baguio parade
The guest house where we are staying in Baguio has the most comfortable foam mattress. That is my excuse for sleeping past 6 am, something I almost never do. We had a leisurely breakfast and a quick look at the shower setup before taking a pass for a warmer time of day to give it a try. So by the time we had found the center of town and got parked it was coming up for 9, just in time for the start of a parade to celebrate the centenial of the founding of Baguio.

Filipino people are among the sweetest we have ever met, and quite eager for us to have a front row place so they could show off their culture to what must be the only tourists in town. The parade was quite the deal, with floats and dancing dragons, lots of music and marching bands and some great national costumes. We stayed right up to the horses (always the last thing in a parade for obvious reasons), then took a hike through the park to the shopping mall at the top of the hill for a spectacular view of the hills and a chance to get online at Starbucks.

I managed to completely wrench my ankle on the treacherous curbs and had to buy a crutch to get me through the rest of the day. No big deal; my brother has accused me of using my religion as a crutch for years! We drove around town and over the hills through white pines as stately as anything you would see in Canada, and even got a walk through an ecological reserve that smelled sweetly aromatic. The shower proved to be no trouble at all, despite its idiosyncratic appearance: essentially a bucket with holes in it hooked to a hose. All of that exercise wore me out, and I slept soundly, thankful for lots of blankets in this remarkably temperate city.