The Keybie Cafe

   
Who doesn’t love a good puzzle? No, I’m not talking about the Café down south—the one with the huge collection of board and table-top games.

I’m talking about jigsaw puzzles, with anywhere between a hundred to a thousand pieces or more. I’ve always found puzzles therapeutic, and addictive, but I digress. I’ve done a lot of puzzles with my family, but the most pieces I’ve assembled don’t go above a thousand.

Would you believe that the second largest puzzle in the world multiplies that by 24? Or that the largest puzzle in the world multiplies that by 32?

How about if I said that both of those puzzles—finished and framed—are on display right here, in the Philippines?

 

They’re part of the 1028 different puzzle sets assembled by Georgina Gil-Lacuna, whose collection boasts of wooden figurine puzzles, 3D puzzles, crystal tiny puzzles, huge puzzles, architectural puzzles, and the most Coca Cola puzzles I’ve ever laid my eyes on!

 

With that many puzzles, you’d think Ms. Gil-Lacuna would hold an official Guinness World Record for assembling and keeping them all.

And she keeps them all in the aptly named Puzzle Mansion, up in Tagaytay.

All these puzzles, and you still don’t want to get together

Bad puns aside, we visited the Puzzle Mansion after going on a little food trip in Tagaytay. Since it was homegrown and no one in the family had visited it yet, we all decided to drop by. It’s actually both a bed and breakfast and a museum, but we didn’t have any plans of staying overnight.

After paying the entrance fee of P100 per head, we started exploring. The first floor has hundreds of framed and meticulously labeled jigsaw puzzles lining dividers—

Walls—

And even some parts of the ceiling.

Some of the puzzles are 3D, displayed on tables—

And shelves.

From simple to mind-bogglingly elaborate, it’s easy to see that a lot of time and care was spent assembling all these puzzles!

The second floor had the two largest puzzles in the world displayed—

and available for sale.

I can’t imagine the floorspace needed to form this puzzle.

Time to buy a puzzle!

When my aunts told me there was a shop that sold puzzles, I immediately hoped to find—and happily found—a whole section that sold Coca Cola puzzles!!

Glow in the dark puzzles, huge puzzles, little puzzles, even puzzles of the actual cans! Unfortunately there were no stocks left of the 3D Coca Cola can… I would’ve grabbed it in a heartbeat.

All this awesomeness made it so hard to choose.

I got this baby instead—

Glows in the dark, and may require actual Coke to finish.

I would’ve also bought a Starry Night puzzle, but my mum had a point: one puzzle at a time is best.

Even the pieces have stars!

Hopefully we get to come back, and by then I’m definitely hoping to grab that coke can puzzle—and another coke puzzle!

This one’s not a puzzle, but it sure is gorgeous.

After finishing the 1000 piece puzzle of the New York skyline that had been waiting for completion for about a year, I went and started on this magnificent Coke-ness—

This makes my second Coca Cola puzzle!

It’d take me a while, but it’ll get there! Also started assembling puzzles on thin cardboard and gluing the pieces down after I got enough of the border put together. Why didn’t I know of this earlier? When I used to do 1000-piece puzzles with my family after school almost every day? Tsk tsk.

Puzzle Mansion Bed and Breakfast
Address: Cuadra Street, Brgy Asisan, Tagaytay, 4120 Cavite, Philippines

    

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