About three years ago, I did the unthinkable and took a break from work. Yep, I actually filed for vacation leave, got my boss to approve it, took a four-day vacation, and left town. Actually, that’s a bit misleading – Thursday, June 12th, 2003 was Independence Day, a holiday anyway, and so the only vacation leave that I needed to report was June 13th, Friday. And of course, I still had Saturday and Sunday free.
I went with a few other people to that ultimate Akyat-Bahay destination, Vigan City Sur. Manila 9 pm and getting there at about 5 am the next morning.
As soon as we got there, all we had to do was claim our room reservations at our pre-booked hotel. Actually, it was not your usual hotel at all – instead, it was a genuine 18th century ancestral house, now converted into an inn. We’re at the Verzosa House, now called Villa Angela.
Villa Angela is unusual because it is bounded by three major streets, all still within Vigan’s old district. In the above photo is V. de losReyes Street
As soon as we got there, all we had to do was claim our room reservations at our pre-booked hotel. Actually, it was not your usual hotel at all – instead, it was a genuine 18th century ancestral house, now converted into an inn. We’re at the Verzosa House, now called Villa Angela.
Villa Angela is unusual because it is bounded by three major streets, all still within Vigan’s old district. In the above photo is V. de los
Another unusual thing about Villa Angela is that, unlike most other Vigan houses, it has a wide and relatively grand rear entrance. No doubt this is because it is accessible via a major street. The original builders took advantage of the house’s exceptional location and gave the back door not only a double grand staircase
but also a long and wide driveway and lawn, large enough for carretelas (horse-drawn buggies), with interesting stamped metal designs like those on carrozas, to park and allow their horses to graze and their coachmen to take naps.
While Villa Angela’s front door is pretty standard as far as Vigan houses go (as we will see in succeeding articles),
its interior is again rather different from that of other Vigan houses – as it is larger and contains more volume, due once again to its larger, well-situated lot. This is evident from the ground-floor zaguan, now converted into two very large bedrooms for shared accommodation by budget travellers. The kitchen and dining room are also on the ground floor. (I didn’t think to take photographs of this ground floor as I thought them rather unremarkable, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.)
Towards the back of the zaguan, near the dining area, is the staircase leading to the second floor. Like all Vigan staircases, it was steep, had small treads, and went up in just one flight, which meant that it felt rather dangerous to ascend it. (Which is why I failed to take a photograph of this as well – a lame excuse.) At the head of the stairs, one emerges into the antesala or hallway, now furnished as a formal dining room.
The staircase is visible at the far right in the photograph below:
Even though it is certain that this room was the original antesala, it has since been convincingly redesigned with dining room furniture.
This hallway-now-dining room leads via an arched pair of double doors to the large living room
now fully furnished in what appear to be good reproduction antique furniture and furnishings.
Another doorway from the hallway-now-formal dining room leads to one large bedroom,
which of course is also accessible from the living room.
On the opposite side of the living room is another bedroom, whose double doors look like this from the inside
and has three beds, one of which is this one, which I promptly assigned to myself
and had an aparador (clothes cabinet)
and a tocador (dresser) besides.
On the other side of the living room and the (new) dining room is the original kitchen, now really just for show.
The only other room on the second floor that we have not visited is a bedroom, situated in what would have been the original dining room. This is now a “special bedroom” in that it is the only room in this house that is airconditioned, and has an ensuite toilet and bath besides. The house staff now refer to this room as the “Tom Cruise Bedroom,” as the American movie star used it when he was filming “Born on the Fourth of July” in the Ilocos region some years back. So you’re jaded and you say, where are the photos? Well, the room was occupied, therefore I couldn’t take photos, so there.
In the end, the fact that Tom Cruise had airconditioning, while our rooms did not (our group took the remaining two other bedrooms on either side of the living room), proved to be Villa Angela’s undoing for us. We just could not stand the indoor heat that first day – it really felt like Holy Week in June. It didn’t help that the occupants of both bedrooms (as many as six at full occupancy) had to share a grand total of one toilet and one bathroom among them, which one had to go outside across the azotea to access.
By the late afternoon of the first day, our group had decided to seek somewhat cooler and better-appointed lodgings – period authenticity simply lost to modern conveniences. In fact, we moved into a drab modern motel just half a block away – so nondescript that it was too embarrassing to take any photos.
But at least we had airconditioning to go home to at night, and the toilet-and-bath sharing ratio was down to 2:1. These amenities were extremely valuable after all the walking around town and the further akyat-bahay visiting that we did, as we will see next.
4 Comments
mike10017 wrote on Oct 28, '06, edited on Oct 28, '06
That room also has the Maruja(remake) tocador. We also stayed there but in the bunk beds in the silong because we were a big group and they didn't allow people sharing the beds baka mabutas ang sulihiya. I don't remember seeing the kitchen though.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment