La Dolce Vita

Mini Honeymoon – Huge Fun! Singapore Here We Come!

By Meirav Markowitz | August 13, 2014

You know those emails that sometimes people send you, usually your mom, with a PPT about cute dogs or a funny cartoon (which is not really funny) or a cool location around the world? So, in 2010 I got one from my mom (of course) about one of the coolest rooftop swimming pools in a hotel in Singapore.

It looked so fancy and so far away that I thought that I can’t even dream of going to such a place… but life has many surprises! 🙂

As you know, one year later I found myself being an expat in China, 3 years later I got married in Israel and immediately went back to my life in Beijing. So we started looking for some close by (to China), cool locations to celebrate our honeymoon.

Since my husband (still weird to say it) needed to go to his studies in Singapore, I start dreaming again about this hotel!

Singapore here we come!

We only had one full weekend, so we called it mini honeymoon. Of course, we booked my dream hotel – Marina Bay Sands Hotel. I have to say it was expensive but not as much as I expected. The hotel is huge! They have 3 towers; all having 57 floors where they are connected to one big “boat” that have the swimming pool in it. There is one great restaurant on the top roof and a cool sky bar for drinks and snacks. Since we arrive to Singapore at 7:00am we went immediately to the swimming pool to take photos (when there are not too many people).

So what can you do in only 72 hours in Singapore?

1. Botanic gardens – beautiful! We got there by subway (very convenient). There was a nice lake with ducks and turtles, amazing flowers and special unique trees, you just feel like in a fairy tale!

2. Dempsey Hill – looks more like Beverly Hills. Really beautiful, big villas in the middle of a jungle.

There are 2 great restaurants that I would go for brunch/lunch in the area, one is called “White Rabbit”; this place used to be a church and they redecorate it to a really nice restaurant with many options on the menu.

The other place called P.S Café– we had a great salad and a sandwich and for dessert some cakes that were just divine! Any restaurant in this area will be great as well!

3. Bugis Junction– the Bugis street is a big street market with clothing and accessories, while the junction is a big shopping mall, next to it you can also find more electronic malls. In Singapore the prices for all the electronic products are about 10%-20% lower than the original ones. So if you need a new computer or a tablet you should definitely buy it there!

4. Chijmes- An area from the British colony, very beautiful, has many different good restaurants. We ate there at a Japanese place in a small ally, named Tustsu- amazing fresh and yummy sushi!

5. Sentosa Island – This place is an amazing island, especially for children! They have the beach of course, there is a yacht club where we had breakfast (Kith’s place) and they have Universal studios, I didn’t go there but next time I’ll go there for sure. We took a taxi into the island and from there we took an upper train (for free!) that its last stop is back to Singapore Island at a huge mall! They say this is the best mall to shop in the world.

6. China town- for me it’s always interesting to check out the local China town, since there are a lot of Chinese people in Singapore it makes sense to have it there. I have to say that the street food there looks much nicer than in China (also super clean!) 😉

7. The big big gardens – next to the hotel there are amazing gardens, which from the top looks like the place where they shoot the “Avatar” movie. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to go but it looks amazing to walk around this area… 😉

8. The Marina Bay Sands Hotel- First of course there is the swimming pool that I already mentioned. During the evening I would recommend to experience the Casino, it’s really cool and huge! But be careful not to spend too much money. And on the last evening we went to a Broadway show- “Sounds of Music” and it was just perfect!

The people in Singapore are so nice, every taxi driver that we had was super intelligent and was happy to tell us the history of Singapore and the great places we should go. The food is amazing, the streets are clean and very organized, easy to get along, the public transportation is super friendly to use and efficient.

The warning signs on the subway

There are so many things to do, to see and to be at, the architecture is special and unique, the weather is great (it’s hot outside but the indoor places are very well chilled by AC) and I think it’s just a perfect place to visit and even to live in, well it’s also very small so maybe just for a year or so..

Singapore, you treat me so well, I would definitely come back to you again!

For more restaurants recommendation:

	Amarone– Italian restaurant, we had great simple spaghetti and a stake, a few glasses of really good house red wine!
	Les Amis– French restaurant, very good, really expansive and really tiny small dishes! We had a steak – one of the best I ate in my life, I think it was about 60 grams and cost about 60$!! (USD!!)
	Marche Movenpick– Swiss restaurant, next to the Raffle city. We only came for dessert; I had there the red berries crepe with Movenpick stracciatella ice cream! Yummy!