Tag Archives: Ilocandia

Ilocos Family Trip: Long Drive Up North

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Long Drive North to Ilocos

During the long weekend of Holy Week 2017, we’ve set our plans for a 4-day trip to visit the provinces of Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur. We have planned to do a visita iglesia to its beautiful churches. And while we are at it, we have included in our itinerary trips to the city of Vigan, the famous sites around Paoay, Laoag City, and to the town of Pagudpud.

It has been almost two decades, I think, since I last visited this proud region. Ilocos is famous for being the hometown of Philippines‘ former strongman Ferdinand Marcos and tobacco, its main produce. And so I was very excited to make this trip. In the 90’s, my family frequented Ilocos to visit family friends and this time I’m able to chart our own paths to see more of the province.

For this trip, I’ve booked ourselves a 15-seater van from my cousin’s friend. We started our trip in the early morning of Maundy Thursday. Our ride first picked up my wife’s family from Canlubang in Calamba, Laguna at 12 midnight before picking us up in Bonifacio Global City within Metro Manila around 1AM in the morning.

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Visita Iglesia 2017: Centuries Old Churches of Ilocandia

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Centuries Old Churches of Ilocandia

For the past few years, our family have been doing the visita iglesia as our annual family tradition every Holy Week. We have visited churches in the provinces around Metro Manila, like in the provinces of Laguna, Batangas, and Quezon. We also started the tradition while we were still living in Singapore. And this 2017 we have decided to go up to the northwestern part of Luzon. We drove north for around 12 hours to proud provinces of Ilocandia to visit its century old churches.

Ilocandia basically is group of provinces at the northern part of Luzon where the Ilocanos abound. For this visita iglesia, we are visiting the twin provinces of Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur. On a side trip we have also visited some famous spot in these provinces like in the cities of Vigan, Laoag, Paoay, and Pagudpud.

Like in our past visita iglesias, we it during Good Fridays. We started around 8am from the city of Candon in Ilocos Sur. In every church that we visit, we read a set of prayers for the visita and for the way of the cross. Again, this Catholic tradition commemorates the passion and Christ’s way to Mount Calvary to be crucified.

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