Anniversay at F1 Hotel, Taguig

May 25 was the date when +maria cessna galecio became my girlfriend. So last May 25, 2013, Chea decided to celebrate it with a stay at F1 hotel, courtesy of DealGrocer (I think).

Since Thirdy was staying at Antipolo, we went to pick him up. Chea's brother Cyrus, her sister Chie and nephew Justine came along for the ride. It was an uneventful trip except for the terrible traffic.

Didn't get a chance to take a picture of the building. This is from the menu.

We arrived at F1 Hotel at around 3pm. We parked at basement 1 and then took the elevator to the 5th floor. Their reservations desk was at that level. The first floor was just basically an information desk.

There was a short line at the reservation desk. The entire floor looked small, but everything was clean and modern. It looked like a boutique hotel.

After we were checked in, we went to the elevators (there were 4 for guests and 1 service elevator). The elevators were those fancy ones that you need to key in your room card. We got off on the 10th floor and headed over to room 1015. They didn't have bellboys to help with our stuff, but that was ok since we didn't have that much luggage.

They had electronic door locks. It took me a few seconds to realize to touch the room key card on top of the door handle itself instead of the lcd display. I was accustomed to having key card slots on hotel doors.

When we got in, I was pretty surprised. We got a room with a receiving area. Chea quipped that It looked like we got upgraded. Yey.

The hotel knew that we were bringing Thirdy along so they actually placed a nursery cot in the room.

H'lo, guv'na. Fancy your new cot?

We placed Thirdy in the crib and gave him milk, while I took pictures of the place.

The living area

As i've mentioned, we had a receiving area that had a sofa, a dining table, and a small kitchen. The room had an LCD tv, a Samsung Inverter ac unit, and a personal ref.

In the bedroom, aside from the bed, it had a LCD tv as well, a radio clock, a miniature safety box and another Samsung Inverter ac unit. Man, how cold do you want to get?

Ho ho. A King size bed

A sign stating the obvious. Har har.

Chi, Cyrus and Justine waited for Cyrus' girlfriend to drop by before they headed out. She arrived a few minutes later, so Chea and I started preparing Thirdy for the pool. That kid sure loves the water.

The pool deck was at the third floor, so we took the elevator down and went out into the pool deck.

They had 3 pools there: a round kiddie pool, a somewhat larger rectangular pool for the adults, and a lap pool for those fancying more than just a dip.

Thirdy at the kiddie pool

Chea and Thirdy tried the kiddie pool for a bit, but it gets crowded with 5 kids in there, so they transferred to the adult pool. After an hour, we pulled Thirdy out and cleaned him up. He really had a great time.

We went back to the room and then got ready to head out for dinner.

The plan was to go to S&R across the building, but we decided to head over to the newly opened SM Aura. It started to rain when we came out of the hotel. We took a cab and headed over to the mall. There were a lot of cars coming and going at SM Aura, so it took us a while to get there.

The mall had about 4 shopping levels. The roof was a park with some restos. Unfortunately, none of them were open yet. The foodcourt was packed with people, so after taking a quick tour of the mall, we decided to leave and head over to Market Market and eat there.

The rain had stopped so we started to walk towards Market Market. But since we had crossed over to the Serendra side, we opted to have our dinner there.

We couldn't decide where to eat, so we went walking towards Contis. From afar, it looked like it was full, so we agreed to try out the nearest restaurant from where we were standing, which turned out to be DUO Steakhouse and Wine bar.

It was a wine and resto bar. Chea and I never got into wines so we rarely tried this type of establishments. It was good that we went with DUO because as soon as we got in, there was a sudden downpour that lasted for more than an hour. I'll blog about our dining experience on another time.

After the meal, Chea, Thirdy and myself, hailed a cab and headed back to F1 Hotel. After an hour or so, Thirdy fell asleep with Chea in the bedroom. I ordered for a McDonald's delivery around 11pm as I was too tired to go outside. Turns out, I still had to go down to get the food at the ground floor when I arrived.

We all got up around 7 am the next day and promptly headed down to the third floor for breakfast.

Thirdy was practically wolfing down everything we gave him

Their restaurant was pretty average in size. It's like the ones you can find in good sized resorts. However, the food was great. Food selection was big for a breakfast menu. There were all sorts of breads, pastries, fruits and their dishes were also good. I went for the usual: egg, bacon, fried rice and mango juice. I was unable to try out everything as I felt too full already. Chea however had an appetite since she didn't have a midnight snack like me.

After breakfast, we headed back to the room and waited for Chea's parents to arrive to pick us up. When they did, they took Thirdy back swimming while Chea packed up our things, and I took a power nap.

We checked out by noon, and then headed off back to Antipolo to drop off Chea's parents and Thirdy. We were going to Tagaytay right after as my sister gifted us an overnight stay at Las Ventanas Tagaytay. We originally wanted to bring Thirdy along, but the management didn't allow it. I'll blog about our trip to Las Ventanas on my next entry.

Anyway, our stay at F1 hotel was pretty good, except for the terrible wifi connection. We called to have it fixed but we had to go out for dinner. And when we came back by 9 pm, their IT people had already left so no one could fix it.

Also, I got annoyed about the food delivery that I had to go downstairs. I guess they didn't employ too many staff to be escorting delivery guys around. Another annoyance was getting billed for phone calls. I know most hotels do that, but its kinda irritating especially for three short phone calls that didn't even get charged domestic rates.

Another comment is that the place, is on a far corner of Bonifacio Global City. It's actually beside S&R and St. Luke's Hospital. So if you wanted to go for a night out, you'd be walking far or taking a cab (which we did).

The highlight of the experience would be the fancy room and the breakfast buffet. All in all, a great experience for me.