Manila Meanderings August 20, 2008

Here are some more pictures to keep our family and friends abreast of what we are about in Manila. This is the purpose of my blogsite. Should any visitors happen by, you are welcome too!

These pictures are of our visit to Intramuros, the remains of the walled Spanish city. We took a horse drawn buggy ride. It was a very hot morning and the boys were a bit cranky. We have learned, by the way, that the mornings are the hotter part of the day here and then the day cools and the wind often picks up in the afternoon. A little different than the hot Oklahoma summers we are used to, going out in the morning and staying in as much as we can in the afternoon.  It took us awhile to work this out since its the rainy season and the weather fluctuates so much. But.. we have to work at changing our way of thinking. Well, on this day we were stupid and took the kids out in the heat and they were cranky, so we just saw the highlights. It was fun anyway.

We stopped at St. Augustin Church and peaked inside, took a few snapshots. It was magnificent! The doors were beautifully carved; I wish I could’ve had a good shot of them but they were in shadow and a wedding was going on, I didn’t want to use a distracting flash. Yes! A wedding mass was being performed with tourists talking at the back of the church. Some of them were actually audacious (shall I say Rude?) enough to cross the rope and go into the church during the wedding, preteding they didn’t see the huge sign. Nevertheless, to have one’s wedding in such a place, with that history and the beauty of the place, its was amazing. The church (or its first predecessor) was first built in 1571 and destroyed a few times, completely or partially. But, the roof was only destroyed during WWII. We rode past other notable buildings but didn’t get pictures, I was passing out pb&j sandwiches, doling out water and other food to really whiny boys. We will be back, I’m sure. We saw the cathedral, lots of the wall, jail cells- but our tour guide didn’t know which one Rizal was housed in before he was executed.

 We went into a lovely garden and then into a cannon foundry, it was a facsinating maze of stone and water, called “Baluarte de San Diego”. It was origianlly a fortification that was part of the wall but was later turned into a foundry in the 18th century. We ended our tour with a stop into the handicrafts store for a ‘quick-before-David-or-Daniel-breaks-something’ look around. I bought a wood salad spoon/fork serving set. We will save Fort Santiago at sunset and dining outdoors for when we don’t have the children with us!

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