Intramuros: The Walled City

Today, we walked. A lot. In the heat. We are still getting used to 90 degrees and about 90% humidity. We had an early start today, really early as we woke at 4 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Don’t feel too sorry for us, yesterday evening we had two beers each, then came up to our room at about 6:45 pm. By 7 pm, Phillip was snoring and I turned out the lights and joined him, so our 4 am wake-up meant that we did get 9 hours of sleep. About that beer… San Miguel, the most common beer here and pretty darn tasty. It is a pale pilsner, so it has enough flavor even to this dark beer drinker. Or perhaps it tasted so good because we walked yesterday… We’ll have to try it again tonight!

We walked to the mall this morning because of all the food kiosks and eateries there, planning to eat breakfast. However, like USA malls, it didn’t open until 10 am. So we had breakfast at a nearby diner. Phillip’s breakfast came with  sausages that tasted like a cross between regular breakfast sausage and a hot dog. The love child of Jimmy Dean and Oscar Meyer. No picture of that breakfast, but Phillip did have a mango shake while I ate my fresh papaya slices in the mall. His first mango shake of the day. I bought the papaya from the supermarket in the mall, paying the equivalent of 88 cents for almost a pound of ripe, sliced and peeled papaya in a container with a fork. For a fruit lover, this is heaven with mangos and papayas at their best.

After the visit to the mall, we walked thru Rizal Park and on to Intramuros, the historic walled city. This is the oldest section of Manila, with the wall having been built in the 1500’s by the Spanish. Six entrances, like this one we walked thru, allow people access to the area. Now, it is just another part of the city, albeit one they do not let jeepneys into.  The buildings within Intramuros sustained heavy damage during WW II, as the Japanese used it as a military HQ, just like the Spanish had in previous centuries. Fort Santiago, now a park area, at the south end of Intramuros (which means “within walls” in Spanish) still had canons in the walls and military artifacts around the grounds. We attended a personal  slide show of the history of the area at 2:30 pm, i.e., we were the only ones in the room. That’s probably because other people knew that at 2:30 pm, it was  too hot to be cavorting around tropical military ruins! It was really interesting, though, as Phillip and I walked along the ramparts in some areas of the wall. Here are steps thru an archway that lead to the top. Immediately to the south of Fort Santiago (which is the south end of Intramuros) is the Pasig River. The Fort was built by the Spanish when they built the Intramuros wall.  Not only was Intramuros separated from land to the south by the river, but some areas of the wall still had the moat, which had surrounded the walled city centuries ago. It was neat to see a real moat and drawbridge, but all I could think of was today’s danger from such a feature: mosquitos! The City had apparently treated the waters with larvacide, as Phillip didn’t get swarmed. In the picture of the drawbridge, you can see the chains that would pull it up. The yellowish color of the water doesn’t mean the water is nasty or filthy. The color comes from the flower parts that have dropped off the nearby trees. Tree poop. While we walked along the top of the wall on the north end, we noticed a shot that showed an opening in the ramparts, framed by the lush vegetation that grows here. Almost makes the heat seem bearable when we can see history and natural beauty together like this.

Speaking of beauty, as we were leaving Intramuros, we noticed a crowd near a church. Forgetting that we really shouldn’t join crowds in foreign countries, I walked over to see what was going on. We had come upon a church with a wedding just as the bride was walking into the cathedral. I snapped a few pictures, just as strangers in New Orleans had done when Leslie married Rock earlier this month. This picture is for Leslie!

As we returned toward our hotel, walking thru Rizal Park, hot and tired, what do we see but an ice cream stand. And what flavor do they advertise with the biggest letters? Mango. Time for another mango shake, this time topped with a scoop of melon ice cream. I was more interested in enjoying the shake than taking a picture of it, but trust me, it was wonderful. Tomorrow, we fly to the island of Palawan, to the town of Puerto Princessa. Our flight isn’t till 3 pm, so we’ll have time for some more adventures here in Manila, but probably no long walks.