4/1–Singapore

We don’t really sleep all that late, considering we’d been up for so long the day before.  We’re actually awake around 7 and ready to go by 8, surprisingly enough.  The Club hotel comes with a full breakfast at their cafe – The Disgruntled Brasserie – next door, so we wander over and have an amazingly huge breakfast – Full English for Ed with all the accoutrements – including a salad – and a Gruyere Omelet for me, which is so perfectly done, sitting atop a huge slab of brioche toast, that is looks fake.  It’s amazing though – and way too much for me to eat, but it will serve for our one meal of the day –that’s for sure.

Today, our plans are to explore the Botanical Gardens, which we passed on our last trip here, but didn’t have time to go into.  We take the subway, which is a really easy ride on one line.  The station about a 10 minute walk from the hotel and ends up dumping us out at the entrance to the gardens.  And cheap!  Two return tickets were only 7.40 Singapore Dollars, which is $5.30 USD.  Can’t beat it.  The subway is clean and cool and fast. 

The gardens are huge.  We don’t know how many acres, but the docent at the entrance who gives us our map tells us it would take 4 1/2 to 5 hours to walk the whole thing.  Well, that’s a bit more than our agenda calls for – we’re just going to take in the highlights along the way to the Orchid Garden (yes, more Orchids!) then call it a day.

It is gorgeous in there – even though it is hot and humid (more humid than hot, really, it’s only 80 degrees, but with the humidity we are melting) – the plants, landscaping, lakes and wide green spaces make it bearable (sort of). We start off past the trellis garden with loads of hanging plants and vines, including the pretty flowers to the right.

We follow the path through the park, past the bamboo collection and the foliage garden, spotting a nice big lizard on the way. 

Then up into the Main visitor centre passing the Evolution Garden, which the docent says is one of the best parts of the garden. We figure we’ll hit that on the way back, since it will be an easy detour. The Visitor Centre is awash with people. There is a packed restaurant, a gift shop and people just generally milling around.  We take the opportunity to use the facilities then skeedaddle out of there.  We’ve got more territory to cover!

Wandering past the Symphony Lake, we spy the rain forest garden (which ironically has a sign that says not to enter the garden when it there is a rainstorm).  We think about taking this diversion, but then decide to just get to the main attraction and see if we feel like going there on the way back.  The Orchid Garden turns out to be well worth the extra 6 SPD entrance fee (5 for me, 1 for Ed).  It is fantastic!  The varieties and the landscaping are over the top – and the flowers are amazing.

There are all sorts of cool “photo spots,” all marked as such – where we stop for pix.  A nice couple even takes a picture of the two of us together in front of one of the beautiful planting arrays.