We had our last breakfast in Galle this morning before departing for our last destination on the organised part of the trip. Deb and I will be spending an extra couple of days in Colombo before we go onto the ‘rest and recreation’ part of this trip. Getting to Colombo takes a couple of hours and the road is an expressway for most of the journey. The traffic was light because today is the Full Moon public holiday. There is a downside though, as no alcohol can be sold, so there was no Lion Beer at lunch time.
Colombo is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. Around 5.6 million people live in the broader metropolitan area and 750,000 in the Municipality. It is the financial centre of the island and a tourist destination. Colombo is a busy and vibrant city with a mixture of modern life, colonial buildings and monuments. It was made the capital of the island when Sri Lanka was ceded to the British Empire in 1815, and its status as capital was retained when the nation became independent in 1948. In 1978, administrative functions were moved to Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, which is within suburban Colombo.
Upon our arrival in Colombo our first stop was the Independence Memorial Hall, which is a national monument built to commemorate the independence of Sri Lanka from the British rule in February 1948. It is located in Independence Square in the Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo. It also houses the Independence Memorial Museum. The monument was built at the location where the formal ceremony marking the start of self-rule was held.The design of the building is based on the Magul Maduwa (Celebration Hall), the Royal audience hall of the Kingdom of Kandy.
We drove past some of the notable sites like the Red Mosque, Lotus Tower, National Museum, Exhibition Centre and Performing Arts venues. We will be visiting many of these places over the next couple of days so better photos should follow.
Our drive around ended with our arrival at our lunch venue, called Maniumpathy. This was an old British residence, now repurposed as a boutique hotel. Lunch was a series of dishes inspired by the cooking from Jaffna, which is at the very northern tip of the island and therefore influenced by Indian cooking. The meal was quite spicy, but definitely delicious. It was a fantastic setting to have our last lunch as a tour group.
Our lodgings tonight are at the Kingsbury Hotel which is in the Galle Face district near the waterfront. The obligatory afternoon storm blew in this afternoon so we had a quiet afternoon in the room, until it was time to go to dinner. There was little point going to any of the bars, because there was no alcohol to to be had on the Full Moon public holiday.
When we left it was still raining quite heavily, but we were able to borrow umbrellas from the hotel. We walked past the Ministry of Crab restaurant, which for you cricket fans is owned by retired Sri Lankan cricketers Kumar Sangakkarra and Mahela Jayawardena and have expanded across asia to 7 other locations. We went to a neighbouring restaurant who were able to accommodate us in a meeting room, which then meant we could have some proper drinks. The menu was largely pub fare, so I had a Spaghetti Carbonara while Deb had a Seafood Kottu. We had a good night discussing our personal highlights of the trip, before saying goodbyes to those on early flights tomorrow.
We have a day of sightseeing planned so we will go exploring after breakfast.
Until tomorrow
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