Singapore – and a summary before our sojourn.

Monday 15 October.  This is our last blog, as tomorrow morning we board our flight for Sydney and home (we flew to Singapore this morning and are spending the night in a hotel in the east coast area).  Our last night in Penang was great! We walked to the Red Garden, a large square off Penang Road that is home to about thirty or more food stalls around an eating area about the size of a football field.  We had dinner, with entertainment provided by a small band and a number of singers, bringing us songs from the 1950s to the 1970s. It has been a truly memorable five weeks.  Particular memories include the amazing Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, with their huge enclosed gardens containing every flower and plant imaginable. In Berlin, the historic Brandenburg Gate, the remains of the Berlin Wall to remind us of how recently the city was divided and occupied, and the wonderful Pergamon Museum with the reconstruction of actual relics from Pergamon and Babylon dating back more than two millennia.  To Warsaw, and all of the tributes to Chopin and our visit to his place of birth; the poignancy of the relics of the confinement of the Jews in the Ghetto during WWII, where so many died; and the effort that, each year, is put into accurately recreating the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944.  To Krakow, and the beautiful old town square and Wawel Castle, and the contrast of that beauty with the disturbing images evoked by our visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau.  To Ljubljana, Slovenia, such a pretty town with the river snaking through it, crossed by pretty stone bridges, and the surprise of finding an old Roman wall, from the first century, and the excavated remains of a Roman town. To Ravenna, and the breathtaking beauty of the fifth century mosaics in the Basilica di San Vitale and the Basilica di Sant Pollinaire in Classe; the fifth century tomb of Theodoric the Great and Dante’s tomb.  To Bologna, with its rich history as a university town and the many magnificent churches and piazzas, and our surprise at seeing how much of the town is opened up to the people each weekend by the prohibition of motorised traffic, creating a true community atmosphere.  The side trips to Parma and Modena, each with its own charm and history.  To Istanbul, which stands out as the former heart of the eastern Roman empire, our exploration of the magnificent underground cisterns that held the water for the people of Constantinople more than fifteen hundred years ago; the monumental Aya Sofia and the mosques erected by the Ottoman conquerors in their attempts to rival that great Byzantine church, and our surprise at stumbling across densely patronised food outlets almost everywhere we walked. Finally, to Penang and the magnificent views across the Strait of Malacca to the Malaysian mainland, and the gigantic Buddha which occupies the highest point in the Kek Lok Si temple complex.  It has been a truly rewarding, memorable, educative, exciting, fun experience.  The people we have met have, without exception, been friendly, considerate and helpful and we are grateful for the opportunity to have met these people and had these experiences.

Tomorrow: the flight home to rejoin our beautiful family and friends.