The walk the guides keep returning to deserves its own note. The full waterside circuit of the bay is a little over three and a half kilometres — forty minutes at a stroll, an hour and a half the way you'll actually do it, because the loop is engineered to stop you.
The shape of it
Start anywhere — the loop forgives all entry points — but for the record: from beneath the wheel on the eastern shore, the promenade runs west past the floating platform to the Helix Bridge. Cross it, pausing at the viewing pods. The far shore then carries you past the lotus museum and the resort towers' feet, along the bay front to the open square where the lion statue spouts into the water. The low Jubilee Bridge returns you east past the durian-domed theatres, and the waterfront esplanade walks you home under the wheel. One loop, nearly every postcard in the city.
Surfaces and shade
Flat, paved and step-free throughout — strollers and wheelchairs do the whole circuit. The exposed stretches are the east shore and the bay front, so sun strategy matters: the theatres' colonnade and the malls along the north side give you bail-out shade every few hundred metres. Water points and kiosks are regular; an evening breeze off the water does the rest.
The hour to go
Walk it anti-clockwise, starting ninety minutes before sunset. You get the far shore in golden light, the statue at the moment the towers ignite behind it, and the esplanade stretch in full blue hour — the twenty-minute window when the skyline photographs itself. At dawn it's the runners' loop instead: quiet, pewter-coloured, and the one hour the bay belongs to locals alone.