Vigan Heritage Site

A treasure! Time travel in this Spanish colonial architecture. The vintage site lets you walk on the cobblestone freely and take photos or videos as you want. If you want good photos, you can also come in the morning because the glare from the street lamps can get in the way at night. It was tough to get decent photos at night unless you have a super good camera. In this place, the old and the new merges into an extraordinary experience of the lifetime.

The evening here is different from the morning hussle and buzz of the regular street. There wasn't any night market besides religious items, flowers, and a few souvenir shops open. Since it rained that night, the sought-after Dancing Fountain light show at the Plaza Salcedo was cancelled. Perhaps due to the pandemic, most shops and restaurants along the roads were closed.

At the start of your drop-off, there's the old Maybank and some old office near the church. Walk further to find a statue for some background on an important person behind this site. It really feels like a normal street open to vehicles, and yet extraordinary too with all that cobblestone and walking.

Calle Crisologo is the most famous street here, we walked it from end to end.

If you know Philippine history, you'd easily recognize the Calle Mabini on the side as one named after Apolonario Mabini. And there were several others like Calle Luna, and so on that you'd pass through.

If you're up for it, take the romantic, single horse-drawn carriage, locally called kalesa, a ride for only 200 pesos and fits two people at the center and one person beside the coach driver. It goes for 10 minutes around the site. But it's bumpy and can be fast that you need a more proper video camera besides your phone to take videos. When we came, there was only one operational kalesa ride, you can imagine how long we waited for our turn!

There are sides well-preserved and other sides that seemed like they came out of some ruins or the end of World War II feel. I hope they put some good budget and restore these other parts of the street before they fall apart.

Coming here in Vigan is most nostalgic and it feels like an introduction to Europe's classic streets as if you're watching Princess Sara or some time-period drama.

If you want food, there was one restaurant with outdoor dining that was open near where the Kalesa ride line was. But we didn't have the time to try them as it looked pricey.