Sunday Visit to Gardens By The Bay (Tulipmania)

It was supposed to a normal Sunday evening while my wife is still under confinement and where Steffi should be attending her dance classes while the rest of the kids should be at home watching cartoons in the morning.  Steffi was able to continue going for her classes thanks to Aunty Christina and hubby who had been helping the family out by ferrying Steffi to and fro her dance and swimming classes on weekends!  Otherwise time would be a little stretched for me.

Anyway Jessie, a good friend primary school friend of mine decided to treat the kids to a day out to Gardens By The Bay (GBTB) yesterday as she wanted to visit Tulipmania with her mommy too!  Initially we decided that only Leroy go, but lucky Steffi got to tag along too due to a last minute change and boy was she happy! So off we went, the two kids and me to revisit the gardens!

 

Steffi and Leroy posing before we got into the Flower Dome.

I am sure the tulips looked magnificent in the photos that had been splashed in the social media and the displays are sure colorful and nice.  But it is not exactly that big or grand and one should never have to high expectations.  EVERYONE had to take photos with / of the display at flower dome because that's the reason why one came in the first place right? No?  There were lots of selfie enthusiasts who smiled for their handphones or cameras with their outstretched hands and it's really not easy to get that "PERFECT" shot one would have wanted as there were people everywhere, left, right, front and back but I guess it was fun too!

Here's a selfie of the kids and myslf, for the fun of it! :)

Steffi and Leroy with the prop that the staff handed out.

My friend Jessie trying to take a photo from the top.  Well, that's the main display!

BTW, there is an Instagram competition going on right now, and KLM had sponsored a pair of adut air tickets to Amsterdam for the winner to savor the sights of the real Tulipmania!  It's gonna be a tough competition as they will be lots of people attracted by the grand prize and many professionals BUT I still took part anyway! Lol...

Jessie took this photo for us for the competition, look at that monkey's expression! :)

The kiddos in a photo together with Aunty, Jessie's mommy.  Hope the kids were behaving alright!

Just walking through the flower dome took us almost 3 hours, inclusive of photography time, resting and snacking time and the feast-your-eye-with-flowers time.  Luckily it was fully air-conditioned, if not, we would not have lasted beyond 1 hour!  But that's not all as we still have tickets for The Cloud Forest too and we visited the great waterfall next.  The kids had lots of fun posing for weird photos in front of the giant waterfall and walking through mists of water!

The two trying out our favorite past time, taking "levitation" shots!

We took around another 2-3 hours walking through the exhibits and I was particularly drawn to the awesome looking pitcher plants, one of my all-time favorites!  Here's just a little bit of what we got to see!  Ain't they pretty looking?  Pretty deadly to insects too!

Here's Steffi with a montage of some of the different species we saw.

Before we knew it, we had breezed through both exhibits in about 5 hours plus and it was time to head back home so that I could get the kids bathed and be ready for dinner.  But Steffi reminded me that there was still an art-and-craft session outside the entrance that they wanted to take part.  They had seen the booth earlier and I was secretly hoping they would forget about it but well...  So we stayed back and both Leroy and Steffi got to make their own paper windmills, for free!  

Leroy showing off his caterpillar on his windmill!

Both Steffi and Leroy, happy with their handicrafts and can't wait to get home to play with their Lego figurines.  Both windmill already have their own owners and one of them was Emmet. :)

It was a great day out with the two kids and I hope that the two kiddos brought some laughter and joy to Jessie and her mommy!  I thought I was just feeling a little tired and having a little body ache yesterday, but it turned out that I caught a flu somehow and is now under MC, resting at home typing this out and feeling a little drowsy from the medications.  Hoping to get well ASAP and be back to work tomorrow! Gambatte!