Day 025 of Our Winter:
Jay said, "Let's go to Colombo." And we did. We always like to look around. I've been visiting Sri Lanka since my first trip in 1986. So, we go to see changes. Colombo, a colonial city is well laid out with large boulevards and parks. The center of things are near the port. It's crowded there. We chose the Fort Railway Station as a drop off in my PickMe ride share app. It's the terminus station right in the center of things.
We had the driver drop us off exactly in front of the Fort Railway Station. We peeked inside at the Victoria era ironwork and did notice many foreigners scurrying to trains to their vacation cities. We walked across the pedestrian walkway and moved slowly into the thick of things.
We walked old, familiar roads. The bustle of the Fort area is always a bit amazing and occasionally overwhelming.
Next, we walked past the aging Cargills Building that had once been THE department store in the country. Today, it is sort of a sad shell of a place. One remaining vestige of long-ago times is the modern Cargill Supermarkets found everywhere on the island. One sort of convenience location was still inside. A statue of Queen Victoria still looks down upon the former glories I fear it may not last there a whole lot longer. As is our custom now that the Pagoda is no longer around, we stopped inside for cool drinks. One Elephant House brand Ginger Beer and a Cream Soda, please.
Then we headed towards the Galle Face Road and the ocean. I could have added a whole lot of interesting photos here as the Colombo light house tower and former presidential residence hasn't moved an inch during the near forty years of my visits.
We walked past the Ceylinco building, once the tallest in the whole country. We went to the Gall Face One Mall. We passed the Hilton, Shangri-La, the Kingsbury, formerly an InterContinuental. We passed the old Parliament Building
Galle Face One: This is a premier mall with all sorts of high-end shops that I don't know who really shops in. I headed for the Moose Clothing Store. But, I'll save that for discussion in a later journal entry. We returned to the Galle Face green and the capital city's interface with the Indian Ocean.
We walked the Galle Face towards the iconic Galle Face Hotel. We didn't get down to that end but sort of cut off walking city tour at nearly 6 km near the national flag.
A new PickMe driver dropped us back off in Nugegoda in around a half hour. We paid about US $3.50 with a substantial tip to the driver automatically through the app. We had come back to the house in the air conditioned comfort of a Suzuki Wagon-R along the always-crowded boulevards of the part of Columbo once considered the suburbs.