Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 Queen Victoria, Singapore
Updated: Jul 3, 2023
Today we had lunch at Raffles Hotel – the hotel began as a simple 10 room seaside bungalow in 1887, opened by the Sarkie Brothers, the same guys who opened the E&O Hotel in Penang. As Singapore grew, so did Raffles – it is now a major destination and has hosted the super-rich to Royalty and Presidents. We’d visited Raffles a few times in the past, on our trips to Penang, but it had been a few years since our last visit and the hotel had gone through an extensive upgrade. Raffles comprises several bright white British Colonial style structures within lush gardens right in the center of Singapore. There is a shopping wing, the famous Long Bar – where the Singapore Sling cocktail was invented, and the main hotel building. The Tiffin Room is in the main building, and this was our destination for lunch, having made a reservation a few days ago. Completely upgraded since our last visit, the Tiffin Room was magnificent, and appeared to me to be now styled closer to the original. Leather and whicker upholstery, solid wood tables, parquet flooring, bright crystal light fixtures, glass fronted display cases showed period crockery, and shelved lined with all manner of tiffin tins. The menu in the Tiffin room was Indian, one of our favorite food groups, and after careful study we decided to order conservative quantities – figuring that if we were still hungry after eating what we’d ordered, we could always order more. The wait staff were superb; attentive though not intrusive – just as my water glass was approaching empty, out of nowhere a waiter would appear to fill it up. As the food arrived, we were glad we’d ordered conservatively, the appetizers were huge, and the one main course item was clearly enough for both of us. We both agreed that this was one of the best Indian meals we’d ever had. I’ve always thought that Indian desserts were the weak point of the cuisine and so after Raffles, we headed across the street to Raffles City mall and visited one of our favorite cake shops called Tarte – it’s very small, if you happened to be briefly looking the wrong way as you passed it, you’d miss it – but the desserts and coffee are fantastic, they also have decent internet. For our final afternoon in Singapore we decided we try to do some “outside walking” and headed for the bay, passing through Esplanade Park, by the War memorial, over the Jubilee Bridge, arriving at the Merlion statue – a mythical half lion, half mermaid creature supposedly seen by the early sailors. There were bright blue skies, a slight breeze and the sun was blazing – it was like being inside a steam oven. Despite walking in the shade whenever possible, by the time we got to the Merlion we were both completely drenched in sweat, boiling hot and exhausted – I barely had the energy to take the pictures we’d came for. If we wanted to make it to the nearest MRT station it would probably have involved an ambulance, thankfully Sandra had the brilliant idea to go across the street to the very posh Fullerton Hotel and get a taxi. We marched into the Fullerton looking like a couple of dripping wet blankets; passing through the main entrance and into the grand lobby we headed straight for the concierge desk, trying to look for all the world like we belonged there – and asked for a taxi. We’ve had a great 2 ½ days in Singapore, revisiting some of our favorite haunts and some new – meeting some very friendly people and eating excellent food. If only it was a bit cooler! We now have 8 sea days to sail up the east side of Sumatra, across the Indian Ocean, around Sri Lanka and India, and up through the Straits of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf for a stop at Abu Dhabi.
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