Dakak Park and Beach Resort, like a 50/50 experience here, I may need to write the good and the bad parts in separate posts.

We spent about three days in Dakak to celebrate my uncle’s birthday, my paternal uncle might I add. So five of my dad’s eight siblings were there, us ( minus my dad, my mom was invited not my dad lol), three of their cousins, four of my cousins, some of my uncles friends. We were about 25 people in total. We had to rent a tourbus to go to Dakak from Dipolog.

My uncle rented two rooms that could house about 16 people. We divided the rooms into the different sexes, the women and the mens room 🙂

Here are some photo’s of Dakak

 

Also during our first day there, one of my aunts brought rambutan, santol, mangosteen and marang. They are very expensive to buy here in Norway, but the fruits she brought with here came from their backyard.

I didn’t eat the marang, I am allergic. The mangosteen and santol was what I ate the most!

Dakak is a big place, so we weren’t able to explore everything. We usually had a program that we followed. We weren’t able to swim at some of their pools. They also had a lot of stray cats.

We did have fun in Dakak, partly because of my family. They’re fun to be with and likes to joke a lot!

 

 

My first stop in the Philippines was naturally Manila, but I didn’t really stay there for so long because I went to Cavite City.

Cavite City, the city where my paternal side of the family comes from. I visited Cavite City when I first a child, during one of our vacations to the Philippines. The funny thing is that I never visited the city when my dad decided to relocate the whole family to the Philippines.

Cavite city is about half an hour or an hour away from Manila, depending on the traffic.

Since my dad came back to the Philippines, he has been living in Cavite. Naturally, since it is his hometown.

My dad took me on a small tour around Cavite, unfortunately it was while I was inside the car, and it was also raining outside. Ergo these photos 😛

My dad usually took me around to see his cafeterias, where he lives and etc. I could tell he was very happy to see me again, I mean he has not seen me in over 7 years. So I always got introduced to everyone! I was happy he was happy, but felt a bit awkward since I had to meet a lot of people that I don’t really know.

I didn’t stay at my dad’s place. They were renovating their place, so they booked me a room at a hotel. It was clean and it was okay. I had to have a chaperone though. My dad had to make sure I would wake up early, so he had one of his workers with me. They wake up early in the Philippines.

As I mentioned I had an early flight the following day. So by 5AM we had to be awake, but also because my dad’s god-daughter wanted to meet me. So we went to McDonalds to eat breakfast before we headed to the airport.

I wished I could have stayed longer in Cavite. To get to know the city more, my heritage and the rest of my extensive family.

My dad was really sad to see me leave, I could really feel that he missed me so bad, and my siblings as well. I think the next time I wil be in the Philippines I would want to visit Cavite again.

When my boyfriend and I went to Osaka two years ago, we went to this sushi place in Shinsaibashi shopping district. We really loved the sushi there and the prices were not bad at all.

The sushi chefs also makes the food in front of you and they’re pretty fast! If you want more food you just place the plate in front of you and they put your ordered food there. When a new customer comes in, all the chefs greet the person at the same time.

The only thing I maybe do not like about the place is that they smoke inside, which is still pretty normal in Japan.

I study Japanese, and in one of our textbooks they always mention Mos Burger.  We tried our very first Mos Burger in Osaka, and it was very delicious.

I don’t think I have ever seen burgers prepared as nicely as these in Mos Burger. It is like they were taken out of a commercial.  The green soda is melon soda, which I personally like a lot.

While we were in Kyoto, we headed to the Kinkaku-ji, but it took us hours to decide if we should go or not! Well my bf and my sister wasn’t really that interested in going there at first, but I guess my ”shall we go or not” questions made them decide to go.

We went there about 30 minutes before the place closed. Lucky us! We were not there for that long, we took photos and just followed the route. It did start snowing right after we got there. Anyways here are the photos from the kinkaku-ji

I have always wanted to go to the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, but when we and my boyfriend went to Osaka two years ago, we were not able to go to Kyoto. This time though I planned our stay in Osaka to be about four days so that we would have the opportunity to go to Kyoto as well. I really wanted my sister to experience a lot while in Japan.

We went to Fushimi Inari shrine during our third day in Osaka. The travel was fairly easy and it wasn’t that hard to find the place. The moment you get out of the station the place is there.

Before we went ahead and walked to the trails we actually went to the street where there were a lot of food vendors. There were so many good food, but we went for those with few lines. We went and got us Taiyaki with red beans and bacon. The taiyaki was delicous and was quite fresh. The bacon was very tasty as well.

