We spent two fantastic weeks in Sri Lanka with my (Karen) mother Julie.  Our flights landed a few hours apart, so Reuben and I were able to arrive and settle in before meeting Mum at the airport. We stayed at an airbnb place in Negombo, which I would recommend as it is only 10km from the airport – especially good since Mum arrived at 11pm.  Annoyingly we lost my Kindle on the way to the airport – we have now lost or had stolen all of my clothes, two Kindles, one phone, had another phone break and had one computer break…we are sick of getting police reports!  (Not to mention all of the random stuff we have lost – a plastic picnic knife, two sets of pyjamas left under pillows on two occasions,  headphones, my Strawberry Shortcake tshirt…it is amazing how many things we have misplaced!)

After a slow start to the next morning we headed into Colombo to check out the National Museum (pictured above).  We took Mum on a local bus to do that, and here learned that travelling by bus in Sri Lanka is both cheap and extremely slow! It took about 2 hours to cover 40 kms! The museum was interesting and a nice relaxing way to start our trip.  We also introduced Mum to the joys of travelling by tuk tuk  – not sure she loved it as much as we do – and the joys of street food, which we all appreciated!

The city of Colombo is actually not super interesting to visit, so we didn’t spend any more time here, but Reuben and I did visit again when we left Sri Lanka – we spent a night staying with Reuben’s friend Tabea.  We had fun trading stories and sharing laughter before leaving early the next morning for our flight.