17 Mar 2013 - Day 2: A Famosa and St. Paul's Church

Instead of searching for the revolving tower which cannot be found on my GPS, we decided to search for its actual name Menara Taming Sari.  And viola, it's found and we were routed to the place within 10 minutes.

The revolving tower brings tourists to a height of 80 metres and it offers a spectacular and panoramic view of Melaka.  We did not try because both Jerlene and Javier did not seem to be interested in it.

I vaguely remember there is an old fortress nearby.  So we started walking towards where the crowd was.  After 15 minutes of walking, we reached a place where there were several life-size model of various transportation, such as aircraft, fire truck and train.

Below is the interior of the train, and a good place to hide from the sun.......  :-)

When I looked up from here, I saw some stone structure on a small hill that seems to be the old fortress which I had in mind.  This is A Famosa, a fortress built by the Portuguese during their occupation in 1511.  It is among the oldest surviving European architectural remains in Asia.  Below shows the fortress gate, the only remaining part of the fortress still standing, called the Porta de Santiago.

Behind the gate up the hill, there is another historic structure, St. Paul's Church, originally built in 1521.  Tracy and I were totally exhausted after climbing up the stairs while the kids were still full of energy.

Below is the interior of the church, where you can see some old Portuguese tombstones by the church wall.

We had a superb view of Malacca Town from the top of St. Paul's Hill.  By this time, we were all very tired. So next, we walked down the hill and to a nearby shopping mall for lunch.