Singapore

---

I can honestly say that Singapore is one of my most favourite places I have ever visited! From the moment we landed everyone has been friendly and helpful, the place is clean and well maintained and it's peaceful. Despite being a city there aren't hoards of people getting in your way as you walk down the street, or people begging you to look at their menus and eat in their restaurants.

When we arrived at our hotel we were a bit disappointed as it was quite small, that being said it's the only one I've given 5 stars to on Trip Advisor this whole time. We were in an excellent location, Clarke Quay where we spent our first evening drinking cocktails and making an itinerary for the rest of the week.

We woke up early and walked towards Marina Bay Sands via a little parade of restaurants on the river. We found our breakfast joint for the next 4 days... Eggs Benedict and great WIFI, what more could you want! As we were walking along we found a cat cafe!! We obviously went in and spent an hour with 13 cute kitties!!

When we finally tore ourselves away from the kits we made it to Marina Bay Sands. It costs $50 for two people to go up to the top and look around at the views... that is unless you go into the hotel and get in a lift with a guest who has a key card, then you can get up there for free! We sat in the bar up there for a while and then went off to the Gardens of the Bay. We spent hours walking around and through the trees that are actually big metal structures that have plants threaded through them. In years to come you won't be able to see the metal structure underneath them as they will have grown so bushy!

There are also two domes, one that contains thousands of flowers and another which we visited at night which has the largest man made waterfall. It was incredible, and it felt really fresh in there. Not what I expected, which was a big sweaty greenhouse!

Nightlife in Singapore is great if you're staying in Clarke Quay, happy hour cocktails, plenty of food and good music blaring out from many bars!

We were supposed to only have 4 nights here but we ended up spending 5 the final night being all expenses paid for as our cruise was delayed coming out of the dry dock by a day. We got moved to a Shangri La hotel and had one of the best nights sleep we've had the whole trip. The bed was SO comfy! Eventually we got picked up and taken to the cruise terminal where we boarded our 13 night cruise to Australia!

---