Sri Lanka: A relaxing day in Colombo

Like many others, Colombo is the first stop of many entering to Sri Lanka. We pretty much travelled the whole of Saturday (out of Melbourne in the morning, transit in KL and finally reached Sri Lanka just before midnight). There was no plan, except to get a train ticket from Colombo Fort to Habarana (which for some reason I kept on typing or reading it as Habanara, maybe I am craving for some habanero chillies at all times.)

Note: Taxi from Colombo airport to accommodation LKR 3,100 including tol of LKR 300

We stayed in Ocean Studios Apartment, which was a rather interesting place. It started off with the taxi driver not quite knowing where it was... to some kind Samaritans helping us to get the attention of the person who held the keys to the apartment, and me having a little jolt on the finger when I pressed on the door bell.

 The set up was little funny, it was an apartment with a staircase leading up the entrance. There wasn't any proper reception but the person who took care of the apartment lived across the road, on the first floor. So some kind Sri Lankan helped us to shout to the man from the roadside. As there were no response initially and I saw a door bell by the side, naturally I decided to press on the door bell to see if I could get the attention of the apartment keeper. Ha! The door bell actually gave a mini electric shock. Anyways, all ended well - the apartment keeper came, we had a whole apartment complete with a room each, a kitchenette and a lounge area for 2 nights.

We started the day with a good breakfast - breakfast for champions (lol) of rice and fish curry. It was excellent breakfast but I can't tell you which shop as we just picked one along the road.
Note: In Sri Lanka, curry always comes in a few dishes of vegetables curry even if you ordered for chicken or fish curry.

Fish curry and a selection of vegetables curry, with papadum

We then flagged down a tuk-tuk to get us Colombo Fort for the only errand for the day. Reserved seats tickets were all sold out but we could get non reserved seats tickets the next day. We decided that we need more food thereafter and made our way to Cinnamon Grand for their brunch buffet (we were there on a Sunday). The spread of food was excellent, and well worth the cost of LKR3,635 (~AUD 33). Price including tax and ala-carte drinks we ordered.

I had a photo of some of the staffs as they requested for it after seeing me carrying my camera around.

I thoroughly enjoyed the lunch and totally recommend this if you are looking for a relaxing way to enjoy Colombo. I've seen the reviews of this before visiting and it also came as a recommendation from S's Sri Lankan friend.

Balance of the day was spent at a gem stone shop, granted not my kind of shopping but I didn't mind it and learned something new of course. Anything about gem I learned is new as I have zero knowledge on this. In fact, I didn't even know that Sri Lanka is famous for its gemstone.

From there, we walked over to Galle Face Green which is technically a park for people watching. There were many people with successful kite flying and we sat around till the sun just set.

Dinner? Nah - we were so full from lunch that the food pretty much lasted us till the next day, else I would've suggested we had some chilli crabs!

That - was our super relaxing day in Colombo ;)


Side note: I'm such an Asian, I miss rice...