Like little kids left to our own devices, we roamed around Gapan’s Delos Reyes Street snapping away with our cameras and posing against ancestral houses to our hearts content. I never knew that Gapan, a town we usually pass by en route to my mom’s hometown in Cabanatuan City, held such architectural gems from bygone eras. Like most locals, I usually dismiss Nueva Ecija as quite wanting when it comes to tourist attractions. I was proven wrong that afternoon.

GAPAN’S VIRGEN LA DIVINA PASTORA CHURCH FACADE WITH ITS CENTRAL BELFRY

Still catching my breath from a very Filipino lunch at Hapag Vicenticos, we again boarded Microtel Cabanatuan’s van and headed to the oldest town in the province—and one of the oldest in the Philippines—Gapan. The sun was hitting the stately edifice of the National Shrine of Virgen La Divina Pastora just the right way when we arrived.