Sunday started off on the rocks for me. My stomach had been churning since the bumpy and jolting ride home on the MRT Saturday night. But Niles and I decided to take it easy Sunday morning and early afternoon as we had big plans later in the day. When 4pm finally rolled around I was still not feeling my best but trudge downtown and was sure glad I did!
Niles and I excited for the race to start!
For three nights, the roads around the downtown area are completely shutdown to host the qualifying races leading up to the grand prix night race on Sunday. We got tickets online and our passes were for zone 4 walkabout which meant we had a great area of the city to browse concerts, get food and drink, and an array of options for where we could choose to watch the race.
We started our evening over near the Esplanade (also known as the durian building). Niles and Ethan grabbed a drink and a bite to eat, as I still couldn’t stomach any food. Then we headed over to the small outdoor theater that looked out over Marina Bay and waited with the crowd to see Ziggy Marley! He had a great performance and the easy rocking of his music definitely helped in settling my stomach. After a few of his songs we decided to leave as we were technically just outside the theater and people were crowding us to see over the wall that was just at my eye level.
Race fans!
After a bit of walking we found a nice spot to stand on a tight corner of the track where we watched the first 15 or so laps of the race. Only complaint about the race? NO SEATING! Well not 100% true if you get a grandstand ticket but there’s not many viewing spots that you can sit down in for the zone 4 area. Even though I went with the less fashiony choice of supportive sneakers, my old lady lower back was KILLING me from standing on pavement for so long. Luckily Niles and Ethan were ready to find a spot that would be more comfortable to watch the race from. Just our luck, we stumbled across a grassy patch with a big screen of the whole race! As cool as it is to actually see the cars, you really can’t get a feel for whats going on with the race without the millions of cameras bringing your focus to various parts of the course. We laid out our towel, Ethan grabbed some margaritas, Niles grabbed a beer and we shared some yummy fries, and we watched the race from there until the end. Although 61 laps felt like a long time, it was nothing compared to the 200 lap race of the Indy500! Niles timed it and it took the cars just shy of 2 minutes to complete one lap of the course.
View of the race from where we were standing!
Once the winner crossed the finish line (with a 12 second gap mind you) we headed towards Padang stage to get a good viewing spot for JLo! Also known as Jennifer Lopez or Jenny from the block. She sang some oldies and new songs of hers too. My favorite part was when she said that she was a far way from home and I shouted out We’re here JLo!! You aren’t that far away!! We’re your USA buddies! To which she replied USA FRIENDS!! And invited us on stage with her to dance alongside her for the rest of the evening….ok ok that’s totally not what happened, she obviously couldn’t hear me as we were maybe 200 ft back from the stage and there were thousands of people in front of me but a girl can dream right? Anyway, we stayed for a few songs of JLo before I knew I had to call it a night as it was already way past my bedtime. Plus by the size of the crowd headed towards the MRT I figured it’d take us a while of standing in line for a train before we’d start the 25 minute ride home. Lucky for us the crowd seemed to disappear once we got to the MRT station. Or they were all just going the opposite way than we were. Either way I was happy we could get right onto the train and have a seat.
Everyone should know who this is (hint its Jennifer Lopez aka JLo)
My night ended with a quick facetime chat with my older brother and his fiancé. They made me a tad jealous by confessing they were about to go grocery shopping at Stop and Shop (see previous posts for my grocery experiences here). I’ve honestly gotten better at the whole grocery thing and basically have just gotten used to higher prices and not always having the same items each week. But I’ll probably still go sale crazy when I go to the grocery store back home for the first time.
Overall it was a great end to the weekend, though I was dreading my alarm for work Monday morning.
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