On Thursday, 21 February the family flew to Singapore for their second family overseas trip with Gran and Pop (who stopped over in Singapore on their way back from India).
The flight was very uneventful - a Qantas 737 to Melbourne (where the pilot invited Addi into the cockpit!), a short stopover, and a Qantas A380 to Singapore - row 57. The kids were fantastic, especially Addi who just played iPad, ate food and watched movies the whole way (same as Linc and Carter!).
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| Addi in the cockpit of a Boeing 737-800 |
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| QF35 - Boeing A380 Lawrence Hargrave |
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| QF35 to Singapore |
We arrived in the evening of Thursday, 21 February and were lucky enough to have a maxi-taxi waiting to take us to the apartment - the Village Residences in Clarke Quay - where we met up with Gran and Pop and unpacked ready for a huge week. We grabbed dinner from Chinatown, which is very close to Clarke Quay.
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| Village Residences Clarke Quay (circled) |
Day one we took it relatively easy, and headed to
Orchard Rd to see the amazing shops and commence spending (and familiarise ourselves with the MRT). It was also heaven for Linc (and Dad) as everything from luxury Rolls Royce's to sporty Lamborghini Huracan's drove by one after the other. The amazing thing about that is how expensive cars are in Singapore, partly due to government taxes, but also due to every car having its own Certificate of Entitlement that entitles the vehicle to use Singapore roads for up to 10 years. The current price of a CoE is $35,000 SGD. Add that to the cost of a Huracan (below) and you're looking at $935,000 SGD or $975,000 AUD...!
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| Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4 |
Mum bought Dad a beautiful Ermenegildo Zegna leather/silver bracelet for our wedding anniversary, and the kids spent-up big at Toys R Us, but aside from that we were very restrained considering the huge number of amazing shops.
Fun fact about Ermengildo Zegna, an Italian luxury fashion house founded in 1910 that makes men's clothing and accessories: it is one of the biggest global producers of fine fabrics (2.3 million metres per year) and is the largest menswear brand in the world by revenue, producing suits for Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Dunhill and Tom Ford. Zegna is one of the biggest buyers of ultra-fine Merino wool, and has encouraged, supported and rewarded the efforts of the Australian wool industry since 1963 in the production of finer and softer wools. They hold annual world wool awards (not kidding) and in 2010, a soft ultra-fine 10-micro fleece from Windradeen, NSW set a new world record and won the Ermenegildo Zegna Vellus Aureum International Trophy. But you'll pay for the privilege of wearing Zegna product; for example, a Zegna tie will set you back $345 (I have two - both from eBay, and both for under $100!). Now you know.
For lunch we went to a food court in one of the shopping centres (see below photo) and for dinner we went to an Italian restaurant in Chinatown which was really quite good.
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| The food was amazing; even the food court's had exceptional meals! |
Day two (Saturday) we headed to
Seaworld and were blown away by how amazing it is. The tanks are huge - especially the biggest one - and there's a really good variety of marine life to see. The only downside was the huge crowds and every second person with their stupid selfie-stick getting in the way. It was also our first Singapore experience of trying to keep seven people (including an adventurous three-year-old) together.
In the afternoon we headed to Suntec City as we had booked a
Duck Tour which is an amphibious ex-military DUKW vehicle that tours the key sites through the Civic District from the water.
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| Duck Tour - VERY noisy, very hot, but a different way to see Singapore's Civic District |
Gran and Pop took the kids back to the apartment for their first swim in the pool while Mum and Dad had drinks at the Mandarin Oriental Bar (MO Bar).
Day three (Sunday) we headed to
Gardens by the Bay followed by lunch and some more shopping (although not much purchasing was done - more looking) at
Marina Bay Sands. We did the Sky Garden and Flower Dome and were all brave enough to do the SkyWalk. Addi continued to draw significant interest due to her blonde hair and bright blue eyes - we should have charged a fee for photos!
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| One of the many occasions people wanted a photo with Addi |
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| Sky Garden |
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| Sky Garden |
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| Flower Dome |
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| Sky Walk |
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| The famous boat-on-a-building building |
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| Sky Garden |
Day three was also a very special day; so Mum and Dad headed to the Manhattan bar at the Regent Hotel for the most expensive drinks in the world (luckily they were awesome, with names like 'Coal', 'Bellini', 'Mad Men' and 'Iron Horse').
Day four (Monday) was by far out biggest day with a private car to Malaysia to visit
Legoland! It was particularly hot and humid, but super awesome as there was hardly anybody there (although the park is obviously designed for very large crowds). It was really good in that it had rides for little kids through to bigger kids. The kids loved meeting Lego Batman and the Lego Dragon really loved Addi (along with most of the Asian and Indian visitors to the park who constantly wanted photos with the our family's biggest attraction - Addi!).
The best ride in the park (by Dad and Carter's standards) was the VR rollercoaster. Linc went on once with Pop (without the VR goggles) but didn't like it. Carter went on three times - twice with the goggles and once without - as he loved it (although the below photo says otherwise). It was a fantastic ride - the goggles take you into a virtual Lego car race and there's rises and dips and side to side movements as you dodge various objects. It's also quite isolating as the roller coaster disappears, as does the person sitting next to you and you have no concept of what's happening in the real world. But a real buzz nonetheless.
The live Lego Ninjago show was really good also; they used big puppets to tell a short story and it was nice and cool in the theatre (did I mention how hot/humid it was?!).
After a massive day at Legoland, we had to rush to get to our pickup point at 5pm for the trip back to Singapore. And Addi fell asleep almost immediately...
For Day five onward, see the next blog post!
