Enjoying Life at Vitalis

This place was formerly called Santiago Cove but now it is named as Vitalis Resort and Spa. We were fortunate to be introduced to this place by my brother and hipag.

Vitalis is located in Santiago, Ilocos Sur. It is the town after Candon City and it is 45 minutes away from Vigan City.

The amenities include the following:

The pool whose depth starts  from 4 ft and slowly becomes 6 ft in depth. It is a bit small compared to other resorts but it is clean and there is a slide.

They also have this separate dining area;

The resort offers kayaking and  pedal boating. This picture shows the function area of the hotel and the bar below it.

 It is a cove,so the waters are shallow. This is a view of the hotel 8-10 meters away from the hotel taken from the beach.

 This was a picture taken of me during sunset... See, the water is really shallow and the waves just lap around.

The sand is quite off-white/beige in color and the beach is not rocky. It might not be as powdery as Boracay's white sand but it's still fine.

There are surrounding small resorts in the area-- mainly for the public which dots the way going to Vitalis Resort. If you can see the small roofs in the picture, those are the stalls that were put up that offer cooked food or videoke.

There are plenty of people swimming in that area.

At night time, there is a play of lights in the main area of Vitalis. The colors would turn in different colors of the rainbow.

They also have mosaic displays which the workers work on once in a while during the day. It seems like they do it only when they do't have anything to do. 

It is notable to mention that there are various paintings and works of art inside and outside the lobby of the hotel. We even met one of their artists doing a painting.

For two nights, we 2-3 hours outside the beach staring at the stars....

and watching crabs/hermit crabs crawling along the sand.

During the mornings, we go out and walk or try some of their equipment such as the paddle boat. 

With the paddle boat you can see beneath the CLEAR waters.. we saw some sea snakes and small fishes but these aren't very colorful.. what was colorful unfortunately were the some plastic trash we saw sticking out from the rocks. There are residences on a sitio found a few kilometers from the cove which we discovered when we went driving there. We were dismayed with the trash we saw near the beach which might be going to theVitalis Cove.

We booked in a modest room which is one of those first rooms built in the area when it was still called Santiago Cove:

But there are rooms roughly double the price of our room which had first class amenities which we saw when we toured there a couple of weeks before we checked in. These are located in the new building. 

Our room is at the old building. We also need to economize when we travel if we want to stretch our budget. Thus, the explanation of some of our snacks and stuff there. No shame there...heheh! proud piso pincher here! 

Food:

For the food, I had breakfast buffets way better than at Vitalis. However, they are renovating and changing things so this is understable. 

These are some of the stuff they offer for breakfast:

which can be eaten with these priceless views in the morning..

For our dinners for 2 nights, we tried the following:

Dinner 1: Liempo with rice-- overpriced at Php 300.00. I can have thrice of this is in Andok's! Again-- this is in a resort..:P

Yummy pakbet with bagnet which is PHp 200.00 - more reasonable than the liempo (can't get over it!!!)

For dessert, fruit salad and leche flan (still overpirced but do I need to remind myself that we were in isolation?)

Dinner #2: Bolognese pasta.. This needs a little makeover-- 7/10

And club sandwich..this one I love ..same as the pinakbet however the bacon was burned! That's my complaint.

So, all in all-- I would give Vitalis 6.5- 7/10-- they need a major makeover on their menu and also some trainings for their dining stuff... The place has a feel of a 5 star hotel in appearance but they need to match their food and dining service to that impression. 

With the ongoing renovations an d changes that are coming-- they cannot put a claim on the word, spa, yet - But, it will be exciting to see how much the place will change 2 -3 years from now.