Tea with LaVera: April 2014

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Singapore Botanical Gardens

Singapore Botanical Garden

The botanical garden is beautiful and worth seeing. Established in 1859 by designer Lawrence Niven whose work is reflected in the English garden style you’ll see throughout this 120 acres garden.

Singapore Botanical Garden

What makes this garden so special is its range of styles from English gardens to Jungle. There are several small lakes with swans and turtles in them. There are also streams and waterfalls through out the garden.

Singapore Botanical Garden

The Jungle walk was incredible with its exotic foliage. The brochure said that at one time all of Singapore looked like this jungle with the loud rhythmic buzzing sound of the bugs (don’t worry I didn’t see any of the bugs, but by their sound I think they must have been quite large).

Singapore Botanical Garden

All through the park as in many of the parks in Asia people were dancing for exercise.

Singapore Botanical Garden, Orchard Garden

Inside the garden was another garden you paid for. It was a fantastic orchid garden developed in 1928 for breeding orchards. It has over a thousand species and 2000 hybrids.

Singapore Botanical Garden, Orchard Garden

If you do decide to go to these Singapore Botanical Garden do it in the morning before it gets to hot.

I would highly recommend seeing these gardens. It’s not a very expensive taxi trip to the gardens and is a calming break from the chaos of the city.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Painting a Blossom Branch

A simple way to paint a blossom branch

Supplies you’ll need:

Watercolor paint set

Watercolor paper (140 hot press works best)

Round tip small Paint brush

1) In the tray part of your water color set water down some brown paint.

2 2) Take your brush and start at the bottom of your paper and pull your brush up the paper with your watered down paint. Leave some gaps and make some nob looking spots by enlarging your line in some areas. At the end of your branches pull your line to a narrow point.

3 3) Now take another color such as pink for blossoms and water it down, ( to make pink use red with a lot of water ) make your petals by touching your paper gently to create spots and forming them into the shape of a blossom.

4 4) To create shadows either paint over the desired area with the same color or a slightly darker color.

5 5) You can also go in with a very thin sharpie and draw more details.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Orchard Street Singapore

Singapore is a place people come to shop! Hugh shopping malls are everywhere. Chanel and all the other top brands have many, many stores here.

Orchard Street, Singapore

The main shopping street is called Orchard Street which is a lot like Fifth Avenue in New York or the Champ Elysees in Paris with one crazy difference: almost every third door opens into a mall that not only goes up several stories but also down several stories.

Orchard Street, Singapore

We were enjoying a walk down this large beautiful tree lined street which has blocks that stretch well past a normal length when we came to a very large intersection which had barriers that prevented you from crossing in any direction. Well, being the very savvy travelers we are we looked for a way to go under the ground which in most situations involves a small tunnel that takes you to the other side of the street, so down we went. You can imagine our surprise when we ended up in a giant underground mall three floors deep and sprawling in every direction like a human ant hill.

Orchard Street, Singapore (Under Ground Mall)

We looked and looked for signs of a route to guide us to the other side of the street. The mall was bustling with so many people and so many stores. This mall was so big that it had men in black suits standing by black booths who would tell you where to find things. We stopped at two of these booths and were directed to the way out. We had been wandering in these tunnels of stores for about ten minutes only to come out at the exact same location.

Orchard Street, Singapore

After a good laugh, I thought there has to be an easier way that we didn't understand. So I asked a passerby “how can we get to the other side of the street?” and she said “You have to go back down into the mall, go down two flights on the escalators then head past the Gap turn right up the escalator next to the stationary store pass the food court then up the escalator near the tea store …..” At this point my mind started drifting away in confusion and hopelessness.

When I approached my husband with this information, he informed me very nicely that there was absolutely no way he was going back down there again. So we ended up headed back the way we came eventually grabbing a cab to take us away from this shopping heaven or hell depending on how you see it.

Orchard Street, Singapore

Monday, April 21, 2014

Singapore One of the Cleanest Cities in the World

My husband and I did some traveling this month. Our first stop was

Singapore

which is a city-state and Island country in Southeast Asia.

Singapore

is a wonderful city, a very clean city, that’s located on the Singapore Strait.

Park Royal Pickering Hotel Singapore

It has a couple of unusual laws you should be aware of when traveling there. One is no gum chewing; it is illegal to have gum in your possession. Two is you cannot eat or drink on the underground. If you do either of these two things you could be fined and not a small amount either.

It’s a very modern city with an incredible sky line.

Singapore

It has several older areas such as China town, Little India, and the colonial area which gives a wonderful contrast to its skyscrapers.

Singapore, Chinatown

You can’t help but smile as you walk through this city with its whimsical skyline. The buildings range from ones with gigantic balcony gardens to my favorite one at the Sands Hotel which looks like a giant cruise ship landed on top of it in the last tsunami.

Singapore, Marina Bay Sands Hotel

The people are very kind here and have many interesting stories to tell.

Singapore, Marina Walk

There are beautiful areas to walk. My favorite was the Marina district which surrounds the Singapore river. This walk takes you to the Marina which has some fun modern buildings including the Sands Hotel.

Singapore, Marina Walk

One of the buildings near the Sands hotel contains a very large mall. On each side of the river there are large sidewalks that wander through parks and quiet areas, dotted along the walk are some beautiful old hotels.

Singapore, Marina Walk

Singapore, Gardens by the Bay

Singapore, Boat Quay

We finished our long day of walking along the Singapore River at Boat Quay which is a row of restaurants along the river’s edge. The seating is under tents right against the river. We had dinner there and watched the lit boats glide by as a cool breeze washed the heat of the day away making our dinner and day feel quite magical.

Here are some pictures of the colorful area called Little India.