Road Trip Day 1

This will be the first of a few posts I will be writing on this blog to chronicle our 5-day road trip along northern Luzon during our short 15-day vacation to the Philippines.

After spending a couple of days [on our first weekend] bonding with my family, we started our 5-day road trip. We really didn't have anything planned as far as what activities ~ side trips ~ we would do while on the road. We thought we'd play it by ear as far as that is concerned. Our main purpose was to see the terrain as well as some sights along the way. As far as the activities, we left that wide open. and let our driver Billie take us where he thought would be fun for us to visit.

Since I've been away for more than 10 years I didn't quite know what to expect as far as this road trip is concerned. I just knew we would be braving a lot of traffic jams along the way so I kind of braced myself for that. But that didn't come until the next day. During this first day we used the NLEX [I think] and it was a very pleasant drive. No traffic at all so we just sat back, relaxed and enjoyed the view.

Our first stop was Subic - of course! Amazing how similar the roads are in this highway to our roads here at home.

After about an hour of driving, we arrived to our first 'unplanned' activity. Yep, zip lining which is probably one of the more popular thing to do now for adventurers like me...NOT! The place is called: Tree Top Adventure and there are several things to do to choose from.

Being the daredevil that I am, I decided NOT to join in the fun. Surprise, surprise. Hubby wanted to do the 'Superman' [a 30-second zip lining experience] thing but decided against it because he'd be doing it alone...haha. Instead he opted to do the canopy ride with the little one along with my 2 nieces. It's a very slow ride over the trees just for sightseeing. I knew it wouldn't be scary but I just didn't feel like doing it so I didn't. My sister, my brother and my sis-in-law and yours truly decided to just sit around and wait for the rest of the group to come back from the 30-minute ride.

The waiting plus the ride took longer than anticipated [so what else is new. eh?] so by the time the group came back from the ride, we were all starving so our next stop...late lunch. Guess where we ate....Chowking! Yeah!

Anyway, it turned out that the Tree Top adventure would be our only activity for the day because it was too late to go anywhere anymore. We decided to swing by a duty free shop to pick up some supplies then headed to our hotel for the night. Next stop....Pangasinan's 100 Islands.