15 March - Orchard road and some very large coffees.........

Soren again decided to start the day at 5-something and Astrid only managed to sleep through the racket for a bit longer so we were down at breakfast early again.  Astrid and Soren have their own fan club with the restaurant staff and are always getting lots of attention.  It was pretty quiet at 6.30am on a Saturday morning, without all the usual business people breakfasting, so we had the place almost to ourselves. Astrid again ate her bodyweight in peaches, yoghurt, muffins, eggs and croissants and Soren eyed off everyone else's food and munched on some toast

On a weekend the hotel runs shuttles to Marina Bay, the Esplanade and Orchard Road. We decided to take advantage and catch the shuttle to Orchard Road, via the other stops. It was about half an hour in traffic ad with the other stops being first, but we did get to do some more lazy sight-seeing from the bus. Soren napped through yet another bus trip and Astrid whinged about being tired....... not a good sign for the rest of the morning.

We were deposited at the ION Orchard shopping mall which was another up-market shopping centre full of stores we couldn't even afford to look in, but pretty much the same selection as we had seen the day before at Marina Bay Sands. We had a little wander and then headed out onto Orchard Road for a look. We had been here on our last trip and nothing much had changed, so didn't bother taking many photos. Lots more expensive designer stores, but nothing we particularly wanted to have a look at, so after a wander around we headed into some of the malls in search of morning tea.

We found a cafe that seemed to produce coffees in an acceptable size but what we thought were the large coffees were actually the smalls, and with a free size upgrade medium cappucino was bigger than my head. Astrid had her first babycino of the trip, but is still claiming milk tastes funny and refused to drink it, but yet ate the milk froth off mine which apparently tasted fine. I wasn't impressed.  She is normally pretty well-behaved but was being a little whingey and tired so we decided to head back to the hotel for some compulsory napping.

We had always planned to catch the bus back and couldn't find the stop we had intended to use but found plenty of buses that seemed to go the direction we wanted so grabbed one. Of course the MRT station turned out to be about 200m further down the road but the bus worked fine and got us directly back to the hotel, or at least would have if we had managed to get off at the right stop. We only missed by 1 stop today, only necessitating about an extra 300m walking, not the 1.5km of the day before.  The bus ride had  given us another chance to look around and we even saw some houses not far from our hotel. They looked like they were worth a bit, most had several Mercedes parked out the front of them (I think one had 6 of them!).

Back at the hotel about 12.30pm, Astrid managed to eat more of the left-over muffins she had liberated from the breakfast buffet and was convinced to have a nap to improve her demeanor. Soren had a feed and flat out refused to nap for more than 30 minutes and attempted to wake up the entire hotel (but his sister slept through it, yet again). After some baby nurofen he seemed to calm down and we decided to give up on the sleeping idea and head to the pool.

We normally have the pool pretty much to ourselves, but on a very hot Saturday afternoon there were quite a few families down there. Both Astrid and Soren enjoyed their swims. Astrid did a great job of practicing her swimming.......

 Soren also demonstrated his skills in the pool, loving the opportunity to swim around!

 Then I got two kids at once! Astrid was keen on giving her brother cuddles in the pool. I swear that is his laughing face, despite the fact he looks like he is screaming........

 Astrid then commenced her favourite game of the holiday, being thrown in the air by Anto.......She seems to favour the pike position, sometimes on an angle, but was getting some serious height!

Deciding it was time for dinner, so we could all get to bed at some point, we headed across the street to the same eating house we had been frequenting. Astrid also had them all charmed and we were welcomed by being ushered to a table, and Astrid being made a makeshift highchair from several chairs stacked on top of each other.  The ladies take it in turns to cuddle Soren and give Astrid things. She usually ends up with various bits of free food, tissues, wipes, lollies or anything else they can think to give her The blond curls and blue eyes are irresistible to them. A bit tired for some reason, Soren napped through most of tonight's dinner.

Tonight I tried the deep fried tofu, which was totally different to the version we get at home, with vegies through the tofu and a very different texture but it was really tasty. Astrid had requested the crispy squid salad again and conned her dad into getting it for her, which along with the Hong Kong noodles made quite a big dinner. She seems quite a fan of both the food and attention. Being a Saturday night it was pretty busy down there and the place was buzzing by the time we left at a bit after 6pm.

Back to the hotel for showers and an early night for kids, Anto took advantage and headed to the hotel gym for the first time. Mostly so he could say he had at least done one workout during his holiday. I'm still yet to get there........