In touch with my feminine side?????????

OK OK OK – I have to title is as so, because I know if any of my football mate see this blog and the amount of photos of flowers I am in deep deep trouble.

But anyways here we go ………. a MONSTER blog, I think circa 90 photos, BUT I personally think ALL worth showing. I will keep them all to large size too so you can see the beauty. But where is this??

This place is 10 minutes from where we live in Singapore. It is called Gardens on the Bay, a newly opened attraction in Singapore. We literally look at it from our condo, it’s just across the river. So yesterday with a “free” day for once we went on over, had an amazing time – like breath taking amazing time, we ate like kings at Mango Tree restaurant in the place too.

To my family;

Mum, Nan, Nikki and if only Joe were with us – you would LOVE this place, it is amazing. It’s like Kew Gardens on steroids. Mum PLEASE show this to Nan and Nikki they are gonna love this blog.

Yuko, Miz – when you are here in October, you HAVE to go. I’ll let the kids show you around. You are going to be amazed at how good this is. Bring a camera not a butterfly net – ha ha.

DK, Claire – we will absolutely be taking you here when you’re here in September. You are going to enjoy this day guys. Dinner on me.

Haruko – you just gotta come here with the girls. They/you/we would have such a lovely day. Bring an umbrella for the outside bits (gets a tad hot).

To my friends living in Singapore;

You GOTTA go to this place. We are now annual members, and will be back many times this year.

Now to follow is over 90 photos, I won’t give any commentary unless it makes sense – “picture paints a thousand words” and all that.

OK so here I am breaking what I just said. Here are some “moody” shots of these huge fake trees they have erected. These ones do nothing but look impressive and at night light up and play music. The “bark” is all orchids, yep thousands upon thousands of individual orchids in little pockets with little hoses to water them. This only gets more amazing and more “better” (sorry bad bad English).

This is flower dome. I mean just look at this place. We have looked at it from across the water, from the sister gardens on the bay on our side (nice for a walk/bike ride – but NOTHING like this), wondering what it’s like inside. You walk in and BOOM literally breath taking. HOT HOT HOT outside, you walk in this huge greenhouse structure and it’s COOL COOL COOL. It really is ( and I can’t think of another word to use, hence repetitive) AMAZING.

Here’s me ann the gang literally 5 steps in to the place. Welcome to Flower Dome.

Seriously check this place out. I just hope the photos do justice to what our eyes and other senses were experiencing as we wandered though here.

I mean what are these? Like fluffy banana plant or something. Beautiful.

Come on come on, check these out – Mr Bailey in the house. What beautiful beautiful photos. But the audience are the stars. Just stunning! Mr Totton has been teaching me some new tricks when he’s been photo’ing the cook book – Ged what you think mate???

So this is Africa – the whole place is zoned in to different geographical areas. All sort of placed on their own stage as it were. You start to see the scale of this place when I photo back along the length, it is indeed huge – and this is just one of the indoor pods.

Oh of course it’s a blog isn’t it – can I hear a faint whisper of “FaceBook FaceBook FaceBook???”
Yes indeed I can, ha ha ha!

NO words needed, just have a look at these.

And to my football mates, get a life – these are beautiful and I don’t mind saying it.

Yes I still drink, smoke, and play football – and I do NOT wear a dress, do croche, like Earl Grey Tea, Oprah, Sex in the City, or walks along the beach ……………………….

Ahhhhhh cute guys, I love this one – dear me, did I get just get a desire to do some knitting ………………?

Echo Echo Echo – FaceBook FaceBook FaceBook ………………….

AMAZING!!!! Just beautiful!

And when I say we sit in our condo and look across at these weird domes wondering what’s inside. Well here is the condo we live in shot from flower domes. The orange topped place next to the bridge – do you see it?

Back to those geography zones. I’ll say again, how can you NOT be impressed with this. This place is like Willy Wonka’s on steroids. Where’s the oompaloompas?

Off we trot outside now to the OCBC sky-walk. Can you see it? The yellow walk-way thing, 6 stories up in the fake trees. You take a lift and walk around getting birds eye views. Here’s the word again, AMAZING!

This is taken from up on the walk. See the dome in the background, the Singapore flier, Marina Bay Financial Centre on the left.

Walking through the outside gardens to get to pod number two, cloud forest. Here we are going through the Chinese Gardens.

OK here is THE most amazing part of the experience. Cloud Forest.
Cloud Forest is worth going to see on it’s own, let alone all the rest of the place.

You walk in the doors, to this cool and temperate place, mist everywhere, smells of moss and dampness – and then F*ck me a 35 metres tall waterfall. This thing is so so impressive. What are the walls of this THIRTY TWO METRE waterfall made of – flowers. All the green you see is flowers. It is truly breath-taking. You then proceed to take a lift 6 stories up to the top and then walk down a spiral footpath 6-5-4-3 type thing, and on the way experiencing loads of different things crystals, to stalagmites, to ponds, to waterfalls and so on – again I will let the pictures do the talking.

OK you see the wall from afar, now see the wall up close. Yep every step you take you get eye-fulls of this!

Did I just get a strong desire to read Women’s Own, and Marie Claire …………………..?

Come on how can you not be impressed by this place. This from the top of the waterfall, looking back at the entrance.

Some lovely snaps of our carnivore plants – Venus Fly Traps and all that. But all that aside these things are absolutely stunning!

Sorry a lighter moment.

Whilst gawping at beautiful flowers I aspied these two beautiful things and could not resist a photo. Believe it or not they were not posing for me, I sneaked a photo. The one in blue, or dragon lady as the kids called her, had this kind of mullet thing, too much makeup, an outfit from the 70’s, clearly an attitude, and well ………… the rest I leave to you …………….! Sorry to the lady!