Rizal Rediscovery Tour - Manila Leg

It was a lazy and drizzling Sunday some two weeks ago, when I decided, together with three other CS'ers to head to Manila and do our  more private version of the Rizal Rediscovery Tour - Manila Leg. As I've written before, we've already been to Pampanga and Bulacan with a bunch of CS'rs.

We actually started off late. We initially planned to meet at 1pm at the UN Ave, Lrt Station. However, we ended up starting almost around 2-3pm. It was raining a bit but this didn't stop us. I went with Johanna, Jester and Charlie.

Our first stop was the Paco Park. We only stayed there to get the stamps. Because we are too pressed for time we can't afford to stay that long in each of the stamp sites. We plan to finish all the sites in a span of 2-3 hours! Imagine that.

Paco Cemetery marker

After Paco Park, we went walking heading to Rizal Park. There are three stamp site there, the Fountain and 2 of Rizals monument. As usual we took pictures and hurriedly decided to proceed on our next stamp site which is at Intramuros.


The stamps sites in Intramuros includes, the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, the site of Ateneo De Manila and the site of University of Santo Tomas.

The Clock is on time

More stamps!

This  is the original fountain - had to be transported from Spain

Rizal's Monument

Funny!

Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila

Marking of the UST's original site

We walked all the way so it was definitely exhausting after that. It wasn't over though as we are still heading to Fort Santiago.

It was also my first time to get inside Fort Santiago. I can't really believe I've gotten to this age that I haven't had the chance to. Well at least now I've been there so I'm happy. We all got inside and made our way to Rizal's original prison cell when he was detained at the Fort. This completes our 9 Manila leg stamp!

Fort Santiago

Riza's Prison Cell

We also got the chance to visit Manila Cathedral! Oh my first time as well! It looked magnificent in real life and in photos too!

Manila Cathedral. Great sight

As we are tired and hungry we went on and head to Chinatown to finally grab our dinner. We had dinner at Wai Ying. I ordered hakaw and shared the noodles with Jester. I also like the lemon coke!

Wanton noodles so good

I love hakaw

Lemon coke!

I definitely enjoyed that day. Although it was kinda wet and sticky for us, it felt so good to finally visit those places I haven't been to and relive the history behind those sites.

I really felt glad after that day and was more inspired to explore other historical sites our country should be promoting for tourism. I admit I'm kind of a tourist in my own land so it surely gives me a lot of insights to go through all these places for the first time!