Galle – a fortified town

Galle is a historic walled city, a UNESCO world heritage site and a one hour bus ride from Mirissa – this made it the perfect location for a day trip!  We arrived in the heat of the day, and after a walk around the ramparts decided to take a tuk tuk around the town to…

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Relaxing on Mirissa Beach

The south coast of Sri Lanka has some stunning beaches – we decided to stay at Mirissa, known for being one of the more chilled out beaches.  We booked rooms at a beautiful hotel where each morning we could have breakfast under the palm trees, looking at the ocean and the nearby island – such…

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On Safari in Sri Lanka

We had planned a visit to Tissamaharama to do a safari to Yala national park to see leopards, and had booked accommodation accordingly.  We were rather dismayed to learn on arrival in Sri Lanka that the whole park was closed in September but decided to go to Tissa anyway and try a different park.  We…

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A train ride through tea country

We took a train from Kandy high into the hills to Nuwara Eliya, which was a beautiful trip with lots of views of tea plantations along the way.  We travelled third class as all of the other seats were taken and it turned out to be perfectly comfortable and with far better views than the…

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Hill climbing in Sri Lanka

We decided to hire a driver to visit the sites of Dambulla and Sigrinya, as they were just far enough away that taking buses would have made for a stressful day.  Our first stop was Dambulla, where we climbed a hill and saw the famous cave temples.  There are five different temples perched on the top…

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A day in Kandy

We travelled to Kandy by train – we were in the first class coach, but didn’t have a particularly impressive view.  Kandy itself was lovely – it’s a small town beside a man made lake.  We spent a day exploring Kandy – our first stop was the Temple of the Tooth, where a tooth supposedly…

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Arrival in Sri Lanka

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…

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Things we didn’t see in India but you totally should

As some of you know, we visited India for our honeymoon in 2010.  We saw a few wonderful places that we decided not to revisit this time – but these are five must-see sights in India.  The first and most obvious is the Taj Mahal – we visited here on a day trip from Delhi…

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Last stop in India

We took a five hour train to Madurai, which was supposed to get in around 11pm…but after a 2 1/2 hour unexplained stop on the tracks we rolled in closer to 2am…thanks last train ride!  We dragged ourselves out of bed the next morning to go explore the Sri Meenakshi Amman temple.  This temple was…

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Surgery and sunbathing

From Alleppey we took a train to Trivandrum, the nearest big town to the beach resort in Kovalam.  Before we got on the train Reuben confessed to me that he had broken a tooth before our houseboat adventure, but hadn’t wanted me to worry about it so had kept it to himself.  Luckily, Trivandrum and…

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