It has been 2 years since I last visited Baguio. It was the last time I was able to travel there with my mom and it was literally after that trip 2 years ago, that we found out my mom was sick. As my daughter aptly put it: Every firsts after amah/my mom’s passing still sucks. It was a bittersweet and poignant at the same time relaxing and comforting. The weather was nice as it was cloudy most of the time and a good 10-12 degrees celsius cooler than it was in Manila .
I travelled to Baguio with my family a day earlier than my dad and my sisters with their family. During the 1st day, I had a chance to dine together with our church’s (Christian Bible Church of the Philippines) Senior Pastor, Rev. Jeremiah and our Associate Pastor, Ptr. Allan with their respective families, who also used the Holy Week to travel to Baguio to have a short vacation. We dined at one of my fave place in Baguio – Foggy Mountain Cookhouse and enjoyed great food and had a wonderful fellowship/bonding time together.
For this trip most of us stayed at Baguio Country Club as sponsored guests. It was the place where my parents stayed when they last visited Baguio last year (before my mom passed). Baguio Country Club is located right outside/beside Camp John Hay and offers a quieter surrounding with bigger, cleaner and better maintained rooms than Manor or Forest Lodge ( although the difference isn’t by that much). It is a members (& sponsored guests) only place thus making it less crowded but I still prefer the accessibility of the Manor/Forest Lodge since it is located inside Camp John Hay where I prefer to walk around, often by myself to relax and clear my thoughts.
I personally didn’t go to a lot of my usual “must visit” places here in Baguio. I didn’t hike the trail where I always hiked. We did revisit all the restaurants/places where we had a meal or visit with my mom and the only one we didn’t have time to go to was Ben Cab Museum. It was good to revisit all these places although one can really sense that the mood was a bit more somber and my mom’s presence was sorely missed. My dad and my sisters travelled with us as my dad basically retraced all the places he visited with my mom in Baguio on their last visit months before she passed. We wanted to be with him on this journey to keep old memories alive while creating new memories for all of us…
I look forward to the next visit to this place where I consider as my “happy place” in the Philippines. May more new happy memories be created for us, God willing, soon.
The different places where we ate with mom during our last trip to Baguio which we revisited for this trip.
For this trip, I decided to take along my Sony A7lll, Sony 24-70mm f/2.8GM with my iPad Pro 11″ as my main editing tool and my DJI Lacie Copilot as my storage device.
The Sony performed wonderfully and coupled with the 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, is an extremely versatile, albiet heavy, setup that allowed me to capture a images in a wide variety of situation with confidence. I look forward to more travels with this. The Fuji X100F is still the camera I prefer to bring should I decide to travel light and shoot a lot of street photography. Whle the Sony A7lll _ Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 combination is the one I would bring if I know there will be a lot of low light, wide variety of situation where I would be shooting. Which one is better? The answer is both. Because both won’t leave me wanting in the image quality department, slight edge to the Sony for the details it can pull in and for having the low light advantage due to its full frame sensor while I love the “organic” feel of the Fuji X100F and the “look and color” of the images it produces. The one one I would bring will depend on what I want to shoot/achieve and how I feel for that particular trip.
Please do click on each image should you want to look at the higher resolution version of it. I would also appreciate your comments so please do drop me a line or two. God bless us all. 🙂
Daniel's Lighthouse 
Beautiful recollection of our latest trip to Baguio. All your photos perfectly reflect our emotion during our brief stay in Baguio! I pray that we will have more family trips to Baguio where we can reminisce times with mama and make new memories with papa.
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Amen!
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Beautiful photos and beautiful new memories.
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here’s to more family travels…
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