A Winter Getaway, Part Three

The next day we took a tour of Intramuros (meaning within the city walls; historic Manila) with this guy:

 Carlos Celdran. I urge you to read his blog. It won't be as good as the real thing, but this guy is extremely entertaining.

I won't give you a history lesson, but we saw lots of good stuff. I learned a lot about Manila's history, especially their involvement in World War 2. Seems like we never quite made it to that part of history when I was in elementary/middle/high school. We always talked about Germany and the Holocaust and Pearl Harbor... but rarely had time to get to the Philippines. Did anyone else's schools neglect to teach the 50+ most recent years of history like mine did? We were always squeezing World War 2 in right at the end of the school year, with a slight mention of Vietnam. Regardless, here's more fun pics:

 We rode from one part of Intramuros to another in the above horse-drawn cart. I wasn't a huge fan. See below.

Very little room for us giant Americans. There were actually three other people plus the driver crammed into this thing as well, and they wanted us to squeeze in more! Cue 6 heads shaking no way, Jose!

That's a real guard. I'm not exactly sure what he was guarding, but he was really nice.

San Agustin Cathedral.

Manila is most known for... well, adopting things and making it their own. There's a lot of Spanish influences, a lot of American influences, and a lot of Asian influences. They wear it all with pride. The above photo reminded me of the detailed architecture went I saw when I went to Granada, Spain a few years back.

Some of Intramuros is not so pretty. Some things were never rebuilt after the war, and some of the destruction still exists.

Later that day we went to an art museum ate some food, and then met up with the bride's cousins and bridesmaids for a night out. (That's Jordon's wife Melissa with him in the above photo)

This was a family style meal; all kinds of meat, paella, fish (heads, eyes, tails... everything...ick.) various other seafoods, a few veggies here and there (horray!) and some interesting spreads for the bread (think liver) I did manage to find a few things to fill myself up :)

That night we went to a bar called Borough. It was pretty much the best bar/restaurant ever. It had a "New York" theme, so you better believe they had the kind of comfort food I was looking for after a day of traditional Philippine food. Baked mac and cheese. Chicken wings. And get this: MILK AND COOKIES. Warm milk and cookies. With little shot glasses full of milk to share with the table. I didn't get a photo, but I don't think I'll ever forget the images/tastes of that night.

Namely this. I have never seen so many shots in my life. Now there were probably about 15 of us there, but multiply the above photo by, oh, 22? and that's how many shots we saw slide across this bar. Anya's cousins are party animals. Needless to say, Sean and I did not participate in nearly half as many rounds as the others did.
 

I'm sure Justin will be proud that the above photo is on the internet, but I can't stop laughing at it. Some kind of flash issue with my camera created a non-existent bald head... see, look at all that hair he has in the photo below!

 I especially loved the Waverly print upholstery in the bar.

We met the bridesmaids

And called it a night around 4 am. So much for catching up with that jet lag!