Calle Crisologo (above), Vigan's main street with its many Spanish-style houses, and Plaza Salcedo, which has a nightly dancing fountain show
If not for the Tagalog or the native Ilocano dialect I hear all around me, it would feel like I am wandering in Europe.
With cobblestone streets, horsedrawn carriages and rows of intricate colonial architecture, the northern Filipino city of Vigan looks like an antiquated Spanish town straight out of a storybook.
But this is no gimmicky theme park - the city in the province of Ilocos Sur is a relic of the country's colonial past, when the Philippines was ruled by the Spanish from the 16th to 18th centuries.
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