This first pic is a shot of Colombo Fort railway station - the station that the train to Kandy leaves from. We arrived very early in the morning on a plane from Sharjah and went straight to the railway station to buy tickets for the afternoon. Then it started to rain heavily.... We negotiated a short stay in a fairly posh hotel, where we could get showered and changed and have a bit of a kip before the next journey. The hotel was opposite the heavily guarded, but otherwise fairly unremarkable presidential residence. I only took a photo of it because there was a sign on the hotel window saying 'Please don't take photos of the buildings opposite'. The last picture is of a building in Kandy.... much prettier I think.
We visited the botanical gardens in Kandy. I went there many years ago and enjoyed them very much. Nothing much has changed (except perhaps that the foreigners' entry fee is now even more outrageous than it was) and we spent an enjoyable day just wandering about squeezing our 600 rupees worth out of the place. A gardener showed us a big scorpion (for 10 rupees) and we saw a huge fruit bat colony.
There were lots of exotic and unusual plants. I took a few pictures of bamboo - here's one of them. The tree in the middle picture is pretty crazy. I think I'll put that in my Tree page as well. The last pic is of a huge banyan tree with Sveta sitting in the middle of it. It rained almost all the time we were in Kandy so we decided to escape to the coast.
It rained a lot there too... Here's a picture of me on the balcony of the Apollo guest house in Hikkaduwa. Note the wobbly waist-line there. That's because of all those delicious Sri Lankan curries.... and in the centre you can see one of the great Sri Lankan curry cooks - Ms. Cool Spot herself. As you can see from the menu, the Cool Spot, like most of the restaurants on the coast, specializes in seafood, but when I moaned about this, the nice lady offered to knock up a traditional veggie curry spread....and it was fantastic, easily the best of the trip - green bananas in coconut cream, stewed carrots with curry leaves and coconut milk and fragrantly spiced dhal, all served along side a big mound of brown rice with a fried popadom stuck in the top. Magnificent!
The last photo is just a wee table-top composition from Unawatuna beach, where it rained heavily most of the time we were there, although I still managed to get burned while swimming....
