[Thalpe & Galle, Sri Lanka] After a few worrying days when Bella kept saying strange things like, "I want to lie down for a bit," and "No I don't want to go swimming," this morning we were relieved to see her singing and dancing and running around in circles in the sand again. Nothing like seeing spectacular displays of wanton waste of excess energy to reassure you that your kid has finally kicked an upper respiratory infection.
It's our last full day here in Thalpe, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. Unlike our other vacations, we haven't DONE a lot on this trip. We've eaten a lot of great sri lankan food, hung out in the pool and on the beach, and ventured a few times out to "town" for dinner or lunch, but for the most part there's hasn't been much reason to stray very far from our beachfront/poolfront room with the big veranda. The first few days when Bella was sick and sleeping a lot in the room, at least Mik and I could still swim and watch the ocean and even take turns running down to the beach. I can't imagine what we would have done had we been staying in a room on the 15th floor of some chain hotel resort.
Yesterday was really the only exception, when we spent the day with our friend Federico, who brought us to a nearby beach (where Mama promptly got spin-cycled trying to ride some badass surf) and then to his beautiful house and plantation in Matara, where we had an amazing lunch and relaxed on his Dutch colonial-style verandas and cooled off in the natural stone pool. So, technically, we still didn't DO a whole lot, we just went SOMEWHERE ELSE to do not-a-whole-lot.
Probably still a few great photos to take today and tomorrow, but above is a slide show of the highlights so far, as well as the links for the three small boutique hotels in which we stayed - all of them faaaahbulous in a LUXE guide kind of way, yet still supremely child-friendly.
The hotels:
The Wallawwa, 15 minutes from the airport, a 14-room hotel in lush tropical gardens. They made up a "princess bed" (really a hot pink mosquito net over the room's sofa) that Bella will probably talk about for the next 2 months.
Fort Printers Hotel, inside the Galle Fort. The staff here got Bella ice cream for breakfast when her tonsils were swollen, and upgraded us to the best room in the house when they saw that we had a baby with us. When they found out how much Bella loves flowers, especially the white frangipani blossoms, they would gather up a bunch every mealtime for her.
The Frangipani Tree, in the town of Thalpe, just outside Galle. Owned by the same family as Fort Printers.
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