DAY 1: Manaoag Shrine, American Residence, Wright Park, The Mansion and Mines View Park

We just got back from our three day weekend in Baguio. We left Manila last Friday at around 5 Am as we want to reach Baguio by 12 nn. We took the new express way, the SCTEX, which is really a faster way compared to the old route so by 10 AM, we are already in La Union. Since we arrived earlier than what we expected, we decided to drop by at the Shrine of the Our Lady of Manaoag. We are using my brother’s brand new car so we took the chance to have it blessed.

After Manaoag, we hit the road again and head straight to Baguio. By 12 nn, we are already at Session Road. We went to SM Baguio and had lunch at Don Henricos (I will have a separate post about our Food Trip in Baguio). After lunch, we went to Camp John Hay and started to look for the American Residence located inside the camp as we are scheduled for a tour from 1:00 – 3:00 PM.

After the tour we checked in at the hotel and rested there for a while. Then we went to Wright Park as Bela can’t wait to ride the horses at the Wright Park riding circle. She got excited as soon as she saw the horses and while my dad was parking the car, she kept on saying “Let’s go. Ride horse.” Bela was the one who selected the pink horse and she really had fun.

After Bela’s horse back riding adventure, we went to The Mansion for some photo opps. Then we head to Mines View Park. It was already 5:30 when we reached Mines View so we just had a few shots and decided to go back to Session Road to look for a place to eat.

DAY 2: Mile HI, PMA, Burnham, Ukay-Ukay, Wright Park, Café by the Ruins

We started our day by checking the stores at the Mile Hi Center. Of course I was able to grab some good finds (I will make a separate post about my shopping adventure in Baguio).

After shopping, we went to PMA as requested by my husband. After PMA, we had lunch again at Don Henricos (they are sill craving for Don Hen’s buffalo wings). We decided to leave the car parked at SM and we walked from SM to Bagiuo Cathedral and to Burnham Park where Bela rode the Swan boat with her dad and grand dad. Then we walked again from Burnham Park and checked out the wagwagan center.

Then we went back to SM to pick up the car and went back to Wright Park as Bela wants to go horse back riding again. After this, we went back to session road to look for Café by the Ruins and had our dinner there.

All of us slept early that night. We all got really tired from our hectic second day schedule.

DAY 3: Good Shepherd & Baguio Market

Bela woke up with a slight fever so we decided to just buy souvenirs and head back to Manila. We had breakfast first at Chocolate de Batirol inside Camp John Hay then we went to Good Shepherd to buy our favorite Ube Jam. Then we had a short trip to Baguio market to buy some pasalubongs.

By 12 nn, we are on the road again on our way to Manila.

I don’t get to visit twitter these past few weeks as we are really busy in the office. I miss my twitter mates and all the stories that they share there. I get all the latest gossips, intrigues and tips about blogging from them that my day won’t be complete without a visit to the twitter site.

This morning I was able to get a chance to log in to twitter and read some of the updates from my twitter mates. It got my adrenalin going as their topic when I logged in was one of my favorite things in the whole world. Of course, what else but shopping.

They shared a lot of sites of multiply sellers where they usually order stuffs from diapers, to accessories, to shoes, to clothes, to unique baby gifts or just anything you can think of. I have bookmarked each one of them and I can’t wait to finally have the time and the budget to just sit down and do online shopping.

Oh well, hopefully I can save this month so I can get my hands on the computer and order a lot of things for me, hubby and Bela.

I was checking my archives for this blog when I suddenly realized that I have been blogging since 2004. That means it is almost four years since I discovered the wonderful world of blogging.

My blog has kept my friends and relatives updated with what’s going on with my life. When I started my first blog, it is about our wedding preparations up to the day when I said I do to my husband. Then I gave birth to my beautiful daughter and I started another blog dedicated for her. I enjoyed blogging so much that I started a third blog which is all about me – my passion, my hobbies, my shopping addictions, my favorite TV series and the like.

Ever since, I have used the free web hosting service of blogspot. I am one happy client and I can say I already learned my ways with blogspot. But I have been reading some web hosting tutorials and I learned the many benefits of getting a web host for my blog.

So should I take the next step and move my free blogspot to a web host? So what are the benefits of having your domain hosted? I read a lot about web hosting awards for different web host providers and all of them offer the same benefits. One is I will get my own domain name instead of using a blogspot address. Then I will also get e-mailboxes that matched my domain name. Then I can easily publish my web content by using the tools provided by the web host provider. And since web host provider uses state of the art data canters, I will be sure that my data such as the photos and videos and my web content are safe since they have a backup and restore system in place.

But of course, getting all of these benefits has a price tag so I still have to weigh if the price that I have to pay to get my blog hosted will really outweigh the benefits that I will get. But if ever I made a decision to get a web host, I will definitely check out web hosting rating so I will be able to assess the best web host providers for my blogs based on my needs.

Since we arrived early in Tarlac than what we expect, we decided to drop by at the Our Lady of Manaoag Shrine. It is my and my dad’s second time here and the first time for hubby, my sister and Bela.

“Our Lady of Manaoag (formally: Nuestra Señora del Santissimo Rosario de Manaoag, literal translation: Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary of Manaoag) is a title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary, associated with a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, said to be from the 16th century. She is the patroness of the sick, the helpless and the needy. This holy image is very popular among Roman Catholics in the Northern Philippines, and has been much popularized among the inhabitants of the Pangasinan provincial Area. The province of Pangasinan is one of the Philippines' most widely visited Roman Catholic Pilgrimage sites. Many people from across the Philippine archipelago come and visit the town of Manaoag, where the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary is enshrined in a church dedicated to this name.”

Source: Wikipedia.org