Cycling around

I wish I could blog a bit more. its been ages and though I post regularly on facebook, I miss the depth of reflection that writing a blog used to give me. It was a lot more personal and a lot less flashy. Yesterday, Husband, the kids and myself set out on a bike ride. It had been a long time since we had a free day, and it will be a long time from now that we have a free day - our weekends seem to get chock blocked months in advance. Husband did his research and came up with the 10 river trail. That sounded exciting. And before you get too excited, we ended up covering, I believe, 7 of the rivers.
 
 River 1 and 2: Home to Clementi. I didnt know that the Pandan river and the Ulu Pandan river were two separate entities, but according to Husband they were. As we cycles along near IMM, we noticed how what had appeared to be largely a drainage canal opened up in the middle of nowhere and became a river. I assume that the Pandan river has an underground source *Update: Google maps thinks that the two are the same, but according to Lee Khong Chien museum, they are two rivers. * At this point, husband said something about how we would cycle to Kallang and then cycle back home via Ang Mo Kio (through the forest? Through Kranji??), whereupon both Anjali and I both raised a mother of all tantrums River 3: Alexandra canal This was a bit of a surprise to us. We didnt quite see the canal, but the park connector was beautiful
 River 4. Singapore river.

  It was quite a surprise to me and also, i believe, to the fat frog that was happily sitting on the steps, when we reached the Singapore river along river valley. From there, we cycled to the possibly frog filled waters near clarke quay and had lunch at Clarke Quay central (the waterfront restaurants were way too expensive). Its after we finished lunch that we ran into our road blocks. I mean them literally, since the spaces from esplanade to the F1 pit were closed for national day parade. Husband who knew the roads, led us through the main streets to the F1 pit, where we hit Kallang river

 

Look carefully and you can see Anjali zooming down the bridge We couldnt go down Kallang river because of the road closures, so we went up river to Rochor River and then down Kallang river till Kallang Wave mall and guess what we found there? ' The Milo van! Both girls had never drunk from the milo van before (whats the world coming to?) and so we queued up (not too long thankfully), drank milo, exclaimed over the refreshing quality of milo van milo and then went on our way till Marina Barrage!



 The girls had their dam engineering education (from husband) and then we went up the dam roof to see the kites. It was too loud (dam music) and the dam learning centre was closed for renovation so we came down and ate dam ice cream and drank dam smoothie before turning back We passed by the now starting to get crowded Marina Bay area where everyone was gathering to watch the fireworks and came across Kooza (Note to self to book tickets) and then found ourselves at the end of the Singapore river, where the fat frog no longer rested on the step. It took an hour and a half from there to home and we took a ten minute break at clementi to give some relief to my poor hindquarters.


 A highlight for Sophia was when a woman pushing her bike pointed to her and said "She is so small and see how well she balances". Of course, Sophia is well known for riding a bike that is bigger than her.