Jet lag is doing us in today (and strep throat..?). I coughed myself awake at 6:30am. I decided I probably wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep because of all the coughing, so I checked the sunrise/sunset calendar, and Google Sky Map to see where exactly the sun was going to rise.
Since I was only about 20 minutes from sunrise by the time I got around to checking it I decided it was worth it to just stay awake. The corner of our room faces sunrise, giving us a perfect view over the water.
I sat awake for an hour and snapped a few shots on my phone before finally deciding to wake Jess up around 7:30.
Once Jess was up we decided pretty quickly on where to go have breakfast. Jess found Clinton Street Bakery on Yelp, and the reviews looked promising. Like almost everything so far, it was about a ten minute walk, and the weather was actually really nice this morning.
Clinton Street's slogan is "Made with love and butter" and they combine maple syrup and butter for their waffles and pancakes instead of giving them to you separately; tastes sort of like caramel.
I had caramelized banana french toast and Jess had the Valentine's special, chocolate raspberry pancakes. It was the most perfectly cooked french toast I've ever had (super soft and fluffy, but a little crisp on the outside), and hot unlike most breakfast foods we usually end up with. The taste didn't even come close to Ruby Slipper in New Orleans (hands down probably the best bananas foster french toast you will ever get in your life), but definitely worth trying. Jess' pancakes were delicious, and also perfectly fluffy and hot.
After breakfast we headed toward Bugis Junction which is, you guessed it, another giant maze of a shopping mall. We realized this morning that Jess forgot his swim shorts, so it turned out to be a mission to find American sized swim shorts in an Asian country. The shorts were acquired (thank you Under Armor!), but I've been unable to find a curling iron under $80 so I can tame this humidity frizz.
Also turns out that most of the stores don't open until 10 and 11 on Sundays, and a lot are closed. The whole place was also sort of empty, except for a bunch of people setting up for a Valentine's Day scavenger's hunt.
The last picture is just a neat looking building on the way back to the apartment.
We got back to the room and went to check out the pool and have a drink. The water was freezing, but made the heat much more bearable once we got back out. Drinks were pretty good and decently priced for a hotel bar. Awesome views from the lounge chairs. We'll be taking more pictures from down there at some point.
After the pool we went out for kebab/shawarma. We walked by this place yesterday and it smelled amazing, and the meat tornados looked tasty. Neither of us had ever had shwarma, but the guy making it was really helpful to suggest appropriate sauces. Omg, it was so good and we will definitely be going back. It also helped that they had an upbeat 90s pop soundtrack playing loudly. Passersby would dance their way past us on the sidewalk.
We went back over to Bugis Junction since we forgot to go to Cold Storage (the grocery store) when we were there earlier. It started to rain on the way over (huge rain drops while the sun was still shining) and we decided to go see Deadpool. This meant we had to find our way back through the maze and figure out where the movie theatre is. Unlike this morning, this mall is now packed... shoulder to shoulder in some places. We finally found it, the line was incredibly long for tickets, and then Jess realized he was looking at the wrong location for showtimes, so we decided to postpone it.
Finding Cold Storage was another adventure, but my sense of direction has been a huge help so far. If we both had Jess' sense of direction we would be in big trouble. ;)
Grocery stores here are a huge headache. They're tiny, very congested, almost completely foreign brands, and in the center of these big malls.
Figuring out how to get back out of the mall while carrying multiple grocery bags, a large jug of laundry detergent and a case of beer was not quite as easy as getting in. Then we had to wait in a really long time to get a cab. The walk is not bad at all, but carrying all that would have been awful.
The jet lag had really kicked in by this point. I laid in bed for an hour researching where to find curling irons in Singapore (still not a lot of luck) while Jess worked on some school work.
I then spent probably another hour looking at all the local restaurants and eateries online before resorting back to Dominos for delivery, because neither of us wanted to leave the room again.
We settled down with our teeny tiny pizzas (9 inches!?) and Tiger beer and watched the Amazing Race (yay, my first recording).
Updates from here on will probably be a little more sporadic, since Jess is starting work tomorrow and we don't want to burn you guys out too early on our trip.
We're slowly starting mental lists of all the things we want to do while we're here, and for such a small country there is a lot!