Travel – Page 38 – It's all about the coffee

Coffee With Dean and Deluca

When we were out wandering last night we cruised past this place and noticed they had a proper espresso machine so I thought it might be a great option for coffee in the morning. The fact they also had some amazing looking cakes and pastries absolutely had no influence on my decision, and I’m sure you believe that 100%

The coffee was really good, good enough that we will have breakfast there again. Shinagawa was a sea of people this time of day, almost everyone dressed in white shirts and walking at about the same pace. I thought the café may be crowded but it was almost empty.

We have a food tour today so we had a wander around Ueno first to work out where the meeting sport was. Saw a vending machine and couldn’t resist a cold can of iced coffee. Great value for ¥100

Travel

Coffee @ Home

Arrived home late last night so coffee today was my first back at my favourite Café in Engadine (Steam Brothers). So good I had a flat white and a latte. Must admit after a few weeks without it, Vegemite is heaven on toast.

Travel

Changi Airport Singapore

I’m on the final leg of the journey home, back at T3 at Changi for the flight home to Oz. The checkin was a T3 but the plane actually departs from gate C1 which is technically in T1. Plenty of time to walk or take the skytrain. You can walk all the way around through T1, T2 and T3 but will take some time as the airport is massive.

Checkin area is massive. No queues.

Coffee was at Hudson’s, for an airport coffee not too bad. Better than the one I had here just over 5 weeks ago on my way to London. Apparently it’s the only Hudson’s store outside Australia. It’s pretty much standard chain based coffee, I certainly wouldn’t seek it out at home.

On the skytrain between Terminal 3 and Terminal 1

Lots of things here at Changi to keep weary travellers entertained between flights and waiting for departure. All of these are on the “air side” of the airport after passing through emigration.

The Lilly Pond garden.

Interesting display

Carp pond

Cactus garden

Butterfly garden. Unfortunately only thing active at this time of the morning was a moth.

You can watch the planes go as you go !

And the plane is here, with a little rain outside

Travel

Travelling with Tech

I think everyone knows I travel with a few kg of tech. To be honest the only two things that were indispensable apart from my mobile phone were a rechargeable battery pack and a SIM card with near unlimited European roaming (this one works in Asia too)

The battery pack meant I never had to worry about my phone running out, I think this one will charge my phone 6 or 7 times itself. It kept 3 of us juiced up the entire day and the SIM card meant I could use the phone anywhere without having to worry about finding free wifi or waiting till back in the hotel or apartment (which often had dodgy wifi anyway).

This particular SIM card had 12gig data on it per recharge. It has some fair use policies that would impact you if you used it like I did over a 4 month period outside the UK, but for a month it’s effectively unlimited, and hey, a £20 recharge costs the same as a brand new sim, so just buy 2 or three sims if going for a few months.

Travel

Singapore, Happy Happy!

After I arrived yesterday, checked in and had the obligatory Singapore Sling by the pool I headed out to look around for dinner.

I settled on one of the oldest Hawker food centres in Singapore, the Telok Ayer Market. I had a fantastic Thai beef dish. Absolutely delish.

Singapore is certainly one clean place and obsessed with health and hygiene. One of the reasons I love this city. Each food stall is rated from A to D on a food safety / hygiene scale.

A – You could basically eat of the floor

B – Yeah, pretty good

C – Would you really want to chance it

D – This will probably kill you

For reference, almost all the food stalls in the Hawker centres are B rated. Only one was rated A which was a sushi place.

The metro (MTR) here is really good, seems to go most places. The hotel I’m at has one right next to it, you can get to it via the mall right opposite to completely avoid the humidity here.

When on the metro, after the English announcements, there is one that sounds like “Happy Happy Platform” It couldn’t possibly be that, so I googled it and it’s “Berhati hati di ruang platform” – Malay for “Please mind the gap between the platform”.

The MTR also have lots of little rhyming cartoons asking people to be mindful of other commuters.

At the metro stations, no free phone charging for you!

Even in conformist Singapore these share bikes are treated with contempt. Saw plenty of broken ones here.

My wifi router at home looks like it’s finally packed it in, so went looking for a new one. They have a shopping centre dedicated to geek stuff. They had the one I was thinking of, but the hassles of brining such a massive box home far outweighs the cost saving of buying it over the web at home, so I didn’t bother

Today after my awesome coffee I went down to the gardens at Marina Bay. I didn’t actually go in, the crowds were insane and they wanted $35 so I just walked around the outskirts of it and took the shuttle bus around it

Pictured is the famous Marina Bay hotel with its equally famous infinity pool. This is where I really wanted to stay, but at around 3 times what I’m paying for where I am, which is already a fabulous hotel, I wasn’t prepared to hit the wallet for that one this time just to swim in the pool. It would have to be a fantastic swim for $1000.

I did a little shopping, all of it for Emma since I went past one of her favourite clothes shops.

Before packing for the last time and heading out to find some dinner I had a dip in the pool here and a cocktail.

More than halfway home, Singapore has been an awesome place to break the journey in two and readjust to the clock in the part of the world. Daylight hours flight home tomorrow.

Went across the river to Clarke Quay for dinner. Plenty of nice food options here. All seemed to be rated “A” on the it might kill you scale. I had Mexican. Once the sun was down walking around outside was really pleasant.