Galle Fort is an adorable little place. Walking around its long streets full of clean white colonial buildings is nothing but a pleasure. Every little cafe, restaurant or shop makes you want to go in and check it out, every hotel makes you wonder what it would be like to stay there for a couple of nights. While there is not exactly a lot to see (All Saints' Church is nice and we were told the National Museum is worth a visit, but that is about it) this part of the city has an undeniable charm that is more than enough to justify a visit. This seems to be corroborated by the number of tourists around, although the fort itself and the small beaches outside of it were still quite popular with local families on a day out. Despite obviously being a touristy area (within the not very touristy context of the country) there was still clearly some real life happening around us, made evident by the hundreds of children leaving classes in their uniform and then going on to do sports in the afternoon, with the little ones playing tennis with rackets bigger than themselves being the highlight of my day.
A quick side trip to the Japanese Peace Pagoda and the nearby Jungle Beach revealed a more secluded side of Galle. The first is a beautiful Buddhist monument at the top of a hill across the bay from the fort, with the surrounding temples and scenic views making it an incredibly peaceful setting. At one point, I am pretty sure we were the only people there apart from the gentleman tasked with telling people not to take pictures inside the temple. From there we walked to the Jungle Beach, which as the name suggests took a bit of trekking through the woods to get to. Once we got there we were pretty happy we made the effort as the small stretch of sand is beautiful and the impressive number of beach shacks only add to its charm. Unfortunately we had to get back to Galle as our transport to Mirissa was waiting, but still had time to taste a delicious king coconut while waiting for our rickshaw.
Upon arriving in Mirissa, something unusual happened - the owner of our guest house greeted me with the words "Your address is in Milton Keynes! I have been in Milton Keynes!". Now this is the kind of reaction one would expect to get when coming from New York, Paris or London. Somehow, the gentleman happened to have lived in Leighton Buzzard (a name that always reminds me of Toy Story) in the nineties, and proceeded to show me pictures of him next to a random glass building in MK (there are a lot of them) and also at Silverstone, where he remembers watching Schumacher winning and Coulthard crashing in the rain.
With that bizarre moment out of the way, we headed to the beach, where a choppy high tide and grey skies did not exactly provide the ideal setting to appreciate its beauty, so after watching the sun set from the pier we headed to a roti house for some dinner. The local options on offer were roti (a sort of wrap) and kottu (the aforementioned sort of wrap chopped very loudly). Both were delicious but definitely overshadowed by the peanut butter milkshakes, which were so good I had to have two of them, just to make sure I did not imagine how good the first one was. It was not my imagination. It was that good.
Cheers,
J-Wowww
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