We got up at 5am in order to buy our 6.30 train ticket to Colombo - and a good thing we did too as we managed to get a seat which made the trip pleasant. As we reached Colombo that familiar heat and humidity returned. We got a tuk tuk to Sunshine Hotel in Colombo 4 and not far from the coast.

We couldn't check in until 2pm so we spent some time browsing in the nearby shops on Galle Road, and ended up buying a heap of souvenirs, particularly in Barefoot - a fancy shop/cafe specialising in brightly coloured fabrics. There was also very good people watching on display - the eccentric british ladies of Colombo who were lunching - dressed head to toe in Barefoot fabrics.

We ate south Indian food - dosas, which wasn't quite as good as we had have previously before checking in. Our room had a great view of the building around the city, and also had a tv! We caught up on some Olympics before heading back out to the National museum which had a good, if slightly random combination of exhibits on everything from agriculture, puppets and medieval Sri Lanka.

We walked through the cinnamon gardens and slave island areas of Colombo - which had lots of crumbling neglected colonial buildings to Galle Face Green. A nice open space right on the coast with a little beach. All the Sri Lankan families come here to fly kites, chat and eat. Here we sold our new Lonely Planet to some newly arrived travellers who didn't know where they were going.

We had a beer ( and what we though was a snack but turned out to be fish and chips!) at the Galle Face Hotel - a huge beautiful colonial hotel with a perfectly situated coast side verandah restaurant. A perfect spot to enjoy the sunset.

After we went to the Bars Cafe, which contrary to it's name didn't have a bar, but did do a great selection of deserts. We crashed out back at our hotel and fell asleep watching to the Olympics.

The next day we caught a tuk tuk (they have meters here in Colombo) back to Galle Face Green and walked around the Fort and Pettah areas of the city. The Fort was built by the Dutch and made into the financial centre by the British - hence the wealth of colonial buildings like the old dutch hospital (now a posh shopping centre) and Cargills - an old British department store (now just a shell of a building with a few scruffy stalls inside.) The Fort was crippled in 1996 by a LTTE bomb at the central bank and is now heavily guarded and closed off to the public due to the proximity to the Presidents House.

The Pettah, however, is the bustling market and Tamil centre of Colombo. Here I bought some new flip flops to replace my falling apart pair and we bought some horribly sickly sweet Indian sweets which we couldn't eat. Not before long it was time to check out of our hotel, grab food (khottu rotti - delicious!) and get our taxi to the airport.

At the airport we spent the remainder of our rupees on a couple more souvenirs, had some coffee and a snack and caught up on Internet with some free wifi, before saying goodbye to Sri Lanka and catching our flight to Dubai.