Travel
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Sri Lanka
Anyone?
1) How did you get there (Flight plan?)
2) How long did you stay?
3) Where did you stay?
4) What did you do?
5) Did the political instability affect any part of your visit?
Boludos.
Re: Sri Lanka
1) How did you get there (Flight plan?)
We live in the M.E., so part this probably wouldn't be as helpful for you. We flew direct from Riyadh.
2) How long did you stay?
We stayed 8 nights. Probably wouldn't want any shorter of a stay (if possible) if you are flying over from the States.
3) Where did you stay?
We traveled around. We spent three night at the Heritance Kandalama in Dambulla. It is definitely not up to 5 star standards (particularly with respect to food). It was cool to stay in such a famous and architecturally interesting hotel, but I'm not sure that it's worth the money. Next we traveled to Kandy and stayed in Amayya Hill. This hotel was the most disappointing. The food was expensive and bad and the hotel was so far up in the hills that it took forever to get down to Kandy. I highly recommend staying closer to the center of Kandy because it is a really cool city. Next we spend two nights in Unawatuna at a little guest house called the Hotel Flower Garden. This was our favorite place. It was really reasonably priced and you get your own little guest cottage. The pool area is great, the food is decent, and it's a quick walk to the beach. Finally, we spend our last night at the Galle Face in Colombo. It was neat to spend a night in the historic hotel and you can't beat the location.
4) What did you do?
While in Dambulla, we did most of the cultural triangle stuff: Toured Polonnaruwa, road elephants at Habarana, climbed Sigiriya Lion Rock Fortress, visited the Dambulla Cave Temples. The only thing we didn't do was climb Adam's Peak, because that seemed a bit too ambitious with a toddler in tow. In Kandy we visited the Temple of the Tooth and saw the Kandy cultural dance show. On our way from Kandy to Unawatuna, we stopped at the Pinnawella elephant orphanage. In Unawatuna, we spent time on the beach, hanging out by the pool, and we did a sunset trip over the the Galle Fort. On our drive to Colombo, we stopped at the memorial of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and toured well-known sea turtle conservation center at Hikkaduwa. While we were in Colombo we really didn't do much. We walked along the sea wall and spent some time in the large park across the street flying kites with the kids. One place we didn't go tha I wish we had had time for was the Newara Eliya region where they grow tea. People we know that have traveled there say it is gorgeous up in the hills there.
If you are planning on traveling around Sri Lanka a bit, I highly recommend hiring a guide and driver. We had an English speaking guide and driver and it made the vacation that much easier and it really wasn't expensive. Of course, we travelled with both of our kids, so we weren't as keen on relying on the train as we probably would have been had we been traveling without them. My other major recommendation is to research B&Bs and guest houses and, if at all possible, choose those over the better know "hotels". The Hotel Flower Garden was the only guest house we stayed at during our stay and yet it was hands down the best experience and cost about 1/3 the price of the hotels we booked. If you do decide to stay at the well-known hotels, just prepare yourself not to expect their supposed star ratings to match your expectations.
5) Did the political instability affect any part of your visit?
We did not go any further north than Polonnaruwa so we really weren't in the areas where the conflict was centered in the past. The Tamils are primarily concentrated in the northern region. In the areas that we traveled, there was never a moment that we felt at all unsafe (well, minus the crazy driving). We were there in August of 2011 and everything was calm where we were.
If you're interested in more details, feel free to PM me and I will send you the link the my blog. I took lots of pictures, including of the places we stayed, and wrote a bit about all of the activities we chose.
No problem. I PMed you back.