Travel destinations: Tagaytay City, Philippines – Part 1

Getting to Tagaytay City is a breeze. It is only an hour ride from busy fast-paced Manila. Many come here just to relax and unwind! A bus ride is comfortable with the huge air-bus-like, air-conditioned ‘Crow’. In the bus some polite vendors sell bottled mineral water, juices, peanuts, pili nuts, sweets, boiled quail eggs, and pies to eat or drink along the way. Newspapers and tabloids in English are also sold. Better yet, go there by helicopter available daily from the Highlands.

A long winding blue lake along the cemented highway leads to Tagaytay. Nestled in the center, just a boat ride away is the crater of the lake, which is a sleeping volcano. Arm lengths away are rows and rows of different tropical flowers with darker and brighter hues. The warm sun, frequent rain showers, clean air and slightly cold weather made all the photo pigments darker. The anthuriums are redder, the dahlias are brighter and larger, the grass is greener this side of the earth.

A new community of vacationers was built in the highest altitude of the city, the Tagaytay Ridge and is aptly called Tagaytay Highlands. From this ridge a view of the city below; villages, subdivisions, food shops, including pineapple plantations and the awe-inspiring Taal Lake in the horizon can be seen.

Weekdays are generally quiet and laidback, but Saturdays and Sundays are entirely different when locals from Manila spend their weekends in their vacation houses, go horseback riding, fishing or just dine in Tagaytay. All weekends are considered holidays here.

More so, food of various origins can be tasted here. Not to miss are the following: ’sinigang na maliputo’ -sour soup usually tamarind based, with maliputo fish harvested only in this part of the world, from the Taal lake; crispy deep fried tawilis (also a kind of fish from Taal); ‘eruption’- a mound of chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream on top, slicing the cake would reveal melted chocolate which flows out and mix with the ice cream. Much visited is the mushroom burger conveniently located along the highway. Rice cakes like bibingka are specialties of the resort.

Fresh fruits are available in the ‘Mahogany Market’ everyday. Their pineapples are extra sweet. Bananas, avocado, and jackfruit are also abundant. Sample their sweet fried bananas with jackfruit wrapped in ‘lumpia’-thin flour and egg wrapper. Lettuce, bell peppers, cabbage, mushroom, eggplants, turnips, sweet potatoes, carrots, radish are just some of the crops locally grown and sold in the market or along the highway.