Not Quite to the Fort

Jay and I headed towards downtown Colombo today.  We hit two big shopping plazas: Majestic City and Liberty Plaza.  The only thing purchased though was a DVD of a award winning Sinhala film and a map  of Colombo.

Shopping is never big on our agenda.  Generally, we try to get to a Laksala, the government handicraft an souvenir reseller, but haven’t yet.  How many tiny elephants can one give away?  I was half thinking about buying an authentic ruby ear stud as precious jewels are a big export commodity here.  On all the past visits, I was never interested in the slightest.  Now that I have a $9 gold-coloured ear stud in my left ear, I figured I may as well upgrade.  Rubies are my birthstone. We’ll see if I get a chance before we leave the island.  That unfortunate occurrence will happen soon enough!

One other interesting thing we did today was lunch.  Jayantha got his first real job at a hotel not far from here in 1979.  He was a room steward and barman.  We went back to Hotel Janaki and it seemed to be doing well.  We had a great Sri Lankan lunch in their air conditioned restaurant.  I know that Jay enjoyed seeing the differences, like a new swimming pool area.  Of course the whole neighbourhood area had changed a lot in thirty years too.  For example on the bus we passed a great many new multiple storey apartment building towers between the Galle Road and the High Levels Highway.