Quezon City rewards thin wallets: national parks with no gate fee, a 493-hectare campus you can walk freely, wet markets selling breakfast for ₱40, and jeepneys charging ₱13 a ride. Here is a three-day route where almost nothing costs more than a coffee.
A 22.7-hectare green lung off Quezon Avenue with a lagoon, picnic lawns and a small rescue-animal zoo. Open daily 06:00–18:00; entry is ₱10 for adults, ₱5 for students and children. Joggers, birders and boy scouts share the loop trail from dawn.
A 1939 wood-fired pugon bakery on Judge Jimenez corner K-1st, still baking pandesal in the original brick oven. Kapeng barako runs ₱65, a pandesal-and-kesong-puti plate about ₱95, full silog meals ₱120–180. Open 06:00–21:00 daily.
The 1984 neo-Gothic central temple of the Iglesia ni Cristo on Commonwealth Avenue, its spires visible across Diliman. The grounds and exterior can be viewed at no cost; the surrounding INC compound includes the Tanggapan and a landscaped plaza.
Martial-law memorial at Quezon Avenue corner EDSA, with a black granite Wall of Remembrance carrying the names of hundreds of anti-dictatorship martyrs, plus Eduardo Castrillo's 45-foot Inang Bayan bronze. Grounds free; museum ₱100.
Metro Manila's best-known wet market beside Araneta City, famous for cut-price seafood, tropical fruit and the paluto system: buy fish or crab at the stalls, then pay a nearby carinderia ₱100–150 to cook it however you want.
A campus institution since 1949, famous for one dish: tapsilog — sweet cured beef, garlic rice and egg — for roughly ₱130. Cash only, communal tables, and a queue of students from 11:30. Open daily until early evening.
A two-kilometre stretch of over 200 small kitchens run largely by UP graduates. Milk tea from ₱70, rice bowls ₱120–180, takoyaki and shawarma carts under ₱100. Most open midday; the strip peaks between 18:00 and midnight.
Air-conditioned refuge at the MRT-3 North Avenue interchange where mall food-court combos run ₱120–180 and the Landmark supermarket sells bakery bread, fruit and 1.5-litre water at supermarket rather than convenience-store prices.
A 33-hectare reforested park on the edge of the La Mesa watershed, the last rainforest of its size in Metro Manila. Entry is about ₱50; boating on the lagoon runs ₱150, bike rental ₱100 an hour. Open roughly 06:00–18:00.
Quezon City's Chinese-Filipino quarter, better known for car parts but lined with small noodle houses and bakeries. Beef mami, siopao and hand-pulled noodle bowls run ₱90–160, and lauriat rice plates rarely pass ₱200.
Asia's largest 3D interactive art museum, opened 2014 near Araneta City, with about 200 painted trick-perspective murals designed to be photographed. Admission runs roughly ₱500, with student and senior discounts, and shoes come off at the door.
A grassy natural basin ringed by a 2.2-kilometre acacia-shaded oval that closes to cars on Sundays. Runners, kite-flyers and vendors selling ₱20 taho and ₱15 fishballs fill it at dusk, with the Oblation statue a short walk north.