Every Day Brings Something Different

We Rough It Once in a While, But We Want to Enjoy Travel Too

So we have stayed in a variety of different places on our trip, and some are better than others.  Often you have to go pretty basic, with "rustic" accommodations, but we also know how to find pleasure in our hotel stays (mostly thanks to Fiona's talent in making arrangements)

Pictured is the Mount Lavinia Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  It's a colonial style place about two hundred years old.  Faded glory, but still very nice and full of character.  

This picture at night captures the beauty of the Indian Ocean as the sun goes down. 

Sometimes You Meet Really Nice and Interesting People When You Travel 

We spent the day traveling by train to the very southern tip of Sri Lanka, and low and behold, we met a Scottish lady named Fiona!  So for a while I was traveling with two Fionas!  She was in Sri Lanka to do English language training, and we had a long conversation while on the train, and turns out, her and (my) Fiona actually knew some of the same people!

Good Galle Miss Molly 

Couldn't resist ... we traveled on the train to a town called Galle (pronounced Gall-eh) at the south end of Sri Lanka.  It was a colonial fort area originally settled by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and then the British.  It was a bona fide fort with ramparts,  and all the other stuff forts are made of.  The day was warm and sunny and we had an awesome time. 

The area was filled with wildlife, animals and such, like this cool large fishing bird with a Sri Lanka name that I couldn't translate. 

Even though Sri Lanka has become a mostly modern nation, (more comments on that later) it still has remnants of a distance past that carry forward to this current time.