A Walking Tour of Downtown Singapore

My friends Arlyn and Armar (they’re siblings, in case you’re wondering what is up with their names) invited me to go Museum-hopping the other Sunday. I don’t actually like museums all that much, to be honest, but since I had nothing else to do and I was, as someone said recently, “a blogger, so you’re curious by nature,” I went along. And you know what? We had fun.

There are actually A LOT of museums in Singapore, you can view the full list here.

They’re not free for non-citizens or permanent residents, so we didn’t go in, but just looked around at the parts that were free, and posed outside, obviously. We visited a couple of museums. First was the National Museum of Singapore, which has a very beautiful facade.

There are Singapore flags hanging on the walls because the Singapore National Day is coming up soon, on August 9. The inside is lovely too, as you can see below.

You could write down a wish on a piece of paper and hang it on the story tree. One of those pieces of paper you see is ours. I am not telling you what we wrote because it’s a secret for now! 😉

We also went to the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall which had just been reopened after a four-year refurbishment.

 Here is some info on the brochure they were handing out:

 It was initially built in 1855! Wow! It looks so pretty, I must say. There were some free performances due to their opening, but they were all fully booked already, so we were not able to watch any, unfortunately.

In between museums, we had to walk a lot, and also saw these sights:

From left to right: Singapore Flyer, Art Science Museum, Marina Bay Sands, and the Merlion

The skies were so blue and perfect for picture-taking but it was also crazy-humid so we became so thirsty and ended up cafe-hopping as well, dropping by both Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Starbucks for ice blended drinks. In fairness, Starbucks’ 100th store in Singapore, located in Fullerton, looks very cozy, with a lovely view overlooking Marina Bay.

We somehow ended up going to Esplanade mall as well, where this free concert was ongoing:

Then we got tired of walking and took a short bus trip to the newly reopened Lau Pa Sat, which is one of the oldest and most popular hawker food centres in Singapore which had been closed for renovations and only reopened last July 21.

We ordered Filipino food at the Mang Kiko’s stall, and a pancake with chocolate and marshmallows from another stall. I was so full until the next day.

Though Singapore is a small country, there is quite a lot to see and do and eat here!