Pagoda Tea Room
Fort area
Galle Face Green. December 2003
I loved Sri Lanka, but Colombo was "meh".
We visited the island nation just after the peace accord with the Tamil Tigers, so it was finally safe to travel everywhere. We didn't have time to make it all the way to Jaffna, but at least some of the northern cross-island roads were re-opened which made doing a loop around the island possible. Of course, we arrived in Colombo since it had the only international airport at that time and started our tour there. Our first impressions were, like many others before us, "this is just like India", except it was not. At a glance we were in India, but there wasn't that edge we came to expect during our former travels in South Asia. Sri Lanka was a lot more relaxed. We could let our guard down. In fact, by the end of our tour we were ready to proclaim Sri Lanka as "India for Dummies" - if a traveler could learn to get around former Ceylon comfortably, they could probably step up their game for India.
Colombo simply was not that interesting and provided a very bland start to our Sri Lankan journey. I don't even recall our hotel, but it guess it was OK. We explored the "Fort" area with its old buildings and British Raj Era leftovers. We stopped in the famous Pagoda Tea Room where Duran Duran filmed their MTV classic, "Hungry Like the Wolf" (yet again popular media was influencing our holidays). Nothing was particularly amazing, but nothing was bad either. Had we not traveled extensively in India years before, we most certainly would have been wowed. As it stood, it was "just ok".
My best memory is sunset/early evening drinks on the veranda at the venerable British Colonial Galle Face Hotel. I had one of my most glorious G&T's ever there watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean while sitting in colonial spendor. THAT is my strongest memory of Colombo. Even if the city didn't wow me, it did leave me with a wonderful memory.
We ended up hiring a car and driver to take us around the island on a tour realizing that with limited time, we couldn't bother with public transport. It was one of the best decisions we made. Our car picked us up after our second day in the capital, and we were off to explore.
I might be overly harsh on Colombo. It was not a bad city, but compared to the glorious things we saw later in the Kingdom of Lanka, the city fell flat.
I loved Sri Lanka, but I like I said just not Colombo.
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