My mom came to visit! Being the intrepid world traveler that she is, she made the 24 hour trip to see us. Although, let's be honest, the main draw was her granddaughters and probably the fresh mango too.
She came just in time for an early Halloween celebration at the embassy and the girls' October break. She gets extra points for following us all over the embassy as the girls collected candy from the various offices.
It was probably the most high energy outing we did, and it was on her first day. The rest of the time, we tried to take it easy. Elena introduced her to our Seri Hening fish pond.
And, of course, we showed off the mall lifestyle in KL. We started with Suria KLCC which is directly under the Petronas Towers. All the malls had beautiful flower displays for Diwali.
I got a selfie with me and mom outside the mall, with the towers.
Since Mom is afraid of heights, that eliminates at least 50% of the top sight seeing activities in KL, so instead, we took her to the KLCC park and let her admire the towers from afar.
She also really liked the big trees in the park.
Our final destination for the day was the Mandarin Oriental hotel where I had booked us a fancy buffet lunch. The hotel also had a lovely Diwali display.
Even though the reservation was for 12, the hostess at the restaurant informed us that the restaurant didn't open until 12:30, typical, but frustrating. Luckily, everyone in our family is used to these kinds of hiccups, so we went to the coffee area next to the restaurant and had some drinks while we waited. There was a lovely view of the park, so we tried to make the best of things.
Once the restaurant opened, they escorted us to a very nice, curved booth that was out of the way of the main food stations and had a view of the park.
I had tried very hard to find out what kinds of food stations there would be, but all I got was "international". It turned out that since it was Diwali weekend, several of the other nationalities had been pushed out to make room for several Indian food stations. The problem was that most of those foods were spicy, which eliminated most of our dining party. Luckily, the Chinese soup and noodle station came to the rescue!
After that outing, we were all full, so we spent the afternoon relaxing at home and Elena and Safta finished a puzzle.
The next day, we kept it simple and went to our next door mall. We found more pretty Diwali decorations, but also did some shopping. Vivian was getting ready to start voice lessons, so I wanted to price check electric keyboards.
Even though the girls and I had the week off, Jeff still had to work, so we kept Mom busy by taking her to the fanciest mall in KL, Pavilion. They also had up their Diwali display. They usually go over the top for holidays, and this was no exception.
While it's a fun mall for pictures, it's not really the most practical for shopping, so we mostly looked around and then got some lunch.
We walked off our lunch with a quick trip around Tokyo Street, and then we headed back home to rest and change for our evening outing.
Even though Mom doesn't like heights, I knew she would like the towers all lit up at night, so we took her to the WET Bar which is at The W. From there, you can see the KL Tower lit up (it's behind her and Vivi),
and you get a great view of the Petronas Towers.
The next day I had Mom all to myself for a trip to the Islamic Arts Museum. The girls didn't want to go again, so they hung out with Noby. Mom and I wandered around and enjoyed the displays.
Then, we had a nice lunch in the restaurant.
For the next day's adventure, we included the girls. I still hadn't taken them to the aquarium over in KLCC, so with Mom along, we set off early, hoping it wouldn't be ridiculously crowded like it was the last time we tried. We were lucky this time, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves.
One of the main selling features of this aquarium is its "underwater" tunnel, and it did not disappoint. It has a moving sidewalk you can stand on, so we alternated being carried along and hopping off to look at things more closely.
It was definitely a successful outing.
But the fun didn't stop there. Jeff took time off of work, so that he could leave early and meet us for lunch. We decided to try out a relatively new place called Souled Out. We had quite the adventure trying to figure out how to get in, since we couldn't find a door from the mall to the main seating area, but eventually we figured it out and settled down for some fancy drinks and yummy food. The menu was ridiculously extensive, so we got a sampling of things to try.
The time went too fast, and before we knew it, it was the Sunday before school started again and Mom went back to the States. She watched the girls' swim lessons, and then we took her to Alexis for a send off meal.
We wished she could have stayed longer, but we're so glad she made the trip and got to experience Goerss life, KL style.
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