After our stroll through the food vendors we went towards the shrine. There were a lot of people and you know how in pictures it’s usually red, it was actually more orange-like, but always appeared red-ish on our photos.

There were also guardian foxes near the entrance of the shrines.

Here are some various photos I took. Oh and there was a map at one point showing us the way to the mountain and to the exit, and we chose not to go to the mountain. I guess we were tired from all the walking.

 

Osaka Castle

During our second day in Osaka we went to Osaka Castle. My bf and I went there two years ago, but I wanted my sister to experience it as well. What I liked about the public transportation system in Osaka was that the station leading towards Osaka Castle had signs on them that can help us tourists find our way.

When we left the station it was then my bf and I relaized that we may have taken a longer route last time. This time, the moment we left the station we could see Osaka Castle.

On our way to the castle one can see the outer walls of Osaka Castle, some with some water and some with plants growing on them.

Osaka Castle is a beauty in my opinion. Just look at this castle!

Might I just add that the castle may look old, but the interior is pretty modern. When you go inside it is like a hotel reception. There is an elevator that leads straight up to the 5th or 6th floor. From there on you have to walk to the last two floors to go to the roof.  On each floor there are different installations. There are a few floors where photos are absolutely forbidden. Also on each floor there are chairs to rest, I used it often!

The first thing we did however when reaching the top was go to the rooftop to see the view. We went there around 4PM so that’s why the sky is a bit pink-ish.

We were there until a few minutes before it would close, we did go around all the floors.

When we left the Castle, the sunset really gave Osaka Castle this lovely color!

On our way back to the suway we saw cherry blossoms! It has always been my dream to see Cherry blossoms in Japan! I did not expect to see it during December! Made my day much better seeing cherry blossoms

The day after Disney Land, we headed back to the airport to go to Osaka!

Our first day in Osaka we went to Shinshaibashi and met up with my friend. After meeting her, we went towards Dotonbori to find food to eat.

 

We settled for an Okonomiyaki place, which served delicious okonomiyaki.

We managed to mix up our okonomiyaki orders when they were at the table. We thought our orders got mixed up, so we tried to fix it, only to find out some were correct from the start. You see my sister and my friend had a different order than me and my bf. It was funny, and we had a great time.

We headed towards Nanba Parks after our meal. My friend wanted to show us the parks on top of the buildings.

Although we weren’t able to see the place light up at night, it was still a nice view and a bit refreshing to see a park with plants and flowers on top of a shopping centre, or something.

After our visit to Nanba Parks, we went to my friends car, because we agreed to go to her place for dinner. She drove us first to our Airbnb place.  The car ride took about 1 hour, and given that we were still jetlagged, some of us managed to sleep in the car. I did explain to my friend that we were still jetlagged and apologized before hand if I manage to sleep.

At her place we met her adorable dogs and her family. Her mother and mother in-law were so kind! They treated us to sushi, the really good ones, like with very delicious tuna, and curry.

They also served us mochi with sweet soy sauce and fried mochi, very delicious and new for us.

My friend also gave us matcha pudding and custard pudding, as well as mikan, which were very easy to peel.  Mikan is like the clementines we have in Norway, except that they were seedless and very easy to peel. I wasn’t able to taste the custard, but I did love the matcha pudding. I do love matcha.

We had a really great time actually. We didn’t really plan on spending the whole day together, but I do not regret it one bit! it was also quite nice to meet my friend.

 

By the way blogg.no changed into wordpress, and I cannot figure out how to have my photos at a fixed space or format lb p

Hi! So I have been in Japan for almost a week now! Our pocket wifi has been so slow so posting stuff takes time.

We spent Christmas Day in Tokyo Disneyland, the happiest place on earth. Unfortunately we were only able to ride 4 rides, why you ask? Well  the queues were unbelievably long, like 110 minutes waiting time long.

We were all still jetlagged and tired so standing in queue for that long was not good for us. Although we were able to see the morning and night parade before heading back home 😊

Tokyo Disneyland also has their own Coke bottle

The night parade

Also we ate dinner at one of the restaurants inside Disney, the Plasma Ray’s Diner

The food was okay, but the buns shaped as Mickey’s gloves were very delicious!

I have done short weekend trips before and even a day trip, but this one was so exhausting. It must have been because of our very tight schedule and the lack of sleep.

I will never take an early flight back to Norway the next time I do a weekend trip to London, it’s just not worth the lack of sleep.

I do not know when I will go back to London since I am going to Japan this winter break 😊 Yes I am going back to Japan, so I have been working like crazy 💖