Sazz In The City: A little Galle-ing

the Fort Bazaar hotel in Galle

So, on to our last stop in Sri Lanka before heading out to the Maldives – 2 nights in the historic walled fort of Galle. I’m trying not to get overly excited about the Maldives such that this is a bit of a throwaway part of the trip – but its quite hard!!

Our itinerary here is for a walking tour of Galle later this evening, followed by a “culinary experience” tomorrow, so we have a fairly light agenda. The rest of the car ride went pretty quickly (I was catching up on blogging) – at one point we got a bit snarled up in some heavy traffic protesting recent changes in the Sri Lankan parliament (lots of cars, trucks and buses decked out in green) but fortunately that didn’t hold us up for long.

over here!!

We arrived at our hotel at around 2pm and our tour wasn’t until 5pm, so we had a few hours to chill out and unwind from the long drive. Our hotel, the Fort Bazaar, was very centrally located within the fort walls, and uber stylish. https://www.teardrop-hotels.com/fort-bazaar/ Not rustic luxe like Chena, but chic tiling and teak and clean lines. And yet another swan towel arrangement sprinkled with petals on the bed when we checked in!

The weather was being a bit crappy again, so it was overcast when we decided to head out and have a wander around town to do a little souvenir shopping. I was also a little peckish so wanted to find a bite to eat – bizarrely enough, we ended up in this great little taco joint, on the main shopping street – Peddlar Street – that was playing awesome reggae variants of popular tunes – think Bob Marley does Lorde and you’re pretty much there. The tacos (and margaritas) were pretty yummy – but by the time we left, the heavens had opened up again, so we just headed back to the hotel (via another spice shop) for a bit of a nap before our walking tour.

We’d only been back a few moments when there was a knock on the door – and it was the hotel staff with – yes – yet ANOTHER “Congratulations” cake!! Something is definitely afoot!! I’m not sure who exactly got their wires crossed that we were on honeymoon, but when we asked Kingsley about it the next day, he said he’d been told we were on honeymoon, so he’d been phoning ahead all the hotels to make sure they knew!! I mean – I guess its as good a way as any to get free cake (and this cake was DELICIOUS, btw) but it’s a bit embarrassing all the same!!! I’ll have to talk with our travel agents, Scott Dunn, when I get home to figure out where the mix-up came from!!

Also – Scott Dunn are FAB so if you are ever looking for a travel company to help you put together a customized travel itinerary, I totally recommend them! https://www.scottdunn.com/

BritGate

Anyway, back to Galle and it was time to go meet our walking tour guide. I don’t recall his name so, for the sake of argument, we’ll just call him Social Media and Instagram Influencer. He was a very stylish young man, wearing a snappy hat and gold rimmed shades, dressed in linen and – as it became clear as we walked through town – considered himself to be quite the local celebrity. He was a nice enough chap, having lived in the town all his life so was definitely an expert, but he didn’t quite hit the mark for me. He spent more time talking about himself and his philosophies and his social media business than he did telling us cool stories about the city, which I didn’t really care for. I mean, it was interesting to hear a young Millennial’s perspective on the country and its future prospects (and his role in it) but that wasn’t really what I’d signed up for.

Galle harbor

So the tour – and the historical information shared – felt somewhat perfunctory and really not a whole lot more than we could probably have gotten by ourselves. He showed us the main gate, the harbor, the Post Office (complete with George V post box!), the library and a hotel where Duran Duran shot their Hungry like a Wolf video. We then finished by strolling along the fort walls, down by the ocean to see the sunset before coming back through the main drag where we’d been earlier and offering to buy us an ice-cream from his friend’s shop (we split a mango sorbet between us, as we were still full of tacos!). And then he delivered us back to the hotel by 6.30pm, so it was a pretty short tour.

We headed out to dinner a while later at this place that had gotten fairly decent reviews – but was completely empty! It was good enough and the G&Ts were delicious (I’m still in need of the quinine, as I’m still healing up from the Toilet Mosquito Assault). We finally rolled into bed, totally stuffed, ready to meet with Kingsley at 8am tomorrow morning for our Culinary Experience!