Why Baguio Is the Ideal Place for Bonding, Reminiscing, and Eating

I was having lunch with cousins last month when we started talking about our plans for Holy Week.

- WITH PAT-P

Coincidentally, none of us had anything planned yet, and so Dondi Baltazar invited me and my kids to spend the long weekend at his house in the City of Pines together with his mom, Tita Tessie (my late dad's sister), and his sisters Risa Baltazar Nepomuceno and Yappi Baltazar.

My son Paolo went up to Baguio earlier with Dondi and his son Mateo on Monday, April 14, while my daughter Gabbie and I followed on Wednesday right after my live show on NET25. Though we were expecting horrendous traffic that day, the trip to Baguio was a breeze, with hardly any traffic along NLEX, SCTEX, and TPLEX. We arrived in Baguio City before 3 p.m. and headed straight to Dondi's house. The weather was nice and cool, hovering around 28 degrees Celsius, way cooler than the 40-plus degrees here in Metro Manila.

Aside from the cool weather, what I was truly looking forward to was lots of bonding time with my cousins and Tita Tessie, the only surviving child among the seven children of my lolo Gabriel and lola Angeles Daza.

Growing up, we lived in the self-christened Daza "compound," which was comprised of four houses adjacent to each other in Quezon City. Because the Baltazars lived right next door to our family, it was no surprise that we were especially close to them, with Tita Tessie becoming like a second mom to me.