Northwest Roadtrip: Bantay Church, Vigan, Ilocos Sur

Lucky are the busy ones for we have the perfect excuse to not come up with a new topic for a blog post and just dump long overdue photos of our summer roadtrip from 5 months ago instead.

Here it is, finally! The continuation of my Northwest Roadtrip series! Sharing you guys today our first stop for the second day of our 4-day roadtrip to the north!

Surprisingly, we all managed to get a good amount of sleep in spite of our horrible hotel hunting experience! I guess we owe it to our yummy dinner the night before after our night stroll in Vigan's beautiful Calle Crisologo. The next day, we all woke up fresh and ready for another day of exploring Ilocos!

But before leaving Vigan, we thought it'd be a great way to kickstart the second day of our road tip by dropping by Bantay Church, one of the oldest churches in the Ilocos Region (est. 1590)

The church also happened to have an art gallery inside it with lots of religious paintings like the Jesus wall right here.

AKA "My Year"

There was also this beautifully ruined chapel just outside the gallery...

WHAT I WORE: red tanktop / thrifted gingham shorts / black jelly sandals from SM Dept. Store

And of course we didn't miss the Bantay Bell Tower. It's an old belfry which is just a short walk away from the church. They say this bell tower was a watchtower for pirates back in the Spanish colonial era.

And that's how we kickstarted the second day of our Northwest Roadtrip! I actually wanted to do a complete Day 2 post but we took way too many photos that day and organizing them in just one post is causing me brain-ache so I stopped and decided to just cut it in segments like this.

After Bantay Church, we were back on the road again but unlike our Day 1 which was 80% spent on the road singing Are We There Yet?, Day 2 was spent touring the entire city of Laoag! From churches, to the Malacañang of the North, to that glass freezer of Ferdinand Marcos' dead body, and of course, the Paoay sand dunes! That post has been scheduled for next week and I can't wait to share you guys my favorite place in Laoag City!

RELATED: 

Northwest Roadtrip: Ilocos Sur (Day 1 Part 1)
Northwest Roadtrip: Calle Crisologo (Day 1 Part 2)