Traveling always involves significant preparation, and this time was no different – I had a running to-do list that ranged from packing up our room to sorting out what clothes I was taking to cooking dishes that would use up the last of our food. Chris and Zeean, Travis’s parents, came down the weekend before we left and kindly took up two carloads of our stuff to store at their house until we return (how do I have so much stuff??) My friend Annie is borrowing my car while I’m gone, so we signed a contract for that.
On Tuesday was my 25th birthday, as well as Travis’s final presentation day. I dropped Travis off in the morning and spent some time at a library using their sewing machines before going to watch his presentation at noon.
Afterwards I picked up Annie and we met Noah at the hotpools for a midday soak and ocean swim – I did go in, even though the ocean and I are not good friends. Afterwards we went into town for an icecream and did an escape room – we only needed 7 extra minutes and about as many hints. To end the day we met Travis and Ethan and Caleb for sushi dinner. My birthdays have always been memorable – when I was younger we went camping every year, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve always celebrated in some way or another. It’s my job now to make sure I do something fun and memorable to mark the years as they go by, which on the one hand can seem a bit self-absorbed, but also just is a reason to do something fun with friends.
Our flight was on Friday morning, so Wednesday and Thursday were really just a waiting game since we were pretty much packed up and ready to go. Sometimes I get very anxious before traveling, but not this time. Travis on the other hand was angry at the time for passing so slowly – he could not wait to get going.
Finally it was Friday morning and I handed over the keys to my car to Annie at the airport. We got to our gate without a problem hours early. We flew 3 hours to Melbourne, ate lunch there, and then flew 8 hours to Singapore. Once in Singapore we stored our checked bags at the airport and took the (glorious, beautiful, clean) public transport to our hostel. The hostel was not the cleanest but it was a “capsule hostel”, which meant that our double bed had curtains on it and we at least had some privacy. By the time we went to sleep we had been up for 22 hours.
The next morning we woke up at the reasonable time of 7, had some breakfast at the hostel and then bussed to Chinatown, where we quickly found out that people wake up quite a bit later – almost everything was still closed. We had a nice walk around the mostly empty Chinatown and went into a couple temples. Travis quickly learned that you are not allowed in with shorts, even as a man – luckily one temple had some scarves for covering up.
Our entire Singapore experience was defined constantly by the heat and humidity. Whenever we were outside we were sweating – Travis especially. The busses and Metro were beautiful air-conditioned relief, along with some buildings like the malls and some temples. We quickly learned that cold drinks and icecream was another way to make the heat more bearable.
Once Chinatown opened up around 10, we got a soursop drink and a Po-Lo bun to eat, both of which were divine. We had also debated getting some durian – it was sold in every second shop, but was quite expensive. While ambling down a road, a white kid about 14 years old stopped us and said that his family had bought some durian but didn’t like it, and did we want the rest? Yes please, we said, a perfect opportunity to try it. For those who don’t know, durian is a big fruit with a spiky outside and big seeds covered in pulp inside. It smells pretty horrendous, so bad in fact that it is banned on public transport in Singapore. If you can stomach the smell, however, it is sweet and buttery and has a taste reminiscent of freshly baked sweetbread. It has been described to me as making love with a fruit in your mouth – an odd description but I can see why someone would say that. Eating the durian was an experience well worth having, but after one piece both Travis and I had had enough – it’s one of those things where I think “that was yummy, but I think if I have any more I might throw up”. There were still two pieces left, so, taking a leaf out of the kid’s playbook, we went around asking unsuspecting tourists if they would like our durian. Third time’s the charm, and so the durian found it’s third and final home.
We then bussed out to a reservoir on the edge of the city that had a treetop walk. There were lots of macaques there that weren’t scared of people at all. It was cool to see the forest, and we heard lots of cicadas, a couple birds, and saw some cool insects. By the end, however, we were plastered in sweat, hungry, and overheating. I had been recommended to try Roti Paratha, a kind of food, and so we bussed to find some but got lost in the mall and ended up settling for some random but yummy Chinese food.
That afternoon we bussed out to the Marina Bay Sands area, which is an incredibly fancy area of Singapore with some very impressive architecture. The most famous of these is the Marina Bay Sands hotel – see pictures as for why. Travis really wanted to go to the top – easier said than done. We went up the elevator in the middle tower and almost got convinced into spending an exorbitant amount of money on dinner in exchange for the view. After making a speedy escape, we went up the third tower in an elevator full up people, some of whom were staying at the hotel and swiped their card, which allowed us to go to the top. The views were unbelievable from up there, and we just stood there in awe for about 10 minutes before deciding we should try to see another angle – unfortunately there were more checkpoints where you needed a room card and we beat a swift retreat before being escorted down.
We walked around the Gardens by the Bay in the early evening – this is the garden with the famous fake trees, which are pretty cool in person, but once you’ve seen them you’ve seen them and can move on.
We tried to get Roti Paratha again for dinner, but the restaurant had closed early. We wandered around hungry and grouchy before finally deciding on a Korean restaurant, which turned out to be an excellent choice. The food was so delicious and came with 6 bottomless sides. We were confused when the waiter brought out all this food we hadn’t ordered, but really enjoyed them once established that they came with the meal.
