. The steak dishes were good too.

During the day we visited the Tarrawarra Estate for wine tasting and to have a look at the art gallery. Pete, the gentleman at the bar was very accommodating, giving us the history and describing the different terroirs of the area.

Having had most of my wine experience in California in the 80's, where and when I developed a preference for Cabernet Sauvingon, I didn't really pay attention to the lighter Pinot Noir and Shiraz stuff. But come to think of it, lighter reds and whites are much better suited to our tropical environment. I really liked the fruity crisp whites and the lighter reds--we went away with a bottle of Shiraz.

We could've stayed here longer and just basically stay at the Yarra Valley but someone told us we had to check out the Mornington Peninsula and check out the scene there too. So by noon the next day, we were off with our Hertz Neverlost, typing in "Mornington".

A Day at Yarra Valley

From the Melbourne Airport, we got a car from Hertz and drove straight to the Yarra Valley where we were going to spend the night. We made sure we had a Hertz Neverlost, which is just a nice name for a GPS. It's essential specially for people like us, who drive on the "other side of the road"!

Drove straight to Healesville so we could have lunch at The Innocent Bystander. We had heard so much about this place and wanted to try it. We were driving and didn't know our way around yet, so decided not to do any wine tasting yet. We were more hungry...

The Four-Cheese pizza was delicious with a very thin crisp crust. It was a bit salty for me but what wonderful flavors. We also had something like a hummus dip which came with fresh country bread and full-flavored olive oil for dipping.

The place had free wifi, and the password is "buyourwine". The ambience reminded me of NY. Funky cafe. 

And the first of many delicious lattes I was  going to enjoy here in Australia. These people take their coffee very seriously. No weak brews here, all espresso-based coffees. 

Those are canelles in the background. They had a promo--a coffee and a canelle for $6 (less $1 for buying it together), and the canelle would be free if you weren't thrilled by it. Well, I really wasn't thrilled by it, but my canelle reference is directly from Paris, straight from a canelle cart called Le canele Baillardran. I remember it fondly being hot, very crisp on the outside, and soft and almost empty on the inside. I was blown away when I first tried this five years ago that I googled what a canelle was then.  I was now pleasantly surprised to see it in Melbourne, as a regular pastry in many of the coffee shops.  Altho it was less than spectacular here, I decided to be nice and not say anything about not being totally thrilled. I still enjoyed coffee and canelle very much.

Patterned Floors

Paoay Church in Ilocos

I've always been attracted to cement tiles/encaustic tiles. I came across a website that explained everything about encaustic tiles--it's history, and even how to care for them. It's an American site. It also listed the suppliers who still make these tiles all over the world. Unfortunately at the time I discovered the website, there was nothing listed for the Philippines. I quickly fixed that by emailing them!

The Laguna house where my father-in-law grew up has cement tiles in all the rooms, in different patterns. His ancestral home was turned into a library for kids.

Quan An Ngon in Hanoi

Only when I started being more observant of floors did I start noticing how ordinary these tiles were in places such as Vietnam, where even the streetmarket stalls had them. Maybe they were once the cheapest tiles? They are definitely not the cheapest tiles in Manila, where a lot of people refer to them as "Machuca tiles". Machuca is actually a name of a person, a Spanish dude who started making if here at the turn of the century. Today, many old tiles are "harvested" off old homes and resold to collectors and people who restore homes. The thing is, there is no reason to buy the worn out ones when Machuca still makes tiles in Manila the way they did for many decades. Many homeowners and commercial establishments still use them.

Most of the Machuca patterns are multi-colored. They hardly have any which are just one color like the one above, although you can customize and specify what you want, after all, a one color tile is much simpler to make than the many-colored tiles The only other manufacturer in Manila I'm aware of is Malaga tiles or Habitiles.

A restaurant in Saigon

After growing up with the Machuca patterns, it was refreshing to see the selection of Malaga Tiles. Malaga Tiles/Habitiles has many one-colored patterns and reproduce older-looking ones. It's owned by  Edwin Espiritu who is extremely accommodating. I had a clear idea of the effect I wanted, but I didn't know how to achieve it.  Finally after a number of meetings in his shop, he decided  he would make a pattern one just for me (copying a pattern from Architectural Digest). We changed the colors to the colors I wanted for my kitchen, and voila! I love my kitchen!

My kitchen during construction days..

For my  foyer, I just chose something from what he had because I wanted black and white only. I love the look--it has so much character.

The rest of the house has wooden floors. It's a very nice contrast.