Our visitors to Singapore enjoyed:
Christmas Eve at Singapore's award-winning Changi Airport.
Walked along from terminal 3 to Jewel mall with the waterfall in the middle. They got a glimpse of the top of it but the crowds were so dense they and we soon decided to give up and go home.
Jewel
Jewell is badly designed with the entrance to the waterfall overlook too narrow for a crowd, lifts too small for families who are bound to visit, one family with two toddlers in baby strollers, and another family with a stroller or wheelchair and scarcely room for four of us, the third family. Everybody else waiting for another lift. No sign of a toilet.
Back in Terminal three, when you go down to the basement for the taxis, still no toilet. You wait for the lift then take the lift up not one floor but three floors. The lifts are large, bigger than the ones in Jewel. The toilets have bidet style water showers attached.
En route home we told the visitors from England to Singapore that Singapore was already building terminal 5 which would be bigger than all the other terminals combined, and
1 At home from a condominium balcony:
A piece of aloe vera, which looks like a star shaped cactus reaching up, the insides of a slimy juice supposedly good for burns.
2 Setting Off: The MRT, mass rapid transit, underground railway.
Clean, modern, every 5 minutes or less time.
Signs above the doors tell you they will be opening Other Side as you pull into a station.
At Botanical Gardens we stopped on the platform to check our MRT maps and a member of staff who is always on the platform rushed over to help advise us the quickest route.
3 The Botanic Gardens - free!
Lovely shaped archways for climbing plants.
Food plants with plaques.
The Orchid Garden
Free to Citizens and Permanent Residents Only about 5 Singapore dollars for tourists.
Orchids named after famous people: Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, Lee Kuan Yew.
The bandstand.
The water fall.
A giant tree planted long ago by Lee Kuan Yew.
Swans and a swan sculpture in the lake.
A girl on a swing sculpture.
People walking small well-behaved dogs on leashes.
A mahogany tree.
The Tanglin Club
All the big restaurants were fully booked.
Food not up to the usual standard. Fresh juice - not as flavourful as usual. tasted watered down.
Chicken sandwiches, cheap but chewy, tough, tasteless, dry chicken. good salad and chips on the side
Hardly any beef in the sandwich.
Ngee Ann City
Huge central tree with golden baubles. Up the entrance atrium. Looks like the one I have seen pictured in Galeries Lafayette in Paris, France.
Basement food area where we were offered free coffee, free tea.
Orchard Road Singapore 2019
Triangular lights Xmas tree shape and multi-coloured sponsored by Hitachi.
Hanukiah
Decorated columns.
Gateway transparent walkway tube at second storey (counting ground as level one like in the USA) across Orchard Road.
Mall called 313@Somerset
Indoors but straight, like a traditional street of shops. Lots of amusement. One restaurant had a sign, Don't worry, beer happy.
Emerald Hill
Chinese shophouses, ground floor shopfronts, with tiled roofs overhanging the ground floor. family bedrooms with shutters above.
A Chinese business with typical row of orange round orange shape lanterns outside.
Bottle with red bow on the tables outside El Paso bar, Emerald Hill, just off Orchard Road below Orchard Gateway. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
Penguin and Igloo Photo Opportunity
The Singapore Flyer was closed, we phoned to check for them, for technical reasons. Good thing we phoned.
Home to hear the Queen's Christmas Message. St George's Chapel, singers and violins. She referred to the moon landing, one small step for a man, a big step for mankind, then the anniversary of D day and the veterans of opposite sides coming together for reconciliation - small steps eventually having big results.
Useful Websites
Singapore Airlines
singaporeair.com
About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer author and speaker. See next post for photos of the Swan lake Sculpture at the Botanical gardens. Please share links to your favourite pictures.
Christmas Eve at Singapore's award-winning Changi Airport.
Walked along from terminal 3 to Jewel mall with the waterfall in the middle. They got a glimpse of the top of it but the crowds were so dense they and we soon decided to give up and go home.
Changi Airport. Jewel mall fountain. If only the paths were wider so we could have got nearer. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
Jewel
Jewell is badly designed with the entrance to the waterfall overlook too narrow for a crowd, lifts too small for families who are bound to visit, one family with two toddlers in baby strollers, and another family with a stroller or wheelchair and scarcely room for four of us, the third family. Everybody else waiting for another lift. No sign of a toilet.
Back in Terminal three, when you go down to the basement for the taxis, still no toilet. You wait for the lift then take the lift up not one floor but three floors. The lifts are large, bigger than the ones in Jewel. The toilets have bidet style water showers attached.
En route home we told the visitors from England to Singapore that Singapore was already building terminal 5 which would be bigger than all the other terminals combined, and
1 At home from a condominium balcony:
A piece of aloe vera, which looks like a star shaped cactus reaching up, the insides of a slimy juice supposedly good for burns.
2 Setting Off: The MRT, mass rapid transit, underground railway.
Clean, modern, every 5 minutes or less time.
Signs above the doors tell you they will be opening Other Side as you pull into a station.
At Botanical Gardens we stopped on the platform to check our MRT maps and a member of staff who is always on the platform rushed over to help advise us the quickest route.
3 The Botanic Gardens - free!
Lovely shaped archways for climbing plants.
Food plants with plaques.
The Orchid Garden
Free to Citizens and Permanent Residents Only about 5 Singapore dollars for tourists.
Orchids named after famous people: Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, Lee Kuan Yew.
The bandstand.
The water fall.
A giant tree planted long ago by Lee Kuan Yew.
Swans and a swan sculpture in the lake.
A girl on a swing sculpture.
People walking small well-behaved dogs on leashes.
A mahogany tree.
The Tanglin Club
All the big restaurants were fully booked.
Food not up to the usual standard. Fresh juice - not as flavourful as usual. tasted watered down.
Chicken sandwiches, cheap but chewy, tough, tasteless, dry chicken. good salad and chips on the side
Hardly any beef in the sandwich.
Ngee Ann City
Huge central tree with golden baubles. Up the entrance atrium. Looks like the one I have seen pictured in Galeries Lafayette in Paris, France.
Basement food area where we were offered free coffee, free tea.
Orchard Road Singapore 2019
Triangular lights Xmas tree shape and multi-coloured sponsored by Hitachi.
Hanukiah
Decorated columns.
Photo by Angela Lansbury.
Gateway transparent walkway tube at second storey (counting ground as level one like in the USA) across Orchard Road.
Mall called 313@Somerset
Indoors but straight, like a traditional street of shops. Lots of amusement. One restaurant had a sign, Don't worry, beer happy.
Emerald Hill
Chinese shophouses, ground floor shopfronts, with tiled roofs overhanging the ground floor. family bedrooms with shutters above.
A Chinese business with typical row of orange round orange shape lanterns outside.
Bottle with red bow on the tables outside El Paso bar, Emerald Hill, just off Orchard Road below Orchard Gateway. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
Penguin and Igloo Photo Opportunity
The Singapore Flyer was closed, we phoned to check for them, for technical reasons. Good thing we phoned.
Home to hear the Queen's Christmas Message. St George's Chapel, singers and violins. She referred to the moon landing, one small step for a man, a big step for mankind, then the anniversary of D day and the veterans of opposite sides coming together for reconciliation - small steps eventually having big results.
Useful Websites
Singapore Airlines
singaporeair.com
About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer author and speaker. See next post for photos of the Swan lake Sculpture at the Botanical gardens. Please share links to your favourite pictures.
