Jonathan and I ended our Day Date at the Cloud Forest in Garden's by the Bay. It was a lot more peaceful in there without the kids.

It was a typical warm sunny day in Singapore, about 30 C. It was almost chilly as we walked through the doors into the climate controlled Cloud Forest, meant to represent an tall alpine mountain in Asia. We just stood for a moment feeling the mist off the waterfall and just loving the feeling of cold.

A little while later, we asked ourselves what temperature this "cold" actually was. We had a chuckle to read that it's actually 24 C inside, so not actually "cold".

The greenhouse's path winds in a slow slightly inclined spiral through the greenery. Eventually you reach a Lift (elevator) for a ride the rest of the way up to where the waterfall starts. Up at the top it's kept foggy and misty. The trees are stunted and you can imagine the harsh conditions plants would typically be growing under in such a location.

After exploring the top you wind slowly down pathways about 1/2 way down the mountain before taking a lift to the bottom where there are ponds and caves to explore. It's a very large space, with a one way path and so it's very Covid safe. We passed hardly anyone on a Saturday early afternoon.

In the lower elevations we passed African Violets in the ground cover, Rhododendrons left to grow as full tall trees, and of course a large variety of orchids. My favorite spot in the whole greenhouse is the narrow tunnel you walk through filled with dangling orchids.

The gardens are also filled with all sorts of sculptures of different materials. Some are wood carvings, some glass sculptures, a few look like they are woven of natural materials like dried grasses and mosses.  

Besides the sculptures we noticed a few other things we hadn't had time to see when we brought the kids with us before. Our biggest find was that all the windows of the entire huge dome can be covered up with something like sailcloth. We imagine this is a combination of protection from bad weather like hurricanes and maybe to help with temperature control. It's hard to see in the photo, but there are wires running across all the windows connected roller furling, like you would see to automatically roll up sails on a sailboat.