What a first day in Singapore! Well… my actual first day was wandering off a fifteen-hour flight into the most BEAUTIFUL airport I have ever been in. I mean… look at that…

So that was my introduction to the “Garden City” of Singapore and it didn’t disappoint from there. Our first outing into the city state was a visit to Gardens By The Bay, a park in downtown Singapore built as a tribute to this green city, opened to the public in 2012. We took a meandering walk through its themed botanical gardens (there’s a “silver garden” just because there can be) and saw just an outstanding amount of biodiversity. Then of course, the famous trees…

 

It may have been overcast, but they were still absolutely stunning! In the back of that video when it first starts, you can see the Marina Bay Sands – a famous hotel situated right next to the park and featured in many movies about Singapore. Gardens By The Bay had many different curated spaces (that you had to pay to get into) but one experience we splurged on was the Flower Garden with long hanging trellises to walk under and a series of overlapping waterfalls… just freaking stunning.

The other part of our day was a visit to Marina Barrage, which is a dam built across the Marina Bay channel, creating a freshwater reservoir, right on the coast – increasing Singapore’s water catchment to two-thirds of the country’s land area. The dam is walkable, so we walked it. Then took a jaunt to roof garden of the Marina Barrage museum, which gave some pretty sweet views of the city.  The museum itself was super interesting, with detailed histories of Singapore’s “green transition” and some of the ways it tries to increase its sustainability as an island city in the face of growing populations, sea level rise, and climate change. What a day!