Wake up call at 7.00, last night I managed a little more sleep at 7 hours (perhaps by the end of the trip, I may have managed a full night). Breakfast at 7.30, and left the hotel at 8.15. First stop was Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka's ancient city built in the 3rd century BC, and regarded as the most important of the ancient cities. It is home to a sacred Bo (or bodhi) tree, under which Buddha gained enlightenment, and is the oldest living tree in documented history. From there we visited the remains of the Brazen Palace, as well as various other temples and Pagodas. After visiting the city complex for a couple of hours, we made of way to Sigiriya Rock fortress, (stopping en route for a local curry buffet). A couple of us also chose the optional activity of an hour long elephant back ride for an hour which was great fun. We then headed back to the bus and on to Sigiriya Rock Fortress, built by King Kasappa in 741AD on the top of a rock (which towers 200 metres over the surrounding plain), as he feared retribution from his family for killing his father. It was a challenging climb to the top (having to scale over 1200 stairs to reach the summit), but was well worth it for the views which greeted us at the top. At the top of the rock there is also the remains of the palace which king Kasappa had built, though little remains of it, save for the foundations and the swimming pool, but when one stops to think that each brick has to be manually carted up, and once built, that all the supplies and needs of the king carted up by hand, the feat achieved is really quite astounding. Now that we had managed the climb up, we now had the task of climbing down, preceeded by an excited gaggle of schoolchildren who found us all very amusing for some reason. The whole visit took us just over 2 hours, and we arrived back at the bus (this time having climbed down the south face of the rock), and continued another 1.5 hours to our next destination Polonnaruwa, stopping en route for a Sri Lankan delicacy of hoppas and bananas, which was really quite delicious.