We are in Colombo, Sri Lanka after Penang, Malaysia.
I have never thought Sri Lanka would be so close from South Asia!
It only took 2 sea days!
This would be our 4th or 5th visit to the city
and we always have hired a taxi for half a day to look around.
So we decided to do something different this time.
And we saw Galle Tour out of many shore excursions offered from the cruise.
It was only 130Km from Colombo to Galle
but it has taken more than 2 hours by tour coach.
But it was rather pleasant with views like the above along side the highway.
Rest stop on highway
Tea farms scattered around mountain area.
Entering seaside of Galle.
Our tour guide looks like well over 70 was very enthusiastic
about the tour today and said that
Galle is a must visit place when in Sri Lanka!
A local market on a beach
Seafood shop
Famous (?) clock tower!
It was so humid and hot day,
even sea breeze was not a help much
to climb up the small hill to the top of the fort.
Galle has the largest fort built by European in Asia.
Portuguese first then Dutch came here and fight
for exotic spices and tea centuries ago.
Needless to say about their emerald and saphire...
Highschool kids playing cricket
This is so called museum but it was actually jewelry store.
Didn't someone tell us that there is no gem stones left in Sri Lanka
because they export them 100% to overseas?
He was posing and asking us to take photo of him.
The stones he is working on are moonstones.
I don't know much of gem stones but these are pretty!
Another famous (?) landmark in Galle.
Dutch church.
Well located hotel by the cliff with nice view
was our lunch stop.
It must have been very popular tour for the passengers!
There were three coaches with 120 people at lunch buffet.
I was hoping to have nice curry dish.
At least one.
But big disappointment as there was no authentic local dish presented.
One of the worst tourist food ever, as well!
There has been huge monsoon rain while we were at lunch
which lasted about 2 hours.
Sri Lankan tea products in fancy packages.
Tour guide promised to us to go to see stilt fishermen
in the afternoon if we have time left.
Sadly we had to satisfy ourselves with this photo
hung in a hotel souvenir shop
as obviously we didn't have time to go to see them
before hurry back to Colombo.
Back to Colombo.
Most of stores closed as their biggest national holiday is on tomorrow.
The day to be with their family in hometown.
All in all, we did enjoy the tour to Galle
even though there were few disappointments. ^^
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