Vigan... The City That Time Forgot... but is catching up.
We arrived in the city center at around 3:00pm and found a quaint little inn that was a throwback to the early 1900s. Grandpa's Inn & Restaurant was actually an ancestral home during the Spanish time until it was sold in the middle of the century. As soon as you enter what looks like a small hallway, you are literally sucked into a world that screams HISTORY. The inn owner kept everything -- from telephones, typewriters, pianos, furniture, to even the calesas that still plied the cobbled streets outside.
Outside, it was like the present had all but been absorbed by the past... there was nothing in between. Old buildings were surrounded by electric wires and cable satellite dishes. Monuments and houses, though preserved for their historical value, had been turned into money-making commercial spaces. It was amusing to note that the new restaurants and hotels had been designed with cobblestones and bricks, but inside, it was all modern.
And of course, there was Calle Crisologo. One of the few remaining cobbled streets in the country, where only bicycles and horse-drawn carriages are allowed to pass, Calle Crisologo shows signs of wear and tear but also of efforts to at least make it look inviting for tourists to visit. Then again, tourists really go there to visit and to buy and to bargain and to buy. For this street is where all the souvenir shops are found.
... to be continued...
