A Wonderful Day in Tagaytay

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, my mom and I stayed in Tagaytay for one night right after we attended a wedding in Batangas. It was a short overnight stay but it was a really good one. I booked a room for one night at Lee Boutique. It's been years since I last stayed here but I still do really like it. Part of what I like is its very convenient location, right along Tagaytay-Calamba Road and quite close to Santa Rosa-Tagaytay Road. We arrived at around 11pm and it was raining really heavily when we did but thankfully, parking was still available when we got there. (In my experience, I've always been able to park.)

Lee Boutique hotel lobby

Surprisingly, the room rate hasn't changed; it is still about P3000 for one night (although I guess technically the price has gone up because my room didn't come with breakfast whereas before, it did). Our room was on the ground floor. This made is very easy for us since we didn't have to go up the stairs. Another thing I love about Lee Boutique is that it is a pretty small hotel. The walk from our car to our room was just about 20 meters. This made it very easy for us to bring stuff from our car to the our room and vice versa. That said, while the hotel itself is relatively small, the rooms are actually very spacious. Ours had twin beds, a small couch, and a table with two chairs.

Lee Boutique hotel twin room

To set expectations, I told my mom I was getting a room at an inexpensive, non-fancy hotel since we were just going to stay there to sleep. As it turned out, my mom thought Lee Boutique was pretty good. She liked its quaintness and the fact that the room was comfortable. The staff was also very friendly, helpful, and hospitable. When we checked in, the cable box in our room wasn't working so the receptionist replaced it with another one. Upon check out, one of the staff told us that all the minibar items are free and that we should just take them all. Cool!

Lee Boutique hotel reception

My plan was to take my mom to Restaurant Verbena for brunch but I was surprised that I couldn't find it! It seems like Discovery Country Suites has either closed or moved because it wasn't where it used to be. Instead, I decided to go to Bag of Beans Athena, which I saw along the road on my way to Lee Boutique the night before. This turned out to be an excellent choice!

Bag of Beans Athena

Bag of Beans Athena has a really lovely ambiance and is beautifully decorated. While I waited for our food, I took lots of photos here.

The beautiful al fresco area of Bag of Beans Athena

It was raining more heavily that day than it was the day before so we couldn't see Taal but in better weather, this restaurant seems to offer great views of the lake.

Rainy weather meant that we couldn't see Taal lake from Bag of Beans Athena

I ended up ordering the Breakfast Sampler which has eggs, bacon, pork sausages, ham, hash browns, and two buttermilk pancakes. I also ordered Kape Barako to go with my pretty heavy breakfast. I remember Bag of Beans had unlimited kape barako before but I couldn't see it in the menu this time so I just ordered one mug. Once I had fully consumed it, I ordered another one. It was then that the waiter told me that he can just convert my order to the unlimited one (apparently it's still in the menu and I may have just missed it). This saved me a bit of money. Cool!

Bag of Beans Breakfast Sampler and Kape Barako

The restroom here is also really nice.

Restroom in Bag of Beans Athena

Before we left, we purchased a few items from the shop, including raisin bread, cream cheese cookies, and coffee. I really enjoyed our brunch here and I told a lot of my friends about Bag of Beans Athena. I definitely want to visit this place again, hopefully in better weather so I can enjoy the view of Taal.

Inside Bag of Beans Athena

During the pandemic, a friend of mine told me about Cecilia's and she said that their buko pie might actually be her favorite. There are a lot of Cecilia's stores in Tagaytay and we stopped at one of them on our way home. I got some buko pie and my mom got some other goodies, including banana chips which my nephew enjoys. Cecilia's buko pie is indeed quite good. I'm glad we got to try it.

Cecilia's Buko Pie

We also ended up making a quick stop at Good Shepherd. I purchased some ube jam as well as burong mangga (or pickled mangoes). I didn't know that Good Shepherd has this product. One bottle costs around P200 which is cheaper than other similar-sized burong mangga products I've seen in shops in Manila so I got one. I kinda regretted not getting another bottle because I ended up consuming the one I got pretty quickly haha. I had forgotten how much I love burong mangga!

This trip to Tagaytay, even on a rainy weekend, reminded me why I love this place and why I used to take vacation leaves from work and spend a few days in Tagaytay just to chill out and go on solo food trips. Maybe I need to do this again.