Stop Skipping the Capital Cities – Why You Should Visit Colombo, Sri Lanka

A lot of people overlook the capital or main cities they fly into when visiting a new country. They immediately fly out to beach towns or other sites. I think this is a mistake. I love cities. I am a city person. However, even if you are not, the city is where you can get a glimpse of how people live day to day, get a wider range of food especially local, have more cultural things to see like museums and architecture, and just feel the vibe of the country. Colombo, Sri Lanka is definitely one capital you should not skip. Its a cosmopolitan, clean and beautiful city filled with lots of things to see as I will demonstrate in this post. I would recommend someone stay at least one, and ideally 2 days in the capital. The Galle Green area is where I stayed. This is the “newer” section of the city with taller skyscrapers, luxury hotels, and the water right at your door step. I stayed at the Shangri La, which is connected to a mall, and was really happy with the hotel (especially the breakfast – tons of local, Asian and Western options) and location. This was the view from our room on the first morning:

After breakfast, the driver I hired (message me if you want the info, I paid about U$1,200 for about 2 weeks all inclusive, it was amazing) pick us up and took us to our first stop – Jami Ul-Alfar Mosque. The sight of this mosque was incredibly beautiful and with all the chaotic street action around me, I was fully immersed and happy to be in Colombo and the country.

After this, we went to St. Anthony’s, a Catholic church. It was nice to see so many religions in the country living together.

On that theme, