Hey everyone, Tony here, so Jenna spent our entire vacation in Sri Lanka sick– so I’m taking over for her for a bit to write about our trip. When we were looking for a Christmas trip we wanted to go for something fun, relaxing, and easy and Sri Lanka was just that. I’ll be breaking up the next few blog posts up to go over the different aspects of our trip.
The first 4 days of our Sri Lankan vacation were spent in the coastal resort of Mount Lavinia. Mount Lavinia is a beautiful resort just south of the capitol city of Colombo and while it is only about 60 km from the airport, the traffic was so bad that it took almost 3 hours for us to get there! Traffic was crazy in Colombo, and that’s saying something coming from Doha. When we got to the resort it was great, the hotel is over 200 years old and is mildly reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel in the Shining (not that we saw ghosts just that kind of feel). There were several wonderful restaurants at the resort including one that had the best seafood we’ve ever had.
The lovely pool and deck
View from our hotel room balcony- Lovely to hear the waves at night!
The lobby
The second day we were there we had to take a train into Colombo to buy train tickets for the second leg of our trip a few days later. The train ride was super fun! First the train was about an hour late and when it did get there it was so jam packed full of people that we had to stand right next to the open door.
Mount Lavinia train station
Fortunately for us it was only about a 30-minute train ride. We got to the busy terminal in downtown Colombo
and had to stand in a room that was well over 110 degrees for a while to get the tickets for trip up to the center of the island. After spending much longer in the train terminal then we thought, we finally caught another 
train back to Mount Lavinia. The rest of that day Jenna spent the afternoon relaxing on the beach and I walked around the area taking photos.
The next day disaster hit…The third day was planned to be Jenna’s “beach day”. I’m not much of a beach person myself, I get bored after about ten minutes of doing nothing but all Jenna wanted out of this vacation was some relaxing beach time and a chance to unwind from work in Doha. Unfortunately, that afternoon started the crappy part of the trip for Jenna as she got food poisoning and some other flu-like disaster sickness.
While she spent some time on the beach and by the pool, the majority of the day she spent feeling like crap in the hotel room. I stayed close by in case she needed anything but each morning and evening I spent taking photos of the beaches and the people of the area. Fortunately relaxing in the room was good for Jenna and she was able to get feeling a little better for a while. We then left Mount Lavinia and Colombo and headed for the mountains and Kandy.
*Tony doesn’t write with as much detail as I do, but we were able to spend our time at Mount Lavinia with our same friends we traveled with in Nepal. I will just add a bunch of extra pictures of these first few days. :)
Fancy dinner :)
Corinne and Jared at dinner
Fancy dinner night
cameras and carry-ons 