Hi All,
Stepping onto our flight to Sri Lanka, we felt like we’d been upgraded to business class! We were welcomed with a glass of water (not champagne though) and had huge TV screens playing great films for our short haul flight. Our dinner was surprisingly tasty (even served with metal cutlery) and the unusually good wine even better! EasyJet needs to take a leaf from the book of Sri Lankan airlines!
We landed late, raced through immigration, grabbed our bags and got a tuk tuk to our airport hotel. The following morning we headed to Negombo, a small fishing town just north of the airport for some much needed rest and relaxation after our hectic week in India.
Negombo isn’t known for the pristine beaches that can be found on Sri Lanka’s south coast but is great for seafood. We spent the day relaxing and planning where we would like to visit in Sri Lanka then headed to the beach for sunset. We had an incredible seafood platter with crab, lobster, bream, king prawns, and cuttlefish - all delicious! The following morning we explored the local town and fish markets; we enjoyed seeing the array of fish being sold to the locals. The smell led us to a huge area where thousands of fish were being dried and turned into salt fish in the sun.
Batteries recharged, we headed by bus to Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka. So far, Colombo is the place that has felt most similar to cities at home. The Dutch and British architecture a clear reminder of it’s colonial past. While the city is rich is history it is also developing rapidly; sky scrappers and modern hotels line the shore and building work has started on the sandbank for an entire complex of hotels, shops, restaurants and bars. We spent the morning exploring Pettah market, the city’s wholesale fruit a veg centre. There were bananas for days! The ‘perfectly’ shaped ones were being boxed up for shipping abroad, branches of stubbier ones were being loaded into tuk tuks to deliver locally and small scale sales being made to passers by. We walked around the upmarket Old Dutch Hospital in the Fort area for a spot of window shopping and perusing menus for restaurants we couldn’t afford to eat at. After, we headed to Galle Face Green for dinner with the locals in a small cafe on the waters edge. We had a giant barbecued prawn (bigger than we’ve ever seen) and mixed seafood kotthu (a traditional dish made with chopped flat bread) - much better than a fancy restaurant! Our final stop of the day was a trip to the cinema to see Bohemian Rhapsody; it felt odd to be doing something so ‘normal’ thousands of miles from home!
Next we are off to Kandy, the last capital of the Sinhalese kingdom. Well technically we’ve already been there but are playing catch up with blog posts so expect another, hopefully more interesting, one shortly!
Love R and D xxx
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