Entries Tagged 'Travel' ↓

It almost the middle of Day 2 (or the third day of travel – at least when I’m starting this post. Edit: It’s now Friday, so I’m way behind but not giving up yet!) The flight was uneventful, I dozed a bit, food was fine. I was pretty tired so I didn’t make any really progress in getting things done or watching TV. I read a little bit of my book and listened to some music. We landed on schedule and it took a little while to get through immigration, but nothing too bad and our luggage was already on the carousel by the time we got out. We had organised a transfer to the hotel, but unfortunately they never showed up. We spend a fair but of time waiting but in the end we got frustrated and decided to just take a taxi. We then had the issue that there was 5 of us and Maxi’s can take a while to arrive. In the end we split into two taxis. They took two different routes to the hotel, but they arrived pretty close together and the fare was less than a dollar in difference.

The hotel is nice, without being amazing. It’s almost $250/night so it’s not cheap, but then again no accomodation in Singapore is. My experience so far is that Singapore is fairly expensive, probably more so than the US. Although, this trip is slightly different – travelling with friends I’m probably less likely to cut corners on cost. Anyway checked in with no issue. We were all pretty tired and had agreed on room service for dinner. I’m on level 9 and my friends are on level 25. My card won’t let me up to their floor so we met in the lobby and then headed up to their room for dinner. Then it was time for a bath & bed!

We agreed on a relaxed start for Sunday and met on floor 4 for breakfast. The hotel that we’re staying at includes a (buffet) breakfast which is pretty good. We then headed off to do the Flower Domes and Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay. They were great – it was cool to see indoor flowers. The biggest thing I noticed when we walked in was the lovely fragrant scent of them all. They were beautiful to look it, but I can’t write a lot about it – they were flowers! We had lunch athwart is probably a typical (Singaporean) fast foot joint. Then we saw the cloud forest, it was avatar themed which was a bit of fun and there was an amazing indoor waterfall.

After that it was on the MRT (Singapore public transport) back to the hotel. I must say Singapore public transport is great. You can scan on & off with your credit card, so no extra card needed. It also covers the whole city really well. (Though that’s probably easier when you consider Singapore is the size of Bunbury and there’s not a lot of urban sprawl).

Edit: Oops – I forgot the other thing we did until I started adding photos to this post. After the cloud forest it was actually the MRT down to the water where we had a bum boat tour booked. We organised that then ducked into a nearby bar cafe to have a cold drink and some cooler air and a break from the humidity. The boat tour was good, we got to go up and down the river and hear some history about the areas we were passing by. We also got to see the Merlion (which was good – more on that later) with some decent photos. After the boat tour we headed back to the hotel!

We decided to have the buffet dinner at the hotel. The food was good, but it wasn’t cheap. We also realised it was a halal hotel which meant no port at all and also no alcohol with dinner. 14,694 steps later and 10.33 km it was time for bed.

Here are some pictures from Day 1 – you can expand them to see the full photo by clicking on the image!

OK, so I officially sucked at documenting the travels. I’m again on a plane in business class, but this is also a month after I started this post. As an aside, I’ve really got to stop upgrading to business class – I’m getting used to flying this way and it sucks when I don’t! Anyway, let’s see how much I can recall of my trip (with the help of hastily scribbled notes and credit card statements).

As I mentioned at the start of the last post, it was an early start on Monday but I didn’t have any issues. I’m glad I paid the small fee for priority on AA, especially since these flights were my basic economy fares. Unfortunately, Hartford was the one airport that didn’t have an AA (or any one world) lounge so I had to spend the time waiting for my flight in the standard lounge area – isn’t life tough!

I’m struggling to remember, which is why writing this so late is bad, but I think the flights were uneventful. Read whatever I wrote about my last AA flight – I’m sure it was pretty much the same. However, I would like to reiterate that flight across the US seem to have a lot more turbulence than in Australia. (Though given the flight I’m currently on, I’m starting to reconsider that statement). We changed planes in Miami and when I boarded (as one of the first thanks to priority) I was slightly concerned. Though nobody else seemed to worries about the smoke that seemed to be coming from the ceiling… Turns out it wasn’t smoke – have a look at this article (https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/forecasts/what-is-this-weird-thick-fog-filling-airplane-cabin-before-take-off) for a description of the phenomenon, but it was certainly something unusual that I hadn’t seen before. Despite all that we made it safely to Orlando. (and yes I forgot to mention it, but there was a brief stop in the Admiral’s club at Miami airport. This one was middle of the road as they go. Had decent stuff, but not Chicago level!)

At Orlando, after a significantly long wait, I picked up my car at Orlando. This time, it was. Mitsubishi Rouge – it still amazes me that this is a so called ‘compact’ car, but I did love the car more on that later. But here’s a picture of it to finish off this post.

OK, so I’m now a long way behind. I’m currently on my last leg of the return home, my flight from Sydney to Perth. But I’m in business class and I have internet, so lets see if I can’t pump out a few more posts before I decide to do work or play Civ!

So IC finishes and my holiday begins, but I have to get there first! I headed off back down to Hartford. There were a few times where I thought I would have a passenger, but it ended up just being me. I realised that my trip has quite a lot of driving. I do enjoy driving but it takes more concentration in the US as everybody is on the wrong side of the road! It’s not a long drive to Hartford, just under an hour but the problem was that I couldn’t check into my hotel until 3 meaning I had a bit of time to kill.

Anyone what to guess what I did? I went to Target (because they always have a Starbucks in the US) and I got a coffee! I also got pumpkin loaf, because well it’s good and we don’t have it here. That effectively gave me enough time to go find my hotel and check in.

It was nice. They had a pool that I was keen to use, but there were a lot of other people in it and I didn’t really want to share. This is me being introverted, needing some alone time after all the people at IC. I had a drink and and some chips and watched some Masterchef – me relaxing and having my alone time! I had some food, but not enough for a full meal so I decided to walk down to McDonalds (how adventurous of me), came back, ate that, watched more Masterchef!

A brief aside, because I forgot to mention this before – the food at UMass was fantastic. Admittedly it’s probably not a fair comparison, but relative to Uni food in Perth I can see why UMass has won best campus food 2+ years in a row. All the food we had was really good.

Then it was time to shower, shave etc. It was time for my holidays and as I had a few minutes I thought I should was my hair and shave etc. (Please note I did shower during IC, it was just usually done quickly as it was a busy time – this was more relaxed). I then packed which was a bit problematic. This is the same issue I ran into last year. When I have a car it’s fine. If I’m driving around I don’t have to fit everything into my suitcase, I can take backs of things, keep my dirty clothes seperate etc. The problem is going to a new place, where I have to fly, I have to refit everything into my suitcase. I also tend not to have as much room for food etc that I’ve bought. I had quite a lot that I had to go through – some of the things I throw out included a bath mat (another this UMass doesn’t provide) paper tower, a wine glass, chips and other food I hadn’t eaten yet – you see the problem! Anyway I got that all together and sorted.

Then I had a relatively early night – did I mentioned my bad planning with flight bookings. I had a 6am flight so I had to get up at about 3.45. Thankfully, the airport was literally less than 5 minutes from my hotel so that was all relatively easy and returning the rental car was no problem (even though no Hertz people were in attendance). Anyway, that the next post – see you there!

Oh, I’m not sure if I ever showed you the car I had in Massachusetts – here’s a picture of the Mum van I was driving!