Our Vacation In Manila: Day 2

So... day 2 of our vacation was a bit uneventful. We started the day with free breakfast at the hotel. Then we went back to the hotel room to rest up a bit before going out.

Our first stop was to see what the new SM Aura mall is all about since it still wasn't here when I was living here about 2-3 years ago. We had to navigate our way to Bonifacio Global City via one train ride and one bus ride. The place has really become well-developed with tons of new commercial buildings since I was last here.

Anyway, the bus ride took about an hour at least, but was relatively peaceful. We alighted at one of my favorite shopping malls, Market! Market! I knew that SM Aura was somewhere near it but I didn't realize that it was just literally facing the Market  area of said Market! Market! mall.

My mother in front of SM Aura

So it was about 2:20 when we arrived at SM Aura, mostly due to the heavy traffic. The place was very nice and was designed in a linear fashion sort of like the Rockwell mall or the new wing of SM North Edsa. It also had lots of high-end and brand-name shops together with the usual mix of affordable brand staples like Bench and Penshoppe. Anyway, I'm not really much of a shopper, so all we really did there was take some pics and  then have a late lunch at some Chinese stall at the food court.

After that, we made our way to SM Megamall where we were to meet my aunt again.

It's not the camera angle. This thing is huge and heavy.

Me and my aunt

There was a bit of trouble getting into contact with each other via text messages, probably depending on which area of the mall we were at, but we eventually met up at about 7:00 PM. After a nice, but rather heavy dinner (look at the size of the pizza) at some Italian place called Avenetio or something similar, we took a walk around the mall for a little bit until about 9:00 PM.

There was a taxi service inside the mall called "GrabTaxi," which basically uses a cellphone app and GPS units to call in Taxis and private cars registered under the company and within the vicinity to fetch passengers. It was much more convenient than the fiasco yesterday. I'll have to remember to install their app since it basically allows you to set your destination with a specified price and call in their taxis/cars from wherever you are in the city.

Anyway, that's the end of day 2.