"COOL WEATHER, PICTURESQUUE SCENERY" Tagaytay by davidjo

We stayed 2 nights recently in Tagaytay and although the scenery was interesting i thought that it was a city without a soul, as it s rather spread out and not too much to do once you have taken the trip across Taal Lake to climb the volcano, and visited People's Park, an old uncompleted building that Marcos built on top of the highest point near the city. The surrounding area has many developments and big houses for the rich and famous from Manila, and as a result many of the buildings lay unoccupied as the owners only come from Manila now and again to escape the heat. Along the main road were many, many religious centres, for praying, meditation, seminars etc... Our accommodation was 3.5 kms from the rotunda and found it a little difficult to find restaurants suitable for our budget. Therefore we had to take a jeepney to the rotunda where there were a host of fast food joints and a couple of better establishments to eat in. Across from the rotunda were 4 or 5 restaurants built on top of the hill overlooking Taal Lake, although prices were a little higher here. Another 3 kms brought you to Robinson's Mall where another 7 or 8 restaurants are found, perhaps slightly better quality that the fast food joints. One good thing was that the supermarkets had banned plastic bags and you were encouraged to bring your own bag or get your groceries in small paper bags.

On arrival at the rotunda we just wanted to walk the 3.5 kms to our guest house as we wanted to admire the beautiful views from the road which offers good views of the lake, but we found that the trike drivers kept stopping and tried to persuade us to take a ride. also many boatmen hassled us to, trying to get us to sign up for a boat trip to the volcano. When we eventually reached the island we found that there were over 500 horses for hire, again we were hassled and to top it off we were approached by several locals who announced that it would be much better to hire a guide, even though the path to the top was 1.7 kms long that you could see a km away when you were on the boat. The path was a wide dusty, dirty trail worn out by all the horses going up and down. Then when we got to the top we were again hassled by locals with golf clubs who would provide a ball and club, then you could shoot the ball into the lake for 500 pesos, how stupid!!!

• Pros:cool climate, beautiful scenery
• Cons:expensive accommodation and too many people after your money
• In a nutshell:Well worth a visit but one overnight stay would be enough for me.