…one weekend at a time!

You know what I find annoying? Its when strangers and tourists have more knowledge about my own hometown than me. I find it unnerving and even embarrassing how all these people seem to have enjoyed more of my backyard than I did. They experienced more of what my hometown has to offer and that makes me very envious of them and well, upset at myself. How’d I let myself become a stranger to my own home?

Welp, we’ve (my sister and myself) decided to remedy that. The plan? One city every month, four weekends for every city. How does that sound, huh?

We’re realistic enough to want to start with the closest to us. We just cooked up this plan last night so you’d have to excuse us if the current point of our getting-to-know-yous is revolving around food. After all, what better way to acquaint yourself with a place than to let your palates do the discovering? And it’s always a good conversation starter. You can never go wrong with food, I tell you!

Yesterday, we attended a Rock-star Baby’s 1st birthday and decided to do a quick detour around the city. Well, we didn’t go anywhere much but it was a start and from it grew our plan to discover our “backyard” one week-end at a time.

The rock star baby Ishee and the pretty mommy!

***Thank you, Steph and Argel. Baby Ishee is so adorable and cute! ♥

So after the birthday, we decided to walk around the plaza and when we got there, we decided to check out El Ideal. Ever since I was little, El Ideal was already The El Ideal. You can’t visit the city and not check out or hear about the legendary bakery. Mind you, with our haste to sample their food again, I forgot to take a picture of the grand mansion. They’ve definitely improved the interior of the place since my last visit there.

El Ideal trademark stamped on their lamps.

We ordered their French deluxe sandwich, Sotanghon guisado and Buko pie.

Here be the yummy sammich!

This was really really delicious! The bread used in this were French Toast and it was the perfect compliment of sweetness to the sourness of the mayo and the bland freshness of the lettuce. I’d definitely have this again next time and I won’t be sharing! Hah.

Le Buko Pie.

I’m tempted to say “Best Buko Pie” ever but I won’t. However, this is second-best! The best buko pie (coconut pie) award hands-down still goes to my sister’s buko pie. Sorry, El Ideal. This pie leans to the sweeter side of the palates but was very lovely nonetheless.

The food spread.

Their Sotanghon Guisado was the best I’ve ever had. I didn’t bother counting the number of calories I had that day. I felt like I deserved the break. Bahaha. We divided these among the four of us and I don’t know about them but I left with a very full tummy.

My sister and Jeno at El Ideal.

Vince and myself at El Ideal.

We decided to have coffee afterwards so we crossed the plaza and headed to New New City Cafe. And no, that wasn’t a typo. It really was called New New City Cafe. LOL. Last time I was there was some 2 years ago with a friend from manila, Marky who came over to visit and experience the Masskara Festival. Yesterday’s trip proved that their coffee tasted as good as I remembered.

San Diego Cathedral.

 A very quick shot at the lovely San Diego Cathedral facing the side of the plaza. We had coffee and inasal (barbecue) chicken skin and I must say, every place has its distinct flavor of their inasal. And Silay street Inasal trumps over Bacolod street inasal any given day!

Well, we sure did want to stay longer but it was already getting dark fast and we had to go home. We will come back next Saturday, for sure. We’re calling this the Lakwatsero Y Lakwatsera Chronicles. We plan to sample more delectable Silay food and we’re visiting Cafe 1925, Emma Lacson’s and Hestia’s so watch out! (^_<)

The old Silay Port Ruins is also a target must-see for next Saturday and as early as now, we’re contemplating on even including Patag to our re-discovering destinations.

We’re aiming that at the end of this month, we’d be able to point any tourist to the where-tos, be able to suggest to them the what-to-dos and definitely recommend the funkiest places to get some chow. More pictures, too and hopefully, we can help promote the places here.

Cheers to the birth of a lovely plan, living the answers to challenge why It’s More Fun In The Philippines one week-end after another. Ambitious? Maybe. But we shall see about that, eh? But one thing we promise, we’ll have fun with each and every week-end we’ll spend discovering and re-discovering our backyards.