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After meeting with fellow multimedia artists, BFF Cris and I decided to follow our contact’s advice and head straight for Outpost and Kukuk’s Nest. Unfortunately, traffic was really bad that day. Well, traffic was just really bad since Day 1, period.

When we found ourselves in the center of the city, we decided to just let the traffic jam pass by going to Crown Regency Hotel at Fuente Osmeña. They offer Sky Experience Adventure rides. These can be found on the 37th and 38th floor.

I wanted to try this ride. But Cris said that we’d probably lose the CnT lechon we ate for lunch if we did this.

Yeah. The tilting thing — seeing that we were waaaaaay up there — scared the bejeezuz out of Cris.

Visitors can also opt to go star gazing at the Observatory for a price (PhP250).

Behind me is the Sky Bar. No one was manning the counter, though. I guess no one can think about eating when standing atop the tallest hotel.

Blurry photo of the view from above. You can see the stadium at the upper right hand corner. This was where the coronation of Miss Cebu was held, as well as the judging of the Sinulog Grand Parade floats.

We took the Sky Walk + Buffet package. I thought walking across the glass floors of the building would be easier than the other ride we avoided. Turns out that when you’re at the top of the tallest tower in the country and walking on glass floors…well, your knees just weaken whenever you look down. It was really quite scary.

Our smiles here were so fake. I found myself doing baby steps throughout the entire walk. Hahaha!

Here’s a blurry close up of the stadium. I shot this behind the dirty glass windows of the buffet hall.

Pretty lights surrounding the Osmeña circle. This was where the parade people gathered on January 16 (Day 4).

Sorry for the reflection! Was still shooting through the filthy glass window.

Zooming in The Capitol through the windows. I’ve always been fascinated by this because it seemed like a beacon of something spectacular.

This grandiose building was erected in 1937, during Governor Cabahug’s incumbency.

What we had for dinner. There were many other choices: Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, European. But the rest of what I ate didn’t look appetizing on the camera.

The food was so-so, but I guess it was the cheapest we could find when all restaurants in Cebu seemed to have jacked up their prices. Each meal would cost us roughly a thousand pesos! The Sky Walk + Buffet is P750 per head. If you took out the buffet, it would cost PhP550.

We actually liked the adventure. What we didn’t like is that we paid P230+ each for bad photos. We chose 3 shots so that’s more than PhP700 worth of bad photos. I could understand if they were using point-and-shoot cameras but if they were going to charge us an arm and a leg for souvenir pictures, they might as well use dSLRs right. Turn flash off (or use an external flash), adjust ISO, adjust white balance (tungsten/halogen for dark indoor lighting), adjust exposure levels, adjust shutter speed please! I’m not asking for special depths of field here.  I’m just asking for decent shots for the money I forked over. (I’ve actually seen some bloggers take better photos with point-and-shoot cams.) There really is no excuse for using full auto with dSLRs if you’re going to charge SKY HIGH prices. That was just highway robbery…especially since we can’t/are not allowed to take our own photos.

We got tacky t-shirts each for souvenirs. I wish they would have just given us one free photo instead of those shirts. Plus, we never got to Kukuk’s Nest or Outpost. Getting our souvenirs took forever, and even after all that, the traffic was still bad.

On the bright side, I think our photographer took the most decent shots of the lot. She was also pretty helpful and knew how to comfort her scared clients. The whole thing really is something that people should experience (even if I’m not too happy about the pricing and messy queues for souvenir acquisition). For more information about this, visit the Sky Experience Adventure website.