Baguio City Sightseeing Tour — Highlights & Hidden Gems

At 1,540 meters above sea level, Baguio is the Philippines' answer to a mountain retreat — a city of pine trees, strawberry farms, and cool misty air that Filipinos have been escaping to since the Americans built it as their colonial summer capital in 1900. This full-day tour hits the classic highlights while finding time for the off-the-beaten-track spots that make Baguio genuinely different from other Philippine cities.

Morning begins at Burnham Park, the city's beloved lakeside center, where boat rentals and cycling laps start early. The tour moves to The Mansion — the Philippine president's official summer residence, its ornate gates and manicured lawns a relic of American architecture — before climbing to Mines View Park, where the panorama over the old gold-mining valley of Itogon is framed by pine-forest hills. The market stalls here are the best in Baguio for Cordillera crafts: hand-woven blankets, silver jewelry, and woodcarving.

The afternoon is reserved for BenCab Museum, a world-class gallery built into a hillside jungle, housing the life's work of National Artist Benedicto Cabrera alongside folk art, Cordillera tribal objects, and a wildlife sanctuary on the grounds. The day ends with a wade through Baguio's famous ukay-ukay secondhand markets on Session Road — the city's social hub — where designer finds from Japan and Korea arrive weekly at bewilderingly low prices.