Singapore

We arrived in Singapore around an hour before our scheduled time of 9:00 am.

This time we left the ship and ventured ashore in the typical humid and slightly overcast conditions. As with most Australians who have ventured overseas, we have been to Singapore before and have visited most of the sights we have wanted to see. So on this visit we just did some mandatory shopping on Orchard Road and joined some others from the Cruise for High Tea at Raffles Hotel in the afternoon.

Getting ashore and through immigration was relatively smooth as was the covered walkway to the MRT station. Navigating the SIngapore metro is straight forward and now they have converted to the tap-on tap-off system so there was no need to purchase tickets.

The first stop was at Orchard Road where the MRT station is inside an eight-story shopping complex. A couple of quick purchases (hat and crocs thongs for Kathy) were made and other shops including Tiffany's, Christain Louboutin Laubautin and PRADA were admired from outside the store.

A trip to the food court (called Food Opera) followed.

The only drama was looking for a bin to put our rubbish in. It turns out that there is a place to return trays and the trays are returned complete with all plates and rubbish and a person does the sorting and dumping of rubbish. So no bins in sight.

Back on the MRT to another shopping centre where a more practical shop was found to purchase some headphones for use in the Gym.

Then a walk to Raffles where we admired some of the old Colonial architecture.

Then took Piney to the Long Bar to observe Cocktails being made and to have Singapore Sling at a once-in-a-lifetime price.

Finally around to the Lobby to meet up with other cruisers to compare shopping stories. Hands down winners were the pair of ladies who turned up with arms full of bags and a total of 23 pairs of shoes between them. Not a bad effort in the 4 hours since they left the ship.

High tea was suitably formal and over the top.

We shared a taxi back to the ship with the Shoe ladies and their spoils and between the four of us, it cost about the same as the MRT ride. So back onboard with a little over 11,000 steps for the day and time to dress for dinner. (Dinner was skipped)