Hotel Lapira — Hotel in Vigan

It’s Back-to-School again by June 10, so our family decided to do a last-minute roadtrip to the Hispanic Vigan City, and up to the Sand Dunes of Paoay the next day.||After a grueling 10 hour drive from Alabang to Vigan, we stayed at the Hotel Lapira, located just a few hundred meters away from the hispanic Calle Crisologo. I specifically selected this hotel due primarily to their secure parking area, and then some.||I checked out all the more “nostalgic” hotels near and within the Calle Crisologo, but they don’t provide parking—understandably due to their location. I can’t be away from my SUV overnight, so parking is a big deal for me.||Hotel Lapira is a very nice place to unwind at and stretch after going thru almost 500 kms of unending Manila North Road! |The staff were very pleasant, engaging, and polite—despite the fact that we lost the room key on our last day, LOL. ||There’s this Angkong Restaurant at the ground level that serves authentic Ilocano dishes, etc. I loved the Vigan Longaniza served at breakfast, matched with sunny side up egg, fried rice, then finishing off with a cup of hot brewed coffee. ||Airconditioning in our rooms (two quad rooms) were okay, hot shower, flat screen tv with a working remote(!), bottled water, the works. |Guess my only hang-up was the quality of the bath soap provided, almost same size as the old 5-peso coin. Good thing I always bring with me my trusty toiletry tub. There’s no bidet, too, good thing the water pressure coming out of the portable shower head was strong enough to do the job, lol!||in a nutshell, will we come back to Hotel Lapira next visit? ||ABSOLUTELY!...

The hotel was ok, but the staff nearly ruined our trip with bad advice. We stopped here to spend a couple days in Vigan on our way to Sagada. No less than three members of the front desk staff told us we needed to go through Baguio but the road was to dangerous because of all the rain, so we took there advice and didn't book a bus. Then we heard from locals that the buses don't care about the rain and are still running to Baguio but now it's to late to get a bus. The next morning the staff tells us "Or hotel van decided to go to Baguio at 4am this morning so you missed it. " They didn't bother to even tell us until after it left. Sooo we got a bus that afternoon and after about 6 hours ride, made it to Baguio. Our hotel in Baguio informs us that we are nowhere near Sagada! Now we are another day into a 4 day trip and we are actually now farther from Sagada that we were while in Vigan! You don't go to Baguio to get to Sagada! Now we have to hire a private van to take us 8 hours to Sagada, and thanks to the staff at Hotel Lapira, it's cost us tens of thousands of pesos and we lost a day of our trip and no longer have time to go to the famous rice terraces, which was one of the main reasons we took this trip I the first place..

This hotel is ok. The breakfast was actually very good. But the staff have no idea what they are talking about for directions or helping guests. They literally got together at the front desk, talked about our options, and then had us go 6 hours and another hotel stay in the wrong direction..

Shame!......

Hotel Lapira has a very unusual look compared to the ancient and unique styles of hotels in Vigan. We booked for one night but since we arrived very early, around 5am, we decided check in already so we can rest, therefore we paid half of the room rate on top of our booking. The room was average, but I am sure it is more decent compare to other hotels. I am not expecting too much anyway, but the hotel is clean. It's not that bad actually. The wifi was not that great inside the room. It's a bit hard to have connection inside the room. I just noticed that they don't have a bidet in the bathroom so it's quite hard if you need to use it. I suggest you put a bidet in each of the rooms. They don't clean the room if you don't ask them to, but if you request them, they will. ||||The free breakfast was good. At first, they asked us to select from the menu. It was really good. We had authentic vigan longganisa on the first day! On our 2nd day, they had a buffet breakfast. The selection was very less but it was fine as they have daing na bangus which was really superb! They had tocino, scrambled egg and garlic fried rice as well plus lemon iced tea. We were really satisfied with the food.||||Overall stay was fine. Hope they can improve their service...