The Cinnamon Lakeside is a typical smart hotel, very nice but somewhat impersonal. In fact we could be just about anywhere in the world and Kandy feels a million miles away. After a leisurely breakfast in the 24 hour coffee shop we spent a couple of hours in the room taking advantage of the fact that the internet appears to be working at this time of day. No doubt most of the other guests are out seeing the sights and that is the reason! We decided to have a c...

We were up early and packed before breakfast which was good going for us, then spent a couple of hours sitting in the lobby catching up on emails. Before setting off we visited the souvenir shop, much to the delight of Doni the proprietor who had being eying us soulfully all week and respectfully begging us to step inside. We bought a wooden elephant and have probably now put his two daughters through college! We set off on the road for Colombo after an intere...

After breakfast we drove four miles east of Kandy to the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens which are said to be the largest and finest in Sri Lanka. There were hundreds of mostly very small school children visiting the gardens with their teachers and we found out later that it is World Children's Day today so that is probably the reason. In any case a good many of them enjoyed trying out their English on us so there were many 'hellos’, ‘goodbyes’ a...

After our usual buffet breakfast in the Eidelweiss restaurant we set off in the car around 10 am heading north towards the Matale district which is part of the cultural triangle formed between Kandy and the other ancient capital cities of Sri Lanka. We were on a road we had not taken before, but it was just like all the others we have seen so far, that is narrow, winding, hot, dusty and very busy with many crazy drivers! As always the road was lined with many s...

After breakfast we headed down into Kandy town. We needed to find an ATM so had a bit of a wander round the central street soaking up the atmosphere before making our way down to this morning's target, The temple of the Tooth. It was even busier than we had come to expect and we found out that today is a public holiday. There is one month to celebrate the full moon and we might have guessed this after viewing the full moon last night! The temple of the Tooth re...