TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Vigan, Philippines: Four Women, a Man, and a Four-poster Bed

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Vigan, Philippines: Four Women, a Man, and a Four-poster Bed

I'm remembering the time when some friends (Cynthia Posa, Maribel Paraz, Mila Aguilar) and I went to the City of Vigan, in Northern Philippines. We stayed at the historic Villa Angela, a centenarian heritage mansion, where the actor Tom Cruise stayed while filming Fourth of July. He occupied the master's bedroom, the Cuarto del Senor.

We stayed in the Cuarto delas Hijas, an enormous room where we each had a canopied four poster bed.Villa Angela is furnished with incredible antiques and staying there makes you feel you're back in the 1800s. Our Cuarto delas Hijas also had access to a patio that ran the full length of the side of the house.

This photo of Vigan is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Vigan is a well-preserved Spanish Colonial city, with many cultural places to visit, including a church and private museums in family mansions. It is one of my favorite places because it makes me imagine the galleon days of the Philippines.

Eddie Quirino, grandson of Philippine President Elpidio Quirino (who has an ancestral mansion in Vigan), acted as our tour guide. One morning, while the four of us were chatting, Eddie Quirino walked into our room, and I've forgotten what happened exactly, but we started fooling around and somehow Eddie ended up on the bed with us.

It is not as scandalous as it sounds, dear Readers, but I leave it to your imagination to speculate on how this scene with four women and a man on a four-poster bed, came about.

The picture above shows clockwise: Cynthia Posa in the foreground, and right behind her is Eddie Quirino, then there's Maribel Paraz in the peach-colored blouse, Mila Aguilar, and me.
The other pictures are courtesy of TripAdvisor. The top two picture are of Villa Angela; and the rest are of Vigan sites, including the church.

This photo of Vigan is courtesy of TripAdvisor

This photo of Historic Town of Vigan is courtesy of TripAdvisor

This photo of Historic Town of Vigan is courtesy of TripAdvisor

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tags: travel, Vigan, Philippines, Northern Philippines, tourism

This is all for now,
Cecilia

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.