Orchard Road - A Run Along the Iconic Shopping District

Author: Xeo Lye  |  Saturday, August 03, 2013 |  1 comment | We ran out of ideas where to run this week. We ended up testing out the Singapore Orchard Road Run and visit the shopping malls along Orchard Road early in the morning. As most of the Singaporeans will be very very familiar with this stretch of road, I will keep my report short.

Started the run at City Hall and we made our way up North, along one of the most famous shopping route in Singapore. We kind of expected tons of road crossings and traffic lights and off we went! Interestingly, the roads were deserted and traffic is relatively light. Other than stopping to wait for the green light at major road junction, we simply just dash across at the small junctions along the way.

The totally deserted stretch along Takshimaya and Wisma Atrim is a joy to run on this Saturday morning. I have never seen that stretch of Orchard Road devoid of soul, as it is usually brimming with activity, noise and pretty ladies. We made a short loop around Tanglin and the total distance which we covered was a respectable 5KM, which came as quite a surprise to me as we have strolled along Orchard Road in the past and I thought that it may be just 1-2KM in length. Perhaps time and distance seems to be shorter when there are so many sights and sounds all around you.

Overall, Orchard Road is a decent place to run ONLY early in the morning when both human and vehicular traffic is very light and you can run comfortably without knocking down tourists or being knocked down by a zooming sports car (It's well known that there are many sports car cruising along Orchard Road).

The highlight of our run is perhaps our breakfast at the popular restaurant at Wild Honey @ Scotts. This restaurant needs to make an advance booking, at least 3 days in advance in order to secure a seat. We were betting that if we were one of the first few guest when the restaurant open up for business, we will be able to secure a seat. When we reached there, a queue is already form (Scary!) and we were told to wait as the staff needs to a grace period for those guests who made reservations but did not turn up. Lucky for us, there were indeed guests who were unable to turn up and we got a nice seat in one of the most popular breakfast restaurant in Singapore!
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