TBK travels in the Philippines- part four- Maarte Sosyal Cebu

 

The so called Cebu Grand Hotel

They call Cebu "the Queen of the south" and contrary to popular rumour I don't really like Maarte Sosyal Queens. When I booked my first Philippine Island tour in 2011 I left the hotel choice to my then friend Jeff on the basis he lived there and I was in Bahrain. Big Mistake, I have actually seen more of the Philippines than most Pinoys! The second mistake was falling for a Grand name. Maybe there was a time many years ago when the Grand Hotel was considered grand, but not in 2011 when I visited and looked out of my window onto a building site. Websites can be deceptive too, we spent two days looking for the swimming pool and eventually found a paddling pool on the roof.

Plaza Independencia

Our sightseeing took us to many historic site such as Plaza Independencia and Casa Gorordo and I am sure Phil will be happy to hear that I won't copy and paste from Wikipedia in this blog! If you want to find out more just use Google. I will just show you a selection of my photos. 

The guide books told us not to miss this place, but when we went it was closed!

The nice security guard, who explained the opening hours, did let us sit in the sun and take some photos.

Jeff

The British Kabayan

We were not the only ones to be disappointed by it's closure

Well, what can I say?

At least it was not raining like Subic and Baguio. We visited ion September, the first of the BER months ( SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER and DecemBER) so as the Philippines celebrates Christmas for 4 months , they had their decorations up in the Malls!

Christmas in September in Cebu

 

Neil looking old and an even older building

 

The new face of Cebu

Neil posing at Ayala Mall

Just down the road from our hotel

Home to banks and call centres

So that was Cebu, back on the plane now for our next stop, Beautiful Bohol

Until then Ingat and Kita kits

from 

The British Kabayan

The island airports are very simple affairs!