So I have been hearing about Ayala Malls Serin that opened in Tagaytay 2 years ago (April 2, 2014) and the few times Mahal and I went to Tagaytay and passed by it, I kept getting intrigued by it. It looked so elegant and serene from the outside.

So that one particular day we were celebrating our second anniversary, after our little excursion to Marcia Adams and Puzzle Mansion Museum, we dropped by Ayala Malls Serin. We were waiting to get hungry (Marcia Adams’ dishes were so yummy and filling that even after several hours, we were still quite full!) so we thought of going around this prestigious lifestyle mall in Tagaytay.

Since Ayala Malls Serin is located near the Rotunda, as well as our Lady of Lourdes Parish and West Serin Tagaytay by Avida Land, you can expect heavy traffic. Add to that the fact that it was raining that particular evening we went there, so traffic was kind of horrendous. Once we got inside the lot premises, we couldn’t find an available parking space. That’s when we started to realize that this particular Ayala mall looks big from the outside, but really, compared to the other Ayala Malls we’ve been to (Makati, Alabang, Cebu), Ayala Malls Serin is quite small and cramped. Maybe that’s why it was named “Serin”. Serin, according to Wikipedia, means:

“The European serin, or just serin, (Serinus serinus) is the smallest European species of the family of finches (Fringillidae) and is closely related to the canary. “

Okay, now I get it. But that evening we were there, we didn’t know this, so our expectation was not being met. Finally, we were able to find parking parallel to the wall (we’re not even sure if that’s a real parking spot, but heck, we were getting impatient already and no one was shooing us away anyway so park away we did). After the usual ceremony of preparing Tuz and his stroller, we finally got out of the car and off to the famous Tagaytay mall.

Upon entering the vicinity, we found the walkway very narrow. Parts of the first floor were lined up with tiangge (little local boutques) selling clothes and accessories. The escalators going up and down the floors were very narrow too we thought that Tuz’s stroller won’t fit. Luckily, it did but not without some difficulty.

We went from floor to floor and saw a lot of the usual high-end restaurants and shops that one finds in an Ayala mall:

• Blackbeard’s Seafood island
• LZM Restaurant
• Hermana
• Tous Les Jours (We bought our baby shower cake from here last October 2015, the one that looks like a face of a bear with a hat and it tasted like cardboard! Blech! Never again!)
• Seoul Garden
• Big Better Burgers (We’ve ordered from this establishment twice and OH MY GOD their burgers, pasta and rice meals are so delicious!!! Whether it’s the burgers or the rice dishes and appetizers, my diet went down the drain. I’m salivating now just thinking about it. Maybe I’ll blog about this soon.)
• S&R New York Style Pizza (We’ve only tried this once, not because we didn’t like it, but because the food is so sinfully yummylicious that we’ll probably end up with a heart disease if we keep eating there, lol!)
• The French Baker (Tried this a couple of times during my corporate years and though the taste of their food is not that spectacular, it’s not bad either)
• Santouka
• The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (I miss you!)
• Serenitea (Believe it or not, we haven’t tried this yet. Maybe because we find the drinks expensive when we can make it ourselves at home.)
• Hungry Hippo
• Beanleaf
• Krisson
• Dakasi
• Cold Stone Creamery (Spent about a thousand on this before. The desserts are good, just too sweet for our taste. Not nice for those watching their blood sugar levels like us, hehehe.)
• Earle’s Delicatessen
• The Chinese Kitchen
• Kiya J (Didn’t know that J stands for Jericho Rosales until we saw his huge face outside the dining area, lol!)
• Cravings
• Bread Talk (I am addicted to their breads. I usually buy a ton whenever we’re in Ayala Cebu)
• Pho Bac
• Famous Belgian Waffles (one of my newest favorite snacks whenever we’re in SM SouthMall.)

And so many more!!!

We also checked out this cute shop full of cake ingredients and stuff (I forgot the name). Unfortunately, it didn’t have the walnuts and almonds we need. We’ll just buy them again from another shop at SM SouthMall where we first found them.

So we just kept walking around until we got hungry. Since we found the mall cramped, we decided to just head out again and have dinner somewhere else instead (Bag of Beans). I’ll blog about that next. (^_^)