In my last post, I was grateful for Baguio City for a cold yet heartwarming trip. I spent my time there with my family. On the way home, it was another 5-hour drive to Manila. We didn't want to stop before we arrived in Manila so we endured through our hunger. We arrived at 2 PM, hungry and tired. We still had a few more hours before our flight so we decided to head to McKinley Hill in Taguig City for lunch and see one last tourist attraction, The Venice Grand Canal Mall.
McKinley Hill is one of those expensive places in Manila, with clean wide roads, scaling skyscrapers, and thriving street trees. If you don't work or live in one of the buildings, you would probably be there for its unique mall, like we were.
After parking our car in the area's parking building, because the mall's parking was already full (no surprise there), we hurriedly made our way inside. We were greeted by Italian architecture. And The Canal! Flowing turquoise waters were in the middle of the mall! And bridges were going over it, boats cruising on it. As much as we wanted to marvel at the sights, we were famished and eager to have our late lunch. So we headed to TGI Fridays and devoured our last meal for this trip.
Nourished and energized, we finally had that time to appreciate the mall. We walked along the crystal clear canal and commented how clean it was. There were boats for rent, but we skipped riding one because we thought it was too expensive and although we didn't say it out loud, our energy for playing the part of tourists was already expended. We all wanted to just go home.
A cloud was also over my head wherever I went because of what happened to our car rental. During our drive back to Manila, we stopped by a gas station and that's when I noticed the scratches on the car. It must happened back in Baguio City because I don't remember hitting something on our way back. I knew the damage was going to cost me money. So I was scuffed up about the scuffed-up car the entire time we walked along the beautiful canal. It was a bittersweet ending to an otherwise wonderful family trip.