Tagaytay Day Trip - Leslie's

Second day of our vacation leave. We woke up early so we can have our breakfast in Tagaytay. As I've mention from my previous post we didn't have a concrete plan. We're just gonna go there and find where our feet will lead us. One thing's for sure we wanted good food. Something that we can't just have here in Manila.

. . . camwhoring on the bus

From Cubao, we took the San Agustin bus going to Tagaytay. We paid Php104 each. It took us two and a half hours to get there. Traffic was terrible early that morning and Tapioca was getting impatient. When we finally see the pine trees and a huge fog on the road we knew we're almost there.

We dropped off at the Olivares Terminal. When we alighted the bus I kinda felt like I have been never been in Tagaytay before. Tagaytay has changed a lot from the last time I went there. I think the last time I went there was back in early 2000 with my college classmates. Back then we just graduated and we were all excited to explore new places. You know the happiness of hanging out with your classmates without thinking of assignments, projects and thesis. Yeah, kinda like welcoming our new found freedom.

Okay, okay, so I'm reminiscing here but I can't help but compare the Tagaytay that I knew then and the Tagaytay I'm seeing now. There were lots of establishments that wasn't there before like Jollibee, 711, KFC, Yellow Cab and the list could go on and on if I mention them all. Seeing all these commercial places tells you know how the city has developed. I can't say I like it nor hate it. But ya know, I'm all for progress.

And when in a progressive city you are and that city happens to be a tourist spot, expect scenes of haggling and locals offering their services. First thing that greeted us at the terminal were the tricycle drivers. There's plenty of them and if you're not familiar on how much the fare fee from one point to another (like us) expect to pay more. Oh well, we didn't really care as long as they take us to the place we wanted to be.

I asked our tricycle driver to bring us to Bag of Beans because we wanted to try their famous pies and cheesecakes. Due to my lack of research and poor planning, I didn't know that Bag of Beans has now 2 branches. The original branch which was far from Olivares and almost near the Batangas boundary, and the new branch near Rotonda. Unforch, the driver took us to the Rotonda branch which at that time still closed. Our tummies were unforgiving so we went to the next restaurant that was open.

leslie's . . .

We were the first customers for the day and I was sooo giddy because it means we can pick the best spot in the restaurant. And I'm talking about this . . .


See those guys on the ledge? That was Tapioca and our tricycle driver. Well, that's our spot. I have been to Leslie's but never had the place to ourselves until . . . . another group joined us :-(



Tapioca looked pissed but can't do anything about it. We don't own the place. If we want a privy place with unobstructed view of Taal Volcano, we can stay at these cute little cottages at Php500 for 3 hours.


Thanks but no thanks. We would rather stay on our spot for free and just ignore the noisy group on the other table. I let myself enjoy the view taking pictures of whatever caught my attention. The weather in Tagaytay was very chilly so I had to had something hot to drink. I was thinking of kapeng barako but they don't have any. I got stuck with the instant Nescafe. Hahaha!


Then our food arrived. And for some reason the group on the other table decided to change table. Hooray!!!!! Here are the food pics . . .

. . . a huge bowl of special bulalo with big bone marrow

prawns in garlic and butter sauce . . .

. . . and a mountain of rice

Cyempre hindi namin kayang ubusin lahat yan so we had our tricycle driver joined us but still we didn't finish the big bowl of bulalo. Just to give you an idea of how huge that bowl was here's another pic with Tapioca.


The food was awesome. And what makes it even better was the nice view of the Taal lake and volcano. As I said we wanted something that we can't have in Manila. Yes, we can always eat bulalo and prawns in Manila but we will never get the same experience. Thanks to this magnificent view . . .

the view . . .

We decided to stay a bit longer to enjoy the nice view we don't often see. After chilling out, time for more picture taking. Buti na lang we have a driver slash photographer.

. . . hindi naman halata na busog kami, noh?

More of our Tagaytay adventures coming up on the next post.