The next morning we went to the Botanic Gardens, which were quite impressive. There was a large ethnobotany section that talked about how local tribes used different plants, which would have been a lot cooler if I had been at all familiar with the plants and/or the tribes.
We had some salmon bowls for lunch at a mall and then Travis wanted to buy some trail runners because his other shoes were hurting his feet. We quickly realized, however, that Singapore is a very bad place to buy trail runners, seeing as any trail you will find will be either a sidewalk or at worst a well-maintained gravel path.
That afternoon, we went to a water park. We had been hot and sweaty for 2 days now and decided that before we got on the plane, we wanted to cool down and also have a shower. The water park called Wild Wild Wet was fairly close to the airport, and we found a discount online that meant it wasn’t too expensive. While we were walking there from the bus stop, it started POURING rain, and continued at varying intensities throughout the afternoon. What better place to be in the rain than a water park? It wasn’t a cold rain, and the water at the park was plenty warm. We went down lots of waterslides, including one in which you had to stand in a tube before having the floor dropped out from under you before falling down 10 or so meters (lots of water went up my nose on that one).
After the water park we stopped to buy a snack with the rest of our cash – Roti Paratha, if you could’ve guessed. Third time’s the charm. It was delicious.
We ate dinner at the airport and our flight left around 8. We had an 8 hour flight to Abu Dhabi, 2 hours there, and then a 6 hour flight to Rome, where we landed at 5am local time. It was like one weirdly long night with some odd breaks in the middle. Both of us did sleep a good amount but were still tired when we arrived.
From the airport we took a shuttle to the middle of Rome, where the first order of business was breakfast. It was only about 7am, but we did manage to find an open cafe and get some breakfast. I then went on a wild goose chase to get a bus pass while Travis say with our (very heavy) bags. I think I’ve neglected to say until now that our bags contain not only clothes for traveling but also ski boots, ski jackets, ski pants, ski goggles, ski gloves, and I have a ski helmet. They weigh around 20kg each. Getting on a metro packed to overflowing with those bags on our bag was an experience I did not really want to repeat. We decided to go to our hostel to see if we could store our bags for the day. Check in wasn’t till 2, and there was in fact no one there at that point. We decided to try our luck with a bag storage locker, only to book one and find out the shop it was in no longer existed. Luckily they agreed to refund us the money. In the end I waited with our bags in a dog park across from the hostel while Travis went to go buy himself some shoes and get us some (very yummy) lunch from the supermarket. At 12 we finally dropped off our bags and went for a walk until we could get into our room and have a shower at 2. We quickly realized that there was a reason it was so cheap – the hot water didn’t work, the shower didn’t drain, and there was no hand soap. We made do.
That evening we went to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. It is a truly impressive church (probably the most impressive), and in hindsight we should have started with something smaller to get some perspective.
That evening we got acquainted with my two new favorite apps, TheFork and Too Good to Go. TheFork is an app that lets you make reservations at restaurants with up to 50% off your meal – I don’t feel so bad eating out when it costs €15 for the both of us having quite a nice meal. Too Good to Go is an app designed to combat food waste – you reserve a small, medium, or large bag from a bakery or restaurant or grocery store, and then the store puts in the bag whatever they haven’t sold that day, and you pick it up at the end of the day – what you get is a suprise. We’ve been doing it for breakfast, and we’ve ended up with pizza, sandwiches, croissants, and donuts for breakfast. A large bag is €5, a medium one €4, and a small one €3 (usually, there are some exceptions). A large bag is enough for both of us to have a large breakfast with some leftovers for snacks.
The next morning we went to the Colosseum, and in the afternoon the Foro Romano. It’s truly impressive to see what the Romans built almost 2000 years ago without any of the modern technology we have today. In fact, I doubt many if any of the things built today will be standing in a condition that is as good as the buildings the Romans built in 2000 years. Later that afternoon we saw the Patheon and the Trevi Fountain, as well as other random archeological sites and landmarks just sprinkled through the city. I wonder what its like to be a Roman living in the middle of all of this ancient history.
That night, we slept for a solid 12 hours. Until that point the jetlag was still making us tired, but after that sleep we’ve been pretty ok. We went to a local market in the morning and got some cheese (and Travis got some salami), and then we took the metro to the edge of the city and went to a park with some ruins of aqueducts – again just another random park with significant archeological works. We’d decided we wanted to go see a catacomb nearby that afternoon, but saw on the website that modest dress was required – no shorts allowed. This meant we made an emergency stop at a local second hand shop and Travis bought a pair of pants to wear. He is a proud shorts only wearer, but is quickly learning that Europe expects pants, sometimes when you least expect it, so you better be prepared.
The catacombs were an underground maze; a guided tour was required and it was evident why – I would have been quickly lost in there without one. There were 12km of underground tunnels with a wide variety of graves. The ones we saw were either still sealed, or, if they had been opened by grave robbers, had had their bones moved to other levels out of respect for the dead.
We concluded our visit in Rome with another walk around the central city and then a yummy pasta dinner. The next day we took a bus to Florence.