After seeing wild elephants in Udawalawe, we spent the remainder of the evening, relaxing poolside, glasses of bubbly at-the-ready…
The next morning we set about exploring a place I’d never heard of before visiting – Beruwala.
Beruwala is also a seaside town and after wandering around the town, we ended up at the Kande Viharaya Temple, with its rather impressive Big Buddha.
We wandered around the temple (remember, in Sri Lanka, you have to walk around temples with your right arm facing the temples i.e. in a clockwise manner), before heading down to the town…
…past the railway and hopped into the car in search of our next home in Sri Lanka – The Vivanta by Taj.
On the face of it (ignoring the grand entrance), the Vivanta by Taj seems like a relatively small hotel… this is of course until you start exploring its many hallways and realise that you could quite easily get lost here. This is not a bad thing, of course, there’s something to be said for a hotel that still has an intimate feel despite being fairly large.
We checked in fairly quickly, arriving at a bottle of wine and rather colourful sweets, both of which I ignored in a rather uncharacteristic fashion as I headed over to the spa for a massage booked before our arrival. I’m a sucker for a good massage.
Massages over, I set out to relax by the hotel pool with lunch and cocktails…
…before heading down to the beach with the girls for a little wander around.
The rain soon cleared us all off the beach so we headed back to the shaded area by the pool, ordered up some more cocktails and pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon/early evening sampling our way through the rather varied cocktail menu.
Dinner that evening was finally in the outdoor restaurant (I’d wanted to dine al fresco since we arrived) and we were treated to what I can only describe as a seafood cornucopia! *licks lips*It was amazing and easily one of the best meals we’d had all week (can’t even remember what I had for dessert – the main meal was THAT delicious).
Alas, that evening was our final evening in Sri Lanka on our trip as the next day, we packed up our things up (after breakfast, of course) and made our way back to Colombo airport for our flight back home.
Now, although you’d think coming back to Sri Lanka and having a different experience would leave me feeling accomplished with seeing a lot more of Sri Lanka (I’d seen so many amazing and diverse parts of Sri Lanka over almost 2 weeks thus far), I left Sri Lanka, only more eager to return and discover even more parts of this beautiful country!
If you’re heading over to Sri Lanka, make sure to check out our full guide