A Day in a Life

These were my favorite pieces at Bencab Museum. Sorry I

wasn't able to include the names of the artists.

Oh hello world, I have been extremely busy over the past weeks because my sister and I are cooking up a trip to HongKong couple of months from now for our birthday! I just love traveling especially whenever I feel like the world is caving in on me. Geesh. My travel bug is revolting.

A sculpture made by

Leeroy New.

We're almost halfway done actually since we already booked a roundtrip flight, hotel and tour package all arranged through a travel agency. What else did we miss? Pocket money. Yes. We're still working on it to be honest. But then, as this famous adage goes, if there's a will there's a way with a li'l help from someone up there, the omnipotent and the omnipesence, all should be well. All you need is ask and justify to him why you deserve a much needed break.

Time flies and before we knew it we're all packed up and ready to go.

Speaking of time warp, my niece just celebrated her 19th Birthday few days ago and inspite of money constraints and all we still went right ahead and celebrated her birthday through a trip to the museum and some munch time.

These are the 'regulars' 

which is what I call them 

since they've been at Bencab 

long enough.

I remember when my mom is still around, she makes it a point to play a collection of birthday songs whenever it's someone's birthday and make sure it plays full blast to wake whoever is the birthday celebrant in the family (who's sound asleep) as a sort of reminder that every birthday is a blessing. I know that's realy sweet and we miss her ways.

So, we make it a point to always celebrate a family member's birthday no matter what as it is a tradition. Kinda like a family heirloom.

This painting looks so

alive...look at those

eyes...

And because of that, we went to Bencab Museum (and it's been years since we last set foot there) so our niece could take some photos and commune with her artistic side on her special day. Life is simple. A quiet and artsy time every once in a while. Art is life anyways.

Cafe Isabel at Bencab Museum

Afterwards, we headed off to Ozark Diner for some gastronomic experience. It was hard to find quite frankly. An officemate of my sissy recommended the place as it's not crowded as oppose to other restos downtown. It was located in Baguio's outskirts and I think the easiest way is to either bring your own car which we did (stalk a jeep bound to slu-bakakeng), take a cab or jeepney. Wait to alight at the slu jeepney terminal and from there I think you could just walk. To your left find the street sign that says Bareng Drive and just a few walk uphill you'll see this white building with a huge Ozark name on it.

View from the inside of Ozark Diner..

Ozark is really cozy as it is surrounded by pine trees and not situated in a congested area. It's an american resto actually that serves BBQ sandwiches, fries, cakes etc. The good thing is if you're on a 'no pork' diet, you could choose between pork or chicken from whatever dish they have on their menu. So, don't worry 'cuz it seems that they took that into consideration. Their iced tea is the real deal 'cuz it tasted fresh from tea bags which is quite refreshing for a resto nowadays.

BBQ Sandwich-pulled chicken @ Ozark Diner

My twinnie and I had their BBQ sandwich (pulled chicken) served with fries and yes it was a huge serving for small eaters like us plus their best seller called dark beer cheesecake. It was sumptuous and I was really stuffed! Each of us cost around P350 ish which already includes the iced tea and cheesecake along with the gratuity charge which we divided amongst ourselves. Not bad right? I wouldn't care paying that hefty if the food is good and the view outside your window is a stellar. Will I go back? Yes I definitely would 'cuz I still wanna try their other foodie on the menu.

A day well spent. Art and food. Need I say more.

posted from Bloggeroid

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Bencab Museum

It's a sunny morning and my sissy and I both agreed yesterday that by hook or by crook we'll visit bencab museum (asin road) today 'cuz we've been yearning to do that since our last vacation here in baguio last August. We're just so squeamish to have coffee at the onsite cafeteria called cafe isabel  but it was so packed when we got there so we needed to cross that out from our list.

Baguio marketplace...

As soon as we saw the jeepneys bound to asin road km. 6,  we immediately hopped in without asking anyone where the hell the jeep is headed and we're willing to take our chance regardless. The woman asked me (in local dialect) something and since i don't speak their language i was lost in translation hadn't this other local woman asked me in tagalog where we're headed. I told her we're off to bencab km. 6, the lady said the jeep is not headed that way as it's headed uphill and bencab is downhill. So, we immediately stepped out and just decided to take the cab to BenCab (wow that rhymed). We thought asin road is just few kilometers away just and realized we were wrong again and the was quite far. Good thing, there were signs along the road that led us to bencab since the cab driver wasn't so familiar with BenCab neither. The lady in the reception was foreigner and told us that there's a Php100 entrance fee which we're already aware of based on our research. As soon as we're inside we then scoured the entire museum and took photos. The artworks were really amazing since we also draw and paint ourselves so we did not go there just to solely take photos but meticulously check out the murals and awesome wood carvings. We frenzied over each and every painting adorning the white walls of the museum, art at its finest.


We were drawn to this wooden statue made by an artist Junyee. It was a male life-sized carving from recycled wood with red paint all over it's face and body adorned with tribal tattoos. The sculpture's teeth is all black which represents the igorot's fondness with 'nganga' (chewing of betelnut). Attached at the back of the wooden sculpture is a computer motherboard, how cool is that? After checking out all the artworks, we decided to have lunch at cafe isabel. we noticed that there's only one person at the counter  and it will take long for everyone else to be accommodated so we instead decided to have lunch downtown and as usual it was crowded.

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