3/10/13 - One weekend - 100 years apart

We were all over the map this weekend.  I doubt we traveled more than a few physical miles, but it felt like we may have strapped ourselves into Doc Brown's DeLorean and crash landed into a few different time periods.  The first half of the weekend felt like it may have been spent in the earlier part of the past century with the second half vaulting us straight into the present day.  It wasn't a time machine with a flux capacitor, but some sparkling wine, music and movies that gave us the kick out of the 21st century.  The next night, all it took was some modern architecture, a cover band and a night out to bring us back full circle.... or close enough.

I had just returned to Singapore after being gone the past 3 weeks and Sarah had finished her first mid-term of the semester so we decided to pop a cork.  Lets be honest, if you know my wife and her love of wine with bubbles in it, we didn't need much of an excuse.  As she had just picked up a duty free bottle on the way back from Cambodia, she was like the proverbial kid with some money burning a hole in her pocket.  I was looking forward to relaxing though, so I was fairly complicit in this evening activity.  Frank Sinatra and crew provided the soundtrack to the evening on the porch and with a light breeze outside, it was one of those nights where the hours just slide by.  When Louis Armstrong started singing 'As time goes by' you half expected Humphrey Bogart in a white tuxedo to pop his head out the door to make sure everyone was having a good time.  Once the wine was gone we took a step back from thinking about WWII Bogart to actually watching him in action during WWI, evading Germans and big game wildlife on the African Queen.  Not as good as Casablanca, but still a pretty good movie.

After a low key relaxing evening that felt like it took place in a different era, even if it was from the comfort of our own home, it was time to get back out on the town.  The Lantern is an outdoor bar that would feel at home in any major city in the world.  Its on the roof of the Fullerton Bay Hotel (sister hotel to where we had previously had afternoon tea) and has a great view of the Marina Bay Sands hotel and Singapore Flyer.  The bar has the full repertoire of interesting cocktails accompanied by a wide variety of food to snack on.  If possible (from a cost and nutritional standpoint) I'm pretty sure we could subsist on their truffle fries for the rest of our life.

Not having the budget to linger too long, we continued on with the evening once the nightly laser light show was done.  It was off meet up with some friends in a basement Irish bar to listen to a cover band crank out some 80's rock music.  Unfortunately, this plan got derailed by the Scotland/Wales rugby match.  Since a few hundred rather large gentlemen with accents ranging from mostly understandable to "what did he just say?" had descended on the bar it was time for plan B.  Back across town to Boat Quaye to hear a Filipino band rock out to Bon Jovi and Journey.  You had to smile at that - from the early 1900's to modern day Singapore, we ended up back in the 80's to close out our weekend.  Close enough to the right time period I suppose... and we could sing along as well.  I call it a winning combination.