Manila Day 4 - Rain, rain, go away...

Day 4 of our trip was the weather we'd been dreading all week- nonstop rain, occasional thunder. I figured it'd be the perfect day to get my first workout in at the hotel gym. If I had to rate the gym on Yelp, my title would be "Most things work, most of the time." :-| The two ancient, fussy and slippery treadmills (the staff polished EVERYTHING in that gym, five times a day) were attached to apparatuses that looked like transformers of some type, that took time to warm up, and even then, were very temperamental.

The first day in the gym, Ryan accompanied me there purely because he had been dying to try out a treadmill for years. All the ones he sees (at Sears, on the other side of the island) have signs posted that they're for adult use only, and so he's never been able to hop on a working one. I figured if anyone would look the other way, it would be the kind (and still sleepy) staff on duty in the early AM.

Because I'm partly moronic, I forgot that the treadmills there configured for kilometers vs. miles. As a result, for 30 blissful seconds of running what looked like 10mph, I was sure that I was ready to qualify for the Olympics! I even selected the dazzling outfit I was going wear in the homecoming parade I knew the Mayor would plan in my honor! Once I realized I was running my normal abysmal pace, well...I cried.

Just kidding, but I did mange to eke out 4.5 miles (less than half the run I had scheduled) at a decent clip. I remembered that running on a treadmill is always easier for some reason (don't ask me the physics behind it), but still found it painful given the boredom factor. The internet connection was also spotty, and Pandora wasn't available in that country...so I was stuck with a very old mix of music saved on Rich's phone. This was still preferable to trying to run in the city, which was essentially not an option outside of Rizal Park and the waterfront (but holy HE-double hockey sticks, it was way too hot). The rest of the city was too crowded and not safe to run.

Thankfully, we were a 2-minute walk from a massive mall (that we never fully explored even in our many trips there) that we figured we could spend the day at. While there, Ryan stumbled onto what would become his number one favorite attraction in Manila- a Virtual Reality game booth. :-/ $5 bought you a whopping 15 minutes of playtime, so he was able to try out a few games that day.

The entire mall was decked out for Christmas like it was Dec. 24th. Holiday music was blaring, and the decor was quite festive as though Christmas was next week. We found this to be the case in many other locations as well. Rich's coworker later explained that it's because it's really their one big holiday a year, so they tend to go all out, everywhere, even as early as October.

The small town, country girl in me LOVES this stuff, even though it was early Nov! I have zero design aesthetic, so I doubly appreciate other people's ability to do so all the more.

This is a must-do for us on every trip we take. I justify it as "'It's because we don't have this kind of stuff on our island!

Is this not the cutest cotton candy you've ever seen?! OMG. If Ryan were younger, I'm sure he would've begged for some, and I would have obliged, because...you know...we don't have that stuff on our island!

I took this shot with the intention of putting it on our annual Christmas card, but it didn't quite make the cut, so Happy Holidays in November!

Dinner was a series of international foods we brought home from the mall. We cooked exactly ZERO times while in Manila. ;-) Food was cheap enough that we never felt the need to cook.

I took this photo because this is what Ryan did pretty much 100% of the time we were in our room (when he wasn't being forced to read, write in his journal or bathe).  I have a feeling this phase will last until he's 30, and only because he finally has his first child (a girl he will probably name 'Jolene' in honor of his loving mother).