John woke early and decided to walk down to the Temple from our hotel. There is a lovely view from the front porch of The Secret Kandy.
The commercial stretch that leads to the center of the town is busy and interesting, but not exactly beautiful. There are little remnants of the old colonial town. I wish more of them had been preserved.
John did notice one slightly decaying remnant of colonial days, the “Old Boys Club” for the Anglican secondary school.
He found his way down to the temple and palace complex. There is a lake in front of it created by the Kandyan monarchs. It is still remarkably lovely.
We probably could have spent some more time in Kandy, but we had a train to catch. The British loved to build railways in their colonial possessions, so it was no surprise that Sri Lanka is criss-crossed by railroad lines. One of the main purposes of these rail lines was to get tea from the highlands to the coast where it could be shipped back to Old Blighty where people could huddle by a coal fire with a “cuppa.” Now these lines carry people mostly and the line through the tea country is popular with tourists.
Tharindu brought to the the train station. We were struck by the “uplifting” message we saw there and wondered who paid to put these up.
We wait around for a while though the train was not particularly late. Tharindu is driving to the Hatton where we will get off the train and I think he wanted to make absolutely certain that we were on the right train.
It finally pulled in, about ten minutes late. Of course for Amtrak, that would early….
We had a seat in the air-conditioned first class car. John checked out second class and third class. They were like something you see in movies. From my seat I watched as the country became more and more mountainous.
And one large, and not so lovely bird.
Our room is nothing special, and John is a little disappointed there. But it is the only thing remotely close to decent wifi I have had on this trip so I am jubilant. I can finally publish all these blog posts I have been writing! There are only four rooms here and the staff to guest ratio must be about 2 to 1. Unfortunately for us, all the other guests now are an extended French family. It is awkward as we almost feel like we are crashing their New Year’s Eve family reunion. Plus, only a couple of them speak anything other than hotel check-in English. I am sure they are wonderful people and we would all be good friends if we could communicate. But we can’t.
We had our New Year’s Eve meal early and we plan to hit the sack before midnight. Happy New Year to all!
