Five Star Luxury in Sri Lanka

Unbelievable...sitting on our porch...looking through the palm trees to the restless ocean, crashing ceaselessly upon the huge boulders submerged along the coastline. The sun setting brilliantly through the darkening clouds scattered across the sky. The view! The ambiance! The stunning beauty!


Jeff has posted a slide show of pictures from our travels - check them out by clicking here. 

View of the Jetwing Hotel

The trip here was a bit of a rush. We ran out of school exactly at 3:00 so that we could be home and ready for our driver at 4:00. We gave ourselves 30 extra minutes because traffic is horrendous in the afternoon and especially when everyone is leaving town. Well, of course, the traffic was non-existent and we made it to the airport in 30 minutes (heck, we can take that long to get home...and that's across the street!). Of course it meant we had a longer stay but since we have a nice lounge we can go into and they have snacks and tea and comfy chairs, it was fine to sit and read while we waited - much better than sweating it out in the car.
We landed here at 3:00 am...bleary eyed and exhausted. We were totally amazed to be greeted with Christmas lights and wreaths hanging throughout the airport and Christmas music playing everywhere (at 3am). I thought it was a Buddhist country (it is) with Hindu also (it is) but apparently with so many European conquerors, the Christians didn't want to be left out. Our driver was waiting for us and we headed out in the dark of night to our first destination – Galle.

North from our hotel

The hotel here is fantastic, unbelievable, add your own adjectives – 5 star luxury at 3 star prices. We have a fabulous room with a view that doesn’t stop. We can see the coastline, view the sunsets while we sip cold drinks, watch the fishermen, without ever leaving the comfort of our deck. The service…impeccable.  Dilan, our hotel young man, brought us tea and coffee to the room. He makes sure everything is perfect, the room, extra water, our meals at the hotel. We've never had someone whose job it is to look out for us like this. This could be easy to get used to. 

Fishermen on the rocks

What do you eat if you don't eat meat? omg - let me tell you. We went to one of the nice restaurants here - this is a very posh place and the food is fabulous – and not just for carnivores. They have an unbelievable number of vegetarian dishes. Tonight I had cumin baked pumpkin with beans and pistachios wrapped in a buckwheat crepe with a lite sauce made of buffalo mozarella. It was absolutely wonderful. The salad was fennel fronds (don't remember what they called it) with mushrooms, peppers, other veggies and a basalmic vinegar sauce that was wonderful. Breakfast includes many different and unusual foods - red rice with various curries, spicy pickled veggies, grain breads, cumin spiced gouda cheese (delicious) and chili spiced gouda - though that one could have used more chili. This is going to be a hard place to be on a diet.