USA Part Eleven - Back to San Francisco

After very long, long journey we arrived in San Francisco - it was my second time to visit the city and Rich's first. I was excited to show him some of the things I saw last time and explore some new things.

I was also excited to come back to San Francisco because we were going to catch up with a bunch more friends here! Including Kiki (who Rich hadn't met before) yah!

When we first arrived in San Francisco, we had to take a bus from the train station and finally to a central city bus stop where Kiki met us and helped to direct us to our hotel. When we were all checked in we decided to visit the Japanese Tea Garden (you all know by now how I feel about Japanese and Chinese Gardens).

The Japanese Tea Gardens are within Golden Gate Park and as Kiki is a local she knew that we could get a good view from the top of the fine arts museum, by heading straight to the lift (no entry fee). It pays to know someone local!

We explored Golden Gate Park a little more with Kiki, its a seriously pretty place.

 Next stop for the day was Japantown - I don't even know how I could have possibly missed Japantown last time I visited San Francisco!

Kiki and I went to have our photos taken in one of these cute photo booths - I  haven't used one of these since I left Korea so I jumped at the chance to have some pictures taken. You can add all kinds of cutesy features once your photos have been taken - for some reason Rich chose to sit this out. 

We only had a brief look around Japantown as a lot of the stores where already closing by the time we got there. We did stop by this really cute bakery though.

After Japantown it was time to say goodbye to Kiki, but there was time for one last photo by the pagoda. Thanks for taking time off to hang with us Kiki - you're awesome!

After spending a day exploring San Francisco, Rich  and I decided we needed a break so we headed back to our hotel for a bit. At around 7pm we decided we wanted to go for a bit of a walk and maybe find a bite to eat. But because we have some kind of problem a bit of a walk turned into us exploring Chinatown for a couple of hours (because that's how we roll).

 I literally can't remember if we ended up eating at all! But exploring Chinatown was a lot of fun, I feel like I saw a bunch of new stuff that I didn't see last time I was here (and of course things do change over a couple of years). After exploring Chinatown it was finally time to collapse as there were many more adventures ahead!

Singapore Part I - ALL OF THE THINGS

Rich and I both love to travel, but when we travel together we have a bit of a problem. That is we try to see and do as MUCH AS POSSIBLE each and every day. Sounds great right? Well yes and no - I love that we are both keen to get out and do as much as we can and not just sit around a pool. 

However, there is a problem with our attitude to travel, that is we do and see so much we just end up exhausted to the extreme. I guess its because we are from New Zealand and whenever we go anywhere we always think "but what if we never make it back here - I don't want to miss anything". 

When we talk about our "extreme" tourism aka trying to do EVERYTHING in one day, we often talk about "that day in Tokyo" where we did so much I was physically exhausted for about two days afterwards and to be honest my brain was kind of fuzzy in a "can't take in any more history or culture" kind of way.

Well our first day in Singapore was pretty close to "that day in Tokyo" we did a whole LOT of stuff! Just as well much of the following day was spent on a train to Malaysia.

Anyways on our first day in Singapore we woke up pretty earlier, mostly because of the jetlag and we took the MRT to City Hall Station (just like I did a couple of years back to meet up with Chloe).

First stop was checking out the whole waterfront type area, including the Merlion. I can never get enough of the Merlion.

We also met up with a ele-corn or a uni-phant near the merlion and I  was quite taken by him!

We continued walking around the bay, before we had left on our trip our friends Kai and Diane had told us there were amazing views from the Marina Bay Sands and we should go and check it out. They were totally right - it was awesome. 

Then there was more walking, more walking and more walking - obviously!

 We stopped for ice cream sandwiches - delicious!

Finally we arrived in China town - which was really vibrant, so much happening!

 

We had lunch and plenty of ice tea in China Town and decided we wanted to head to Robertson Quay, along the way we stopped off in a mall. In New Zealand we NEVER go to malls, but they are  air conditioned and its great to visit the mall for a few minutes when you're melting from heat. Once we left the mall we did see this cute little "wall of love". 

Then it was time to check out Robertson Quay - by this stage, we realised how far we had walked. Too FAR! SO HOT!

So we stopped off and bought a drink, one of my favourites when I'm traveling in this part of the world - a milo dinosaur. We decided to take our drinks up to Fort Canning and check out the park. The park was a lot of fun, but I've got to admit it felt a bit like being a terrarium - mostly because of the heat.

After this it was time to slowly make our way home, but we did make a couple of more stops along the way including the National Library of Singapore - Rich IS a librarian after all. Here's the view from the library.

 On the second day of the trip we left for Malaysia and as we took the train it meant we could sit down for most of the day. Which was kind of awesome for obvious reasons!