Entering the Magical Door of Pinto..

Hey travel mates! So if you remember, we explored Manila from our last expedition and for today I want you to tour around to my beautiful hometown-the city of Antipolo! Yep that's it! The place where I grew up for over 20 years and still counting.

During one fine afternoon last January, me and my friends decided to meet and explore a secret garden in Antipolo City. A hidden place where a magical door must be entered for those travelers who appreciate the beauty of nature and art. A place where you'll find peace and will give you a visual treat from its picturesque ambience. So if you appreciate the beauty of nature and the mystery behind every work of art, I bet you'll like our destination for today. My travel buddies, I bring to you the doorknobs of Pinto Art Museum..wohoo!

So "pinto" is a Filipino term that means door, obviously, the etymology of today's destination. Let us now enter Pinto! But, before we step to the doors of Pinto, of course we need to pay first for the entrance ticket. So Pinto entrance rate varies, the regular ticket costs 180.00 pesos. For our dearest Lolos and Lolas the entrance fee is worth 150.00 pesos and for students that will present their IDs you can enter the main door of Pinto for only 100.00 pesos and for cute little children ages 3 years old and below they can enjoy the gardens of Pinto for FREE! (Yay! Lucky kiddos! Wish I was also 3 years old..haha!)

Pinto Art Museum is open every Tuesdays through Sundays except for Mondays. You can tour around from 9:00 a.m to 6:00 p.m. and I recommend you to go there as early as you can so you could explore the vicinity for a long time. I regret that we go there at 2 in the afternoon so we didn't have enough time to appreciate every piece of artwork that Pinto is offering (huhu) but still we enjoyed a lot from our first experience at Pinto and we will surely come back there!



There's a guided tour for visitors but me and my friends want to spend some quality time together so we decided to explore Pinto Art Museum happily without the help coming from any guide. So we did our own interpretations from the art pieces that caught our attention. But if you want to be guided accordingly at Pinto here's the guided tour schedule: 09:00 am – 11:00 am; 12:00 nn – 02:00 pm; 02:00 pm – 04:00 pm; 04:30 pm – 06:00 pm

I can say that Pinto Art Museum is a home for modern and contemporary art pieces that was made by various artists around the Philippines and I am proud that it can be found in my hometown. There were six galleries inside Pinto Art Museum that you can tour around. Each galleries have their own themes and exhibitions of different paintings, sculptures and art installations.

There's also a Museum of Indigenous Art where various indigenous artworks were displayed that was inspired by the significant culture of Filipino aboriginals showing their traditions and their way of life.

 

 I really like the fact that Pinto Art Museum is environmental-friendly. I was really happy to see number of trees and rocks that formed naturally from the different galleries and were not removed by the museum administration. There were really a lot of simple things that will surely make you happy if you go there.

So if you're already hungry from exploring the different galleries, there's Pinto Cafe in the garden area and Cafe Tan-aw in a roofdeck area near the entrance that offers mouth-watering dishes as we've seen it from the other tourists who ate around. We actually didn't order anything from these two cafes even if we're already hungry cause their menus are like artworks that are pricey. But, for food enthusiasts who don't worry for the price I suggest you should try some of their dishes cause the smell of it as we walk around the cafes was truly heavenly.

So for our side trip and gastronomical adventure we went to Chevy Burger that was near Pinto Art Museum and located beside the highway. It offers different kinds of burger that was worth the price, also various snacks such as pastas, nachos and many more are included in their menu list!

How to get there?

Pinto Art Museum is located inside Grand Heights, a private subdivision in Antipolo, Rizal. So if you are coming from Cubao you could take LRT Line 2 and get off at Santolan Station. After that, take a jeepney bound to Antipolo then go to Ynares Center or Kapitolyo. Ride a tricycle and tell the driver to take you to the doors of Pinto Art Museum :)