It seems like only yesterday we were on the plane to Houston, and yet here we are about to fly to Italy. We had an early-ish start to the day, always liking to be at the airport early. ?
The bags were closed up, beds made and a last wipe down of surfaces complete before heading to the airport. Mark drove us and then went back home to drop the car and ubered back. The problem with 5 people is we can’t all fit in one vehicle if someone else is driving. Luckily the opening game of the Rugby World Cup had just started and the roads were empty so it was a quick 10 min trip each way.
There was no queue at check-in making for a quick process. I was impressed that we had managed to get everything into 3 bags each weighing on average 20kg (that’s a tiny 12 kg each!).
We went upstairs but had to wait about 10 minutes for international departures to open – but as we were almost at the front of the queue when it did open, it was extremely quick and pain free.
Onto Koru for breakfast, a wee glass of bubbles and to watch the rugby – however Koru could not get the rugby on their TVs much to everyone’s disappointment. Mark duly got out his iPad and watched it on that – as it turned out it really wasn’t worth the bother!
We are flying Singapore Airlines direct to Singapore and Sophia was very impressed with the plane. The tray table even has a little mirror stashed away in it. The girls were very happy with the movie/TV selection (even though they had downloaded about 100 hours of stuff onto their iPads ?).
The lunch meal was actually delicious for plane food. Sophia and I had creamy mushroom chicken pasta and Greer had spicy beef. There was also a smoked salmon entree and Kapiti Hokey Pokey ice-cream for dessert – I think Sophia was in Seventh Heaven. The boys sat behind us so I didn’t keep track of their food ?. The dinner meal options were beef goulash or chicken tikka masala – still good but not as good as lunch.
We all managed some sleep and it felt like a relatively painless and quick trip to Singapore.
Upon arrival we cleared immigration quickly and walked about 5 minutes to the Jewel. We had about 8 hours to kill so found somewhere to store our carry-on bags and went to check out the various activities.
https://www.jewelchangiairport.com
We had pre-purchased tickets to some of the attractions – there are various bundle deals or you can purchase individual attractions. There is a very impressive rain vortex which is in the middle of the complex. After looking at that we checked out the mirror maze, the hedge maze, the bouncing net and Canopy Bridge – all whilst walking around the Canopy Park.
The attractions were all fairly small and the mazes in particular, not as impressive as we had imagined. That said, it was a good way to fill in some time.
We went and got a drink at Shake Shack – the variety of food outlets was impressive – and then wandered and looked at the various shops avoiding the temptation to buy.
We were all feeling jaded and Greer not particularly well (just a cold but she wanted to rest) so we headed back to the terminal, through immigration and then found a spot to rest. Some of us managed sleep.
They have security at the gate so when it was time we cleared security and boarded the plane ready for our next 12 hour flight.
We all fell asleep pretty quickly and I think only Greer ate the dinner. We slept on and off and passed the time with movies, games etc before finally arriving into Rome about 8:20am Sunday morning.
We’re not at our final destination yet but I’ll continue on a day 2 post …