A nice article from the Financial Times… Lisa Macuja Elizalde talks about their cribs…. “The Donada Compound” and two other vaction homes at Boracay & Tagaytay Cavite. I’ve seen the Tagaytay castle-like house via one lifestyle magazine and just looking at the pics will make you breathless and truly awed. I can’t just imagine how awesome it is LIVE! Please Mr. Fred Elizalde invite me to do your lawn and how about a cup of coffee eh? =) Ms. Lisa describes her Tagaytay holiday house below, see the excerpts…
What are the best features of the Donada Compound?
There is a beautiful, spacious garden with lots of shade from very old trees, three grand ballet studios and the Ballet Manila (BM) office. So my commute to work is about a minute of walking across the garden from my back door. There is also a pool with a shallow, kid-friendly part, a porch with Wi-Fi and Fred’s painting studio – plus more than 300 paintings and sculptures all over the house and the garden. I guess in that way you could call it an artists’ haven.
Tell me more about the Boracay house.
The Boracay Resthouse is where Missy was conceived. Boracay will always hold a special place in my heart because the island is where Fred took me after he and I got engaged. It used to be the only house on the beach that had a generator. The “old” house consisted of two big porches and three small rooms. Since Fred and I got married he has developed the house to include six cottages using Amanpulo-style architecture. There is a spot on the main porch that even has a ballet barre so I can keep in shape while on a beach vacation. Just like all our other houses, Boracay has Fred’s artworks on display – some of them were even painted in Boracay while we were on holiday. He has a studio (which we call the Cathedral). Our bedroom has a painting on the ceiling. There is a special certificate hanging in every bedroom that certifies that Fred was the first man to free-dive the Camia wreck just off the island.
What about the Tagaytay house?
The Tagaytay house is a huge project still in the making. It was started in the 1970s on Iruhin Grange (the second-highest peak in Tagaytay). It has two floors and several rooms. There are multi-tiered rooms, secret tunnels, secret doors, strange passages, pebbles on the floor, platforms, gates, a great hall, a long dining room table, two fireplaces and several rooftop porches. And there is a bedroom constructed on the side of the mountain underneath the swimming pool with a porthole looking into the pool. In other words, it’s a castle that every child would want to explore and live in. It is Fred’s dream house and is still unfinished. Very colourful, very alive, very Fred.
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