First 24 hours in Singapore

Friday, April 15: Day 3
So we arrived in Singapore at midnight and were in our hotel room by 1:00 am this morning. Sleep was fitful for all last night and we all were up and wide (ish) awake by 5:00 am. (see photo of our view) We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant where Audrey charmed the pants off of the waitstaff and secured an entire bowl of marshmallows for her hot chocolate. They were the big marshmallows too. And like 15 of them! What was the waitstaff thinking?? Hot chocolate is not a normal choice for breakfast in our house, mind you, but today at Audrey's preschool they were acting out a book and having hot chocolate with their snack. She was bummed to be missing out on this, thus the hot chocolate for breakfast for her in Singapore.

We then wandered down the block to enquire about doing a Duck tour. The amphibious vehicle goes both on land and in water, which we thought the girls would enjoy. We did enjoy it and learned all sorts of interesting facts about Singapore. For example, about 30% of the land in Singapore is reclaimed land. Meaning they either use discarded dirt from construction projects or they purchase dirt from elsewhere & have it shipped in to increase the size of the island. As a matter of fact, the Carlton Hotel, where we were staying, sits 1 block from what used to be beach front. Now it is a solid mile from the water.




We also rode on the Singapore Flyer, which is a 165 meter tall ferris wheel, only it has glass enclosed capsules that you ride in. We had lovely weather for it & could see quite far. Audrey loved it & Scarlett appeared to, but was pretty tired & wanted to run around until she accidentally got clocked in the head with an Australian tourist's camera. After that she just crawled around & did her best wet (and screaming) noodle impression any time we attempted to pick her up.









After the tours, we went back to one of the malls near our hotel to have lunch. We ate at this Hawker center, which is pretty much a food court only with REALLY good food from a variety of vendors in their stalls. We had our choice of Indian, Chinese, Korean, fruit stand, Japanese, etc... I had this Roti Prata bread, which is a thin dough that is super tasty and served with curry.
We all were pretty tired after our late lunch & practically crawled back to the hotel. We put Scarlett down for a nap & the rest of us decided to close our eyes for a few minutes. Well... 3.5 hours later we all were waking up at 7:00 pm!! Yikes! Uber big mistake when trying to adjust the body to the new time zone!

We managed to make it out of the hotel & wandered the 2 blocks to the Singapore Art Museum which was a few blocks from our hotel. I found out that they have free admission on Friday nights, so it was a no brainer activity for us. There was some really interesting modern pieces by up and coming young artists. Mostly they seemed interested in land, politics, and other social issues for their subject matter. We barely made it out of there alive due to the fact that we all were hungry, especially the kids. I thought Audrey was going to lose her marbles if we stayed another minute. Usually she handles art museums & galleries very well as she has frequented them regularly since she was a zygote.

We went to dinner at another hawker center where we had Indian, steamed buns & freshly squeezed juices. Again, barely making it out alive due to exhaustion, we managed to find our way back to the hotel and crashed, eventually. Except for those of us awake writing blog entries.