Our rooms were really nice-the boys had their own bedroom. Ashley slept in the sitting room and Greg and I used the adjoining bedroom. They had very nice king sized beds, huge showers, and pretty views from the windows. We were all still tired and went to bed not long after getting to the hotel and piling all of our bags in the sitting room. We woke up pretty early the next morning and went to the hotel's breakfast buffet to see what awaited us. It was amazing! They had fresh pineapple and lots of other fruit, pancakes, bread for toast, an omelet station, yogurt, donuts, rolls, bacon, sausage, eggs, quiche, and a lot of other stuff that we would never imagine eating for breakfast-fish, rice, and many other traditional filipino breakfast things. Needless to say we all enjoyed our terrific breakfasts the whole time we stayed at the hotel.
It was Sunday in Manila-12 hours earlier, so Saturday night in the US. The hotel is very close to Greg's office building and a couple of malls. So we spent the rest of the day exploring. The hotel shuttle drove us by the office and took us to Festival Mall. Greg had been here when he was on his previous trip to Manila. He wanted to show us the indoor roller coaster. Greg, Scott, and Ryan rode that and the bumper cars. They also have a train that goes through the mall and all 5 of us rode that. Then we had lunch at McDonald's.
We were supposed to get to visit our house that day also-Greg had sent numerous emails to arrange it. We came when we were told to-workmen were going to be there so no one else would have to meet us and let us in. We got to the house and found no one. We poked around outside, saw the pool, peeked in the windows, and after a phone call found out that the workmen had finished the day before and the owners were out of town for the day. That was just the beginning of finding out how things work here. At least we got to see more than just pictures but Greg had really wanted us to get to see inside.
We went back to the hotel and had naps and went to the hotel restaurant again for dinner. The dinner buffet is a mix of Filipino, asian, and western, but an emphasis on the former. The kids menu consists of a few items that we came to know well: mac and cheese with shrimp, spicy chicken, or anchovies mixed in (we order it "plain"), spaghetti which has hungarian sausages and chunks of tomato in it (again, "plain"), a hamburger steak which is basically a patty without a bun with a mushroom sauce and rice (the kids instead order the adult burger which comes with a bun and of course decline all of the stuff that comes on it except ketchup - again "plain"), I guess every chef in a 5-star hotel wants to be a Food Network star, and they cook items that don't seem very simple or plain. Not kid friendly, which makes sense given their typical audience, but makes for a nightly and loud-echo-thru-the-restaurant "I don't want to eat that, it's weird!" discussions which has the waiters and waitresses snickering at us. Ashley is dangerous with a water goblet (no plastic glasses with tops here), and I've had to explain to Ryan and Scott why they give us so many forks and spoons ("this is the salad fork, this is the dinner fork, this is the dessert fork, no we can't have dessert again tonight just because they left the dessert fork on the table..."). I'm sure we're a sight to behold from afar, but the staff have been kind to us and sneak the kids candies from the dessert bar even though we didn't order any.
It always seemed to be a discussion of how many rolls each was allowed to eat while waiting on their dinner to arrive, could we have dessert, massive games of "I spy" to pass the time and by that time of day trying to keep Ashley awake. On more than one night she fell asleep at the restaurant. One night Greg came home from work, found us all asleep still from our afternoon naps. I sent him to dinner by himself and me and the kids just slept on all night. I thought that might snap the kids out of their jet lag but not really. They were awake around 3am and we were all sitting on the boys bed playing "go fish" at 4am. Can't say I've ever done that before.
After that we wouldn't let them have a nap in the afternoon no matter how they complained of being tired and after about a week they improved greatly. Ashley also fell asleep leaning against my arm in the van riding home after a long day of furniture shopping. She thinks that she's just as big as the boys but sometimes has to give in to her younger body's needs.
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