Manila

I'm sorry. I know this post has been a long time coming, but here it is...
We spent our last 2 days in Manila. I didn't know what to expect, but we had so much fun. We stayed at The Manila Airport Hotel. I know, it sounds so ghetto, but it was surprisingly nice and only 5 minutes from the airport.
This is the only picture we got there. The kids got good at back flips. The pool was decent and was surrounded by these little "villas." We didn't spend much time there though. We spent the first day at the Mall of Asia, which (I thought) was way cooler than the Mall of America.

Not only did they have an indoor ice skating rink, they also had a city of jump houses, dozens of great restaurants, movie theaters, animal stroller rentals for $4 for the day, and fantastic shopping.
But the most amazing part was this incredible kid's area. This is the biggest and greatest playplace I have ever seen. Parents are not invited. It's completely secured. You check your kids in to play for any amount of time (I think we paid $5 an hour per child) and you are free to roam the mall. Since we had very little alone time all month, this was not only fun for the kids, but a nice break for John and me. (we didn't take any pictures there, so these are all stock photos)
We started the next day at Ocean Park, which is a really cool aquarium. These pictures are out of order because I'm just happy to be getting this post up. Organized pictures are too much to ask!

It's easy to let your kids pick out a to from the gift shop when stuffed animals are $3 not $3o!

I love this pic of Bailey staring at the "Nemo" fish (yes, we spent half our time talking about Nemo and the other half talking about Ariel. We're raising a group of intellectuals here!)
At the end they had a little coloring station right by the shark tank. Austin did this lovely portrait of me on a paper plate. I love it and brought it home!
The sting rays were neat
This is in a tunnel that you walk through and watch the fish swim over you

We got to touch starfish (which are really called "Sea stars" because they're not fish)


The jelly display was our favorite. It was so mesmerizing. The only light is constantly changing color as Cannon in D plays. John snapped this cool pic when the color of the jellies was the same as my shirt.

This room is smaller than it looks. The walls were all mirrors (with signs on them to watch where you are walking. What a people watchers dream- can you imagine taking the signs down and just sitting in the corner of the room watching people walk into their reflections? I'm seriously laughing at myself right now- John doesn't think it's funny). It looked like you were surrounded by hundreds of jelly tanks. I thought it was a good setting for a scary movie.
From there we went to Old Town Manila and Fort Santiago.
Then we headed back to the mall- movie, playplace, dinner, then hotel for a good nights sleep before the trek home.

The next day we headed home. Everything went smoothly. I did not argue with any Korean flight attendants and getting home was about 8 hours faster than getting there (we saved time since we did the leg from Manila to Boracay 2 days earlier, plus flights and layovers were shorter)

How sad that this is my very last post of our trip! Thanks for sticking with me!

Where should we go next year?