Lots of celebrations fell around the same time this April. We had Passover, my birthday, and Easter to celebrate, and what better way to do that than with a staycation to explore KL more? Le Méridien was conveniently offering my new favorite deal where you book a room and get the connecting room for free, and it's right next to the Botanical Gardens which we still haven't fully explored, so it seemed like a great choice. It also has a fancy steak restaurant and is down the street from the St. Regis, which has an afternoon tea that I had been wanting to try. The weekend pretty much planned itself.
Le Méridien bills itself as a design centered chain, and you definitely got that impression in the lobby.
The main door of our room opened into the living room area of our suite.
Jeff and I had a king bed,
and a bathroom with double sinks, which I always appreciate.
The girls each got their own comfy bed, which they immediately got into.
We also had a good view of the winding pool which the hotel shares with the Hilton next door. It was almost dinner time when we checked in, but the pool was definitely on the agenda for the next day.
We had dinner reservations at Prime, the steak restaurant at the hotel. It wasn't exactly a traditional Passover dinner, but at least there was no pork, and we definitely celebrated in style.
The next morning we did the breakfast buffet spread justice, and then we got ready to head to the Botanical Gardens. You can see them from the window near the elevators, and Jeff got this fun shot of Elena looking like she's about to take off and fly there.
We ended up opting for the more mundane method of taking a Grab to the northern entrance to the gardens. My hope was that we could walk the length of the gardens and end up back at the hotel.
While Jeff and I were studying the map, we heard the girls yell, playground! And they took off. We assumed there was a single playground, but when we looked around the foliage to see where they had gone, we saw one playground after another. It's hard for pictures to do it justice, but suffice it to say that there were enough play areas that we spent a good portion of our time at the gardens exploring them.
The girls and I found a fun, multi person seesaw.
But Jeff decided we weren't going fast enough, and hopped on top to speed things up.
After trying out all the different parts of the playground, we were ready to explore the actual garden part of the Botanical Gardens.
We found some sunken gardens,
and Jeff got a cute picture of the girls.
Then we wandered down a path to see what we would find.
We found incredible, huge trees,
and a bunch of small trees, which Jeff and Elena decided was their village.
They wandered along the stream, and eventually found a bunch of turtles.
It was an incredible collection of different palm trees, accented by water features.
We kept walking towards large glass domes we had seen from a distance. These covered a paved area where children were riding bikes, scooters, and skate boards.
Just across from that was a smaller garden with beautifully arranged flowers and sculpted trees.
We were at the northern edge of the big lake.
We found a shady spot to rest for a minute and check out the island in the middle of the lake.
As we studied the water, we saw lots of turtles and fish, and then some kind of animal swimming really fast. We were super excited when we realized that there was a family of otters living on the island and swimming around fishing in the lake.
Despite all the animal excitement, Elena was getting tired and wanted to go back to the hotel. We could see the hotel from where we were, but there were a couple big roads in between us and it. We kept walking south, hoping for a solution to present itself, and sure enough, it did. We saw people going down into a tunnel that went under the first major road, so we went down too.
There were lovely, wrought iron gates on the Botanical Gardens side of the tunnel, which I assume get closed at sunset.
We popped out next to the National Museum, and in standard KL fashion, there is zero signage to indicate that this is a path that can take you to the Botanical Gardens.
We walked up towards the museum and found a small plane.
There was still a big road between us and our hotel, but there was also the National Museum metro station, and we could see that there were escalators on either side of the road going down, so down we went.
Sure enough, we ended up in the metro station, but luckily, we could walk across without having to buy a ticket.
We popped up behind the St. Regis, but we were still on a busy road not meant for pedestrians, surrounded by office buildings.
After some trial and error, we found stairs up to an elevated walkway with signs pointing to our hotel.
It was quite an adventure, but we wanted to figure it out, so that we could walk back to the St. Regis for our afternoon tea. Still, it was a relief to get to the hotel door.
Even though we had gotten an early start, we were still hot and sweaty by the time we got back, so going to the pool seemed the most refreshing option. Jeff and Elena found some chairs in the shade, so that I could dip into the pool to cool off, but then lounge comfortably and watch my fish family enjoy themselves.
One of their favorite parts was the waterfall and water slide area.
I tried each one once, and then was perfectly happy to go back to my lounger. I also ordered us a noodle feast for pool side lunch. Jeff and I got Asian style noodles, and the girls both got spaghetti with tomato sauce. After all the walking and swimming, we were hungry!
After several hours at the pool, we went back up to the room to get cleaned up for our afternoon tea. We found our room nicely cleaned with the beds made.
Once we were all sufficiently fancy, we walked over to the St. Regis for tea in The Drawing Room. They had beautiful, Ramadan themed flowers and some fun Easter things for sale.
One of the reasons I wanted to try this particular afternoon tea, was because they have a Botero horse statue in the middle of the room, which seems so appropriate to me after living in Colombia for three years. Because of the big mirrors, you could see it from where ever you sat.
I also loved the beautiful tea service with assorted pastel colors. Jeff realized they all say St. Regis on the bottom and set up a fun picture for me.
Of course, being Malaysia, things came a bit out of order. First we got tea, then sweets.
Elena very diligently made sure to try at least one bite of every sweet.
Then the savories came, with jam and clotted cream for the scones.
And finally, the champagne came. We had decided to upgrade our tea to a full on celebration one.
Everything was yummy, and the scones were fresh and soft. They offered us refills on the savories, which was nice, and they even snuck us a few extra scones. By the end, we were all quite full. As we were enjoying our tea though, we watched the sky grow darker and darker, until it finally exploded with wind and rain. We enjoyed sipping our tea and watching the rain through the floor to ceiling windows, but ruled out walking back to the hotel, since there is a short part where you have to walk outside. Instead, we took a Grab back.
After our big day, our plan for the evening was pretty relaxed. We got the girls a late dinner via room service, and Jeff and I went up to check out the lounge. They had evening drinks and appetizers service. It was on the 33rd floor which made for an interesting view, but unfortunately it was mostly just of the surrounding buildings. The inside was very nicely decorated though, and the "appetizers" were really a full meal, which was probably more than we needed after our indulgent afternoon tea. Still we lounged and enjoyed ourselves.
The next morning after breakfast, Jeff and I set up for our weekly D&D game, and the girls got extra cozy time in their fancy hotel beds. Before we left the room, Jeff had to get some pictures with the decorative sculpture that he really liked.
When we got home, the first order of business was the Easter egg hunt. We filled most of the eggs with jelly beans, but we had a couple special ones with caramel chocolate eggs and small chocolate bunnies.
Each girl had a set of 14 eggs to find, so we hid a total of 28 eggs around the house. Luckily, one of Vivian's friends came over, because the girls are not great at finding things. They enjoyed their loot, and then we played a game of Wingspan, which seemed very Easter egg appropriate. It was a fun end to a great, celebratory weekend.
