Eating our way through Singapore (Weekend 1)

Last week, Sofia, Ady and I went to Singapore for the long weekend. It was mainly so we could go back to Legoland, so we could maximize our Annual Passes, which I calculated we could get ROI from with at least two visits in a year. You can read about our first visit here.

We were in Singapore for five days, but we weren't clear if we wanted to spend one or two days in Johor Bahru, we just knew we wanted to go to Legoland, visit the newly opened Legoland water park and make a quick visit to Johor Premium Outlets if convenient.

We ended up spending our first day shopping in our favorite haunts Ikea and Anchorpoint Shopping Mall.

No visit to IKEA is complete without having Swedish meatballs with
Lingonberry jam, now served with mashed not boiled potatoes.

Sofia still loves the nuggets kid's meal and playing in the showroom. 

This is Sofia when we just moved to Singapore in 2010.
She was just 2 years old and she convinced us to leave her in the
 IKEA playground, and they called us to pick her up after 15mins.

Sofia is now big enough to fill in the playground form by herself.

Anchorpoint is normally one of our first stops in Singapore because we normally check-out the stuff on sale in Charles and Keith, Cotton-on, Cotton-on Kids, etc before we shop in their regular outlets. It's sad that Cotton-on Kids finally closed in Anchorpoint Mall. I personally spent a lot of money there. Hahaha.

Looking at the bright side,  there's a newly opened Typo Outlet Store.
We love, love, love, looking through their stuff.
You always find something you didn't realize you need.

Typo has everything from office supplies, kitschy things for the home
and eyeglasses in all colors.

After our IKEA and Anchorpoint run, we made our way to Orchard to snack at the recently opened Tim Ho Wan, so we had time to digest it while shopping before we met up with some friends for dinner.

Tim Ho Wan recently opened a branch in Plaza Singapura.
They are known for their Baked BBQ Pork buns but we really
loved their Carrot (or Radish) Cake.

We also ordered Harkaw (shrimp dumplings) and SioMai (pork dumplings).
I didn't think it was anything special, but I'll save my views for a THW post.

Sof was happy to eat what we ordered until she realized that we were just snacking,  and we were heading to dinner right after we did some shopping. 

Our next stop was Ion Orchard because we met up with Sofia's friend for a playdate since we planned to be in Singapore at the same time.

Dinner was our favorite foie gras and black truffle xiao long bao
from Paradise Dynasty. 

It was also some sort of reunion for us because
Candice,  Pat and I used to be teammates.

Mia and Fi enjoyed their brief play time together.
They've been friends since birth, and now they go to the same school.

We went to the Ion's food court in Basement 4 to look for dessert.

We had the layered crepe cakes from First Love Patisserie.
I think they'd be better when eaten at home because it was served frozen.

Next day, we attempted to get up bright and early because we were going to Legoland. Unfortunately, we were still at home by noon, so we finally decided we would sleep over so that we could do everything we wanted spread over two days.

Tim knew we'd need energy to go to JB by bus so he prepared
Waffles with Bananas and Dulce de Leche for brunch.

We went to Legoland on the first and second day. Yay! That makes 3 visits on the annual pass. Hooray for a great ROI.

It was such a cloudy (and rainy) weekend, that it was actually cooler
walking around the theme park, except for when it started to pour.
Good thing, the umbrellas were on sale.

But we only made it to the water park on the second day.
To be blogged about separately.

We were also able to make it to Johor Premium Outlets.

I was able to buy 6 pair of shoes from Vincci (VNC)
for less than the price of one pair.

Food wise, we had dinner at Shilin Taiwanese Snacks, where we enjoyed the
 Oyster Misua, XXL Crispy Chicken and Pork Floss Crepes.

We were dead tired when we got to Singapore, but because we finally worked out the easiest way to come and go by bus, you can read about it here, we made it back in time to have dinner at Irvin's.

Irvin's has the best salted egg sauce I have ever tasted.
It doesn't matter what protein you order it with because it's that good,
We also ordered Cereal Prawns so Fi would have something to eat.

When we got home, Tim being a doting Ninong,  threw Sofia a Belated Chocolate Fondue Birthday Party.

Sof even had a Princess Hat.

On Sunday,  we did our usual Singapore weekend thing, and we went out for a good brunch.

Tim treated us to Steak Benny at Spruce in Phoenix Park.
More of Spruce in a separate post.

After brunch, we went shopping with Tim and Sof for Sofia's gift.

Ady and I got tired waiting for them to finish so we snacked
on this decadent Chocolate from PS Cafe in Paragon while waiting. 

Since we thought we weren't hungry,  we headed for dinner at Saveur in Far East Plaza because we remembered their servings to be French (stingy) sized.

We were pleased to be wrong.
The food was good, and the servings were generous.
You can read more on Saveur here.

When we got home, Sof got Ninong Tim to play with everything they bought.

Twister Challenge

The following day, it was our last day in Singapore,  so we decided to go with Tim to shop at Changi City Point Mall which was near his office. I blogged about Changi City Point last time I went there (I thought it was a Fail!) and nothing has really changed, we still had a hard time finding something to buy.

The only good thing about the Changi City Point Mall is their
Water Play Area outside the 4th level food court.
Just bring swimwear and your kid should be good to go.

We met up with Tim for lunch, so Ady and Fi got their fix of Chicken Rice from the Basement1 Food Court, while Tim and I had more Taiwanese Snacks.

Sofia really loves Chicken Rice.

Because we weren't really able to shop, we made our way to shop in Orchard Road so we could buy our last minute shopping.

Sof snacked on her favorite McWings while I had a Moccachino.

We decided to just go back home after that, so we could nap before a late dinner,  since we were catching the 1.30am flight back to Manila.

We ended up having dinner at 126 Dimsum, you can read about them here. We had our fill of dimsum, and everything we ordered (drinks included) was less than SG$50.

We had two orders each of hakaw, siomai, vegetable rolls and congee.

And two orders of yam balls (taro puffs) and one carrot cake.

Our Singapore (and JB) trip was so much fun. It just felt like I had a hangover for the next few days because I went straight to work after we arrived and I was just so tired. I thought we would go back to Singapore after another year or so, but it was only once we got back to Manila that things started to fall in place for another weekend trip to Singapore just two weeks after. So, see you again SG! I hope we get to eat in our other favorite places. just saying.