The Week USA – August 31, 2019

28 LEISURE Travel

“You have to expect the unexpected in
Singapore,” said Doug Hansen in The
San Diego Union-Tribune. A face-to-
face encounter with a toothy, 30-foot-
long, red-and-yellow cloth dragon
taught me that on the day my wife and
I decided to explore the city’s famed
Orchard Road, a leafy boulevard lined
with upscale shops and hotels. The
dragon and the drum-driven parade
it was leading turned out to be only
one of countless pleasant surprises
that greeted us during our five days
in the vibrant island city-state. Of the
six weeks we spent touring Southeast
Asia, those days proved the highlight.
“In fact, Singapore has become my favorite
major, modern city in the world.”

I should mention two drawbacks. First,
Singapore is a hot, humid, equatorial city:
The average daytime high temperature
hovers near 88 degrees. Second, it’s one of
the most expensive cities in the world. But
its wealth has created something special.

This week’s dream: Sensory overload in dazzling Singapore

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Singapore’s most storied

hotel looks grander than

ever, said Alyson Krueger in

The New York Times. The

1887 landmark recently was

renovated to appeal to a

younger generation without

compromising established

luxury standards: The lobby

has been stripped of gaudy

furnishings to show off the

architecture, while a once

nondescript grill has been

transformed into a pink-and-

purple bistro run by a three-

Michelin-starred French chef.

Though you can still order a

Singapore Sling at the Long

Bar, where the cocktail was

invented, the young crowd is

gravitating to the bookshelf-

lined Writers Bar.

raffles.com; doubles from $650

Hotel of the week

“The ports of Cleveland and Detroit do not nor-

mally enter into a conversation about cruises,”

said Jim Winnerman in The Orange County

Register. They do now, though, because tourist-

ship traffic is booming in the Great Lakes for the

first time since the 1950s. I recently enjoyed an

11-day adventure on a small Victory Cruise Lines

ship as it skipped among all five Great Lakes.

We began in Toronto, “a destination unto itself,”

then crisscrossed the U.S.-Canada border to take

in Niagara Falls, Detroit’s Henry Ford Museum,

Michigan’s Mackinac Island, and the Ojibwe

First Nation’s reservation on Manitoulin Island,

Ontario. Cleveland was a highlight: “Everyone

on board was amazed at the vitality of this flour-

ishing metropolis.” During our time on ship, we

enjoyed five-course meals and nightly concerts by

a trio while passing parades of islands where the

homes on one side flew Canadian flags and the

homes on the other flew the old Stars and Stripes.

Getting the flavor of...

Welcome, Millennials.

Last-minute travel deals

Spanish specialties

Dine on Spain’s legendary

tapas and tour famous plazas

and medieval mansions in the

country’s capital with Indus

Travel’s “Magic of Madrid” tour.

Save $400 on the seven-day

tour, which now starts at $799

per person. Book by Aug. 23.

indus.travel

Rosé in SoCal

Cool off by the rooftop pool

with free rosé at The Rowan,

a top Palm Springs hotel. The

two free cans of rosé a day are

part of a package that includes

late checkout and a 20 per-

cent rate discount. Through

Sept. 20, rooms start at $147.

rowanpalmsprings.com

Richmond done right

The breathtaking grand stair-

case and marble columns of the

Jefferson Hotel await. Through

Sept. 15, Grand Premier guest

rooms at the historic Virginia

hotel cost half as much as

usual, starting at $225 a night.

Valet parking included.

jeffersonhotel.com

Visiting the National Museum, we were

impressed by Singapore’s rapid rise in the

first several decades after it was founded in

1819 as a trading post for the British East

India Company. A global, multicultural

powerhouse by the end of that century,

the city—comparable in size to New York

City’s five boroughs—is today a leader

in education, finance, technology, and

entertainment, as well as one of the

world’s safest, cleanest, and healthiest

countries. And English is the official

language.

We changed hotels twice to explore

different areas of the city, anchoring

ourselves at one point within short

walks of several major museums, the

famed Raffles Hotel, and a spectacu-

lar bayside park. Both the 203-acre

Singapore Botanic Gardens and the

Gardens by the Bay are must-sees, the

latter being the home of the world’s

tallest enclosed waterfall. But as beau-

tiful and green as our surroundings

were by day, “after nightfall the city trans-

formed itself into a nocturnal kaleidoscope

of color, especially down by the bay.” At

the Supertree Grove, in the Gardens by

the Bay, a light and sound show bathes a

stand of 100-foot-tall, man-made trees with

music and changing colors.

At the Capitol Kempinski Hotel Singapore

(kempinski.com), doubles start at $270.

Cruising the Great Lakes

Many of America’s small-town amusement parks

have shut down—but not Funland, said Chris

Lindsley in The Wash ing ton Post. The 1-acre

boardwalk attraction in Reho both Beach, Del.,

has barely changed since I worked there during

summers in the early 1980s. In fact, it’s almost

the same Funland that it’s been since 1962, when

Al Fasnacht and his family bought it. Fasnacht,

now 90, still operates the 40-cent kiddie rides six

or seven nights a week, and “there is no place he

would rather be.” Five of Funland’s 20 rides date

to the 1940s, and those rides, always gleaming,

“hold special meaning for families who have had

three and four generations ride them.” Rides like

the SuperFlip 360 offer modern thrills, but I pre-

fer the beachside park’s signature draw: a dark,

twisty ride through a haunted mansion. “The

ride still strikes a good balance of scary and fun,

just as I remembered it doing the first time I rode

it 40 years ago.”

A classic Delaware amusement park

Singapore

Raffles Hotel

The Supertree Grove, at the Gardens by the Bay