A Food Trip and Mini Visita Iglesia in Ongpin
by: anakngkidlat
Brian had another lakad in mind and of course I was willing to listen if it can be done. He said there is a festival to be held in Makati called CARACOL. I thought
"A festival in Makati? You've gotta be kidding". From his face I could say he is telling the truth. He even showed me pictures of previous festivals. Its funny that I'm a resident of Makati for the past 2-3 years and I had no idea about this. So we checked the net for the schedule. Based from the sites we have seen, it usually starts at 10 am so we thought of a side trip to go with it. Since I was also in the mode of buying a new camera, I wanted to check Hidalgo. Brian had made it much better by going through Ongpin after checking cameras at Hidalgo.
We met at 10 am just to see that it will start at 4 pm! Man we were way too early!
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| And we thought it was 10 am.. oh well |
We had no choice but to had our itinerary turn upside down and we went to Hidalgo first. He checked for new lenses and bags while I did looked for my Panasonic G3 and sad to say there wasn't any (one of the reasons why I'm giving up on buying it). After checking for gadgets we went straight ahead to Ongpin with our first stop, Church of Santa Cruz.
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| Historical Marker |
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| With the Carriedo Fountain |
The Church was made during the 17th century by the Jesuits with Our Lady of Pilar as its Patron Saint.
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| A devotee in prayer |
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| Pieta |
It was almost lunch time and I am so hungry that I couldn't have a decent shot. We have to look for budget friendly restaurants. (and Ongpin has a lot of those) Sadly, it was Sunday and most of them were closed and The worst part is that we had no map or guide to check.
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| The Arch of Goodwill |
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| A lot these items are common here in Ongpin |
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| Jade and other items usually bring good luck, fortune and health! |
You may call it stroke of luck but we luckily found a restaurant that we have checked in the net prior to our trip: LGA Fastfood!
This restaurant serves delicious Chinese cuisine at affordable prices! Come to think of it, for at least 250+ pesos per person (as far as I can remember) we had 3 viands, yangchow rice and a 1.5 L softdrink!
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| Chopsuey |
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| Lemon Chicken |
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| Beef Hot Pot |
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| Yangchow rice |
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| Photo opps before eating |
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| Man were stuffed! |
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| And were not only the satisfied customers! |
We were not yet done with our trip as I told Brian that there is another church here: Binondo Church. As we were looking for where the Church is, we stumbled upon a place famous for its Chinese Delicasies: Eng Bee Tin!
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| Home of the Best Hopia and Tikoy! |
There are a lot of food to choose from. They even have innovated a fusion of Tikoy and Hopia : The Mochipia.
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| Hopia Heaven! |
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| There are a lot of customers! |
After buying our pasalubongs, we also found Binondo Church. We didn't noticed that we were so near the church.
The church also known as the Minor Basilica of San Lorenzo Ruiz (named after the first Filipino Saint) was founded in 1596 by the Dominicans not only to serve Chinese converts but also the Filipino natives.
There was a wedding ongoing when we went.
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| The Altar |
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| One of the Station of the Cross figures |
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| San Lorenzo Ruiz |
It was 3 pm then and we need to go back to Makati for the Caracol Festival. Although we were short on time, we had a blast! We also made sure that we will go back as we felt our trip was not enough =). Thanks to Brian of
http://xplorerboyz.blogspot.com/ for some of the pictures featured on this post.
