Discovering Ilocos Norte & Ilocos Sur: Day 2 – Paoay

Continued from Discovering Ilocos Norte & Ilocos Sur: Day 1 – Laoag City

Day 2 of our Ilocos tour was a bit crammed. We originally planned to spend our second day going north, to Pagudpud, Bangui and other nearby attractions in the northernmost part of Ilocos; but some change of plans made us decide otherwise. Also, we started out late on our second day; we overslept! LOL.

For our breakfast at Balay da Blas, we ordered daing na bangus (fried marinated milkfish) for mom and Ilocano longganisa (native sausage) for me. The longganisa was really tasty, just the right blend of spices without the grease. We even ordered a dozen from them as pasalubong.

Our complimentary breakfast at Balay da Blas

Our itinerary for that day was shortened to just Paoay and Vigan, no more time to try sandboarding at the La Paz sand dunes or even visiting the historic Sta. Monica Church in Sarrat. Oh well. These are good enough reasons to make me visit Ilocos again.

San Agustin Church (click on link/image for more photos and details about our visit)

It was high noon when we arrived at San Agustin church. After exploring the church interior and grounds, we had our late lunch at one of the food stalls across the street. We had a taste of the big and orange-ish Paoay empanada as well. Yummy! We actually planned on having our lunch at Herencia Cafe, and taste their famous pinakbet pizza but were disappointed to see this instead:

Herencia Cafe on renovation last August 2012. They’re back in business now. Too bad, we missed dining here.

Aside from food, a lot of Ilocano handicrafts, delicacies and souvenir items can also be bought from the row of stores here. The colorful mix of the many handcrafted items on display made us spend more time choosing our pasalubongs and especially looking for refrigerator magnets to add to our collection. We also bought wide-brimmed hats to shield us from the sun.

“It’s more fun in Paoay, Philippines,” says this colorful refrigerator magnet, one of the souvenir items we bought at Paoay

After souvenir-shopping, off we went to Vigan, the capital of Ilocos Sur. We hired a tricycle to take us to the highway going south. From there, we took a bus and got off at Badoc, then took another bus to Vigan. There are actually buses going straight to Vigan, but we were clueless about the first one we took. Travel time was about two hours, but I made myself busy snapping some photos of the views from the bus window.

View from the bus window, on our way to Vigan

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Discovering Ilocos Norte & Ilocos Sur: Day 1 – Laoag City
Discovering Ilocos Norte & Ilocos Sur: Trip Preparation
SiriBus free shuttle service from Laoag Airport to downtown