From Mirissa, we head back up the coast to Galle.
It’s about an hour by tuk-tuk. We order a special ‘large’ tuk-tuk to accommodate three people and their luggage.
A good morning for a journey up the coast.
Some salt fish lie out to dry in the sun.
We arrive in Galle. Galle is above all a fortress town.
We stay within the fortress walls and walk around the ramparts.
The Black Fort was the original fortification built by the Portuguese.
Many of the buildings have a Dutch look.
Giant trees are everywhere, too.
You can smell the sea form anywhere in town.
This is Sri Lanka’s oldest light station, dating back to 1848, but the original lighthouse built by the British was located about 100 metres from the current site. It was destroyed by fire in 1934. The existing lighthouse was erected here in 1939.
Galle is a very walkable place.
Another view of the lighthouse. (Our hotel is on Lighthouse Street.)
Some of the centuries-old buildings are looking their age.
We visit the Maritime Archaeology Museum. So do half the schoolkids in town.
There’s an old Dutch Reformed Church in the middle of town.
These signs are everywhere. Usually found where workmen are welding with no goggles or angle-grinding steel in their flip-flops.
The Galle clock tower is a familiar landmark.
According to Wikipedia:
‘The Galle fort is a world heritage site and is the largest remaining fortress in Asia built by European occupiers.‘
We belatedly realize that there are no photos of any of us in this entry. I’ll remediate that with a shot of Maria at the gates of our hotel in Galle.
Sight or Insight of the Day
We take the train back to Colombo, and then another to Negombo.
Negombo is where our Sri Lanka trip began. We celebrate by going out for one last seafood feast at the same restaurant we ate at the first evening we were here.
Then we depart in the middle of the night for our flight to Nepal.