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We arrived in Galle and what a beautiful place this is.
We are staying in the old fort built by the Dutch a few hundred years ago and has a real old colonial feel to it with lots of old merchant houses, tea shops, craft shops and even a lighthouse!
We took our dinner the first night, at the Lucky Fort restaurant - highly recommended by Trip dvisor saying it was the No. 1 place to eat in Galle. And guesss whet? its opposite where we are staying so easy option for us. It is family run and we ordered the 10 curry meal for 2 (even though there are 3 of us). When it came it looked amazing. 10 different dishes - just small amounts of each but even for 3 of us it was enough. Amazing flavours and we could see why it was number 1.
The next day we met with our tuk tuk driver Mashan. He had promised to take us on a tour of the whole area showing us some of the best sights around.
First stop the jewellery factory where we saw men polishing stones and shaping gold into lovely jewellery. All far too expensive for us though.
Next stop .... A Temple of course! This one was a bit different though it was built into the rocks. We had to climb 300 steps in the searing heat to reach it though so we were exhausted at the top.
As we were now away from the main town and the prying eyes of the police, bryan persuaded Mashan to let him drive the tuk tuk. You can see the video and how he got on at
http://tinyurl.com/tuktukdriving
He drove us all the way to the Herb Garden which was actually more interesting than it sounds. We learnt about natural remedies for ailments and broken bones. This was followed up by a nice massage. Jody opted for a foot massage but as her foot was still very swollen and she was having trouble getting her flip flops on, they decided to help her out with it. By smearing red gunk all over her foot and telling her not to wash it off for several hours. It was such a mess.
One of our favourite stops on this trip was the "Virgin White Tea" tea plantation. They still use the original old machinery for the process which is over 160 years old. The virgins don't pick the tea anymore but apart from that nothing else has changed. They showed us the whole process from drying the leaves, to separating the the different sized bits and packaging it. It was actually fairly interesting and all in such a beautiful location. Our favourite bit was The pots of tea we got to sample. It came with the "traditional" English accompliment - chocolate cake of course! Traditional or not we enjoyed it. Even more amusing was the chipmunk that appeared on cue the moment the chocolate cake appeared. Apparently he hangs around waiting for visitors to get at the chocolate cake.
It was while we were here that Jody had had enough of the red gunk and washed it off. That didn't last long!
We stopped at a turtles sanctuary next. However, we did not get a good feeling about this place in the way we had about the one in Mount Lavinia. There we could feel Milan's passion for turtles, here it felt like a business. So we left quite quickly.
Our next stop was to see the very famous Stilt Fishermen who can only be seen in this short stretch of coast between Matara & Galle. It is facinating to watch them perched on their posts so when one of them encouraged us to have a go, Jody wasted no time and climbed up the post to have a go herself. It was surprisingly comfortable. But did she catch a fish???
You will have to watch the video to find out!
http://tinyurl.com/JodyStiltFishing
The next day we spent in Galle town doing some shopping, visiting the markets which have amazing displays of fruit and vegetables. The locals are very keen to help us identify all the ones we never see in the shops in England. This is also where Becki discovered mangosteens and bought a good supply to snack on during the day.
We also visited the Spice Shack man. He was extremely proud of his spices and it was a shame we are not returning to England as we would definitely have bought some from him
We loved Galle and if we ever get the chance we would definitely come back
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