Singapore Day Three

On our third day in Singapore we took the hop on hop off bus to the Gardens by the Bay park. This place has over 100 hectares of reclaimed land that is now different gardens areas that is free to the public. They also have two huge domes, Cloud Forest and Flower Dome, that house beautiful exhibits of various flora and fauna. The domes were actually a bit on the cold side (maybe in the 60's) so it felt great to get out of the heat!! There are also Super Trees in the Gardens which are vertical gardens that use solar panels and reclaimed water so they are virtually self sustaining.
First we went to the Cloud Forest dome (after doing an audio tour on a shuttle).

Longest indoor waterfall

Lego Garden

Lion door!

Near the top of Cloud Forest

Magnifying glasses for mini orchids

Stalagmites and stalactites! From here we went into the Flower dome which started off with a succulent garden and an Alice in Wonderland theme.

 Along with many other sculptures that were scattered throughout the gardens.

View from upper level

Partial people sculpture

Near Chinese Gardens

Dragonfly sculpture

Supertrees with the walkway allowing you to get a closer look. We did not do the walkway but you can see people on it - gives you a better idea of how big the Supertrees are.

Giant baby sculpture called Planet

With Carlton in front you get an idea of its size

With Marina Bay Sands in the background

Dung beetle

Fruit bat

There was an area with bushes sculpted into various creatures. Each creature had a crank near it that made the sound of that creature when you turned the crank,

Gorilla

Hornet

Cannonball tree - the pods explode

Flower clock

After exploring Gardens by the Bay for most of the day, we headed over to the Singapore Flyer to get a bird's eye view of the city. It makes one revolution in about 30 minutes and is about 4 stories high. Each car was about the size of a Singapore bus....we are guessing they meant a short bus. They were probably about 20 feet long and ten feet wide. Thankfully they were fully enclosed and air conditioned!!

Flyer from the ground

Sports arena

Top of Marina Bay Sands

Gardens by the Bay

Supertrees

Merlion Park

Dragon boats

Downtown

Outdoor concert venue at the bay

Gavin was awake!

Inside the Flyer car

Cloud Forest and Flower domes

Flyer car

We used the hop on hop off bus to get back to the MRT (train) to get home. Took a lot of pictures of the unusual architecture along the way but I will save those for another post. I'll just post a couple pics of the famous Orchard Road which is known for shopping. We did not explore that area since neither one of us was very interested in shopping. :-)

In Gavin news, he is slowly moving into three month clothing and as of yesterday (6/27), he has doubled his birth weight! According to our scale at home, he is now 13 lbs and 3 oz.

Singapore Day Two!

Day two of our Singapore trip was filled with sightseeing that was a bit easier on our feet since we used the hop on, hop off bus tours of the area! We didn't realize that Singapore is hot - hotter than Guam! It's closer to the equator, so that makes sense but we didn't realize that before our trip. Needless to say we attempted to get into places with A/C as much as possible but a lot of the sightseeing was outdoors. The buses made it easier to get around. We hit up Chinatown, Little India, and drove through other areas in the downtown district. Chinatown had a cool Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum. TONS of Buddhas inside!! It was about 4 floors and some areas allowed photography while others didn't. One room was wall to wall Buddhas that were about three inches tall and each one represented something different.

This funky building is a performing arts center

Downtown metal sculpture

My boys on the bus

Chinatown

Chinatown

Chinatown

Buddha Tooth Relic & Museum

Funky architecture

Inside Temple

Wall of Buddhas

MORE Buddhas!! About 3 inches tall each

Good luck wheel

Little India

Little India

Little India

Marina Bay Sands Hotel looks like a ship on columns

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel is a famous building that is often seen in pictures of Singapore. It's on the water in the downtown area across from Merlion Park (the Merlion statue was in my post from our first day in Singapore). The building on the bottom left that looks like an open hand is the ArtScience Museum. Cool structure but we did not get a chance to go inside.

Singapore

So Carlton had stand down in the beginning of June and we decided to take a vacation during his two weeks off. We picked Singapore because we had heard how family friendly it was and the flight was not too long. I don't have much time to share details about the trip but here are some pictures and videos from our first day - we did a lot of walking  to get an idea of what sights to go to first. We walked 8 miles that first day!!