Singapore: Day 9

Today we had an awesome lunch planned at Sky on 57, which is located at the top of the Marina Sands hotel.  The hotel, like all the others, is connected to a huge mall and metro station so it was easy to get to in our dress clothes.  The Marina Sands itself is huge.  They even have a map so that you can get around and the mall provided full fledged tour books with room for notes and check off lists of specialty stores and attractions.  We also took advantage of their clean bathrooms.  We encountered some pretty disgusting bathrooms on our trip, but I've been to mainland China too many times for it to really bother me.  Traveling to Asia always makes me very appreciative of the clean public bathrooms in our office building. 

Modern art hanging in the atrium of the Marina
Sands.

To kill some time while wandering around the
mall, we stopped at a coffee shop and saw these
super cute macaroons.

This is the description of Sky on 57 from the mall
tour book. 

We skipped breakfast this morning knowing that we were having a nice four-course meal for lunch. It's a good thing too because we were super stuffed. I normally don't eat the bread when I go to restaurants and especially not the butter, but I figured that I was on vacation so I was gobbling it down like I'd never had it before.  

At the top of the Marina Sands.  We were lucky
to have reservations for the restaurant because
they had guards at the bottom of the elevators who
stop you from going to the top to take pictures. 

I was quite apprehensive of getting near the glass to take these
pictures. 

Our menu selection

I seriously ate at least six little baggetts. 

Vine rippened tomato salad with cured ham

Octopus salad

Foie gras xiao long boa.

Once we were done with our appetizers, they brought out our
soups in these pretty bowls.  There were four waiters standing
around us to pull off the tops for the big reveal all at the same
time.  It was like a movie!

My conch soup.  It came with a lovely broth on the side.

Nick's foie gras Veloute

The lamb selection

The fish curry that Singapore is well known for.

Veal sausage with  a giant piece of foie gras.  The combination
was delicious together.  The veal sausage did a great job of
cutting the richness from the foie. 

I did a good job of cleaning my plate.

Jack fruit tart

We really enjoyed their china. 

Fruit Panna Cotta

We were all quite tired today.  Nick is having
an espresso here. 

We weren't allowed to enter the world's tallest
pool, but there were windows by the elevators
that went right into the pool.  That's right, this is
a picture of random people swimming, but you
can get a pretty good look at it. 

View from the pool area.

After we had lunch, we spit up into the Kids and Parents groups.  The parents wanted to go to some newly planted gardens and Nick and I wanted to go to the Harry Potter Exhibit. The didn't allow us to take pictures in the exhibit and it was pretty dark, but you can check out the details on their website. I was able to buy some memorabilia including a poster of Sirius Black and a commemorative photo holder.

In the mall they had some Harry Potter statues
to encourage people to go see it.  This is one of
the knights from the first movie's wizarding chess
game. 

Once we got back to the hotel we lounged around for a little bit before heading out to meet up with a cousin of mine.  I had forgotten that he lives in Singapore!  He had been living in Hong Kong for about ten years so I wasn't quite sure where he had moved to.  It turns out that he was in Singapore after all.  It was nice seeing him, but I didn't get a picture with him because the night ended quickly with Nick feeling ill.  We think Nick was dehydrated because once he vomited and got back to the hotel he fell asleep and was fine the next morning.  It was great to catch up with him and have him take us to a local bar and hawker center.  He was able to answer all of the questions we had that you can't find in a tour book.

We had beers at this place. He had originally given me directions
on how to get here, but he decided to come pick us up from our
hotel instead.  It's a good thing too since the bar was located
in a small alley and we would have never found it with
my poor sense of direction. 

At the hawker center we ordered giant prawns.  These things
were seriously mondo. 

While the prawns were cooking Nick, Melissa,
and Dennis ordered sugar cane juice drinks.  

This is a size comparison of the prawn with Nick's iPhone.

Tikka Masala

Stingray wing.  It wasn't half bad.  We had some in Penang but
didn't know what we were eating.  The texture was a little stringy,
but it was very meaty. 

My cousin's friend ordered some Singaporean Rojack.
It's basically different kinds of fruit quickly tossed in a
sauce that contains shrimp paste. I tried it, but it definitely wasn't
 my thing. When she was ordering it my cousin even said to her,
"I don't know, I think you're on your own with that one."
He was right. 

Something like chow fun. 

BBQ chicken wings.  These were some seriously good eats.

Singaporean carrot cake.  It wasn't carrot cake at all, but a dish
with tossed squishy cake.  According to wikipedia, it's radish
cake.  It was actually pretty good, though I don't know if I would
order this again on my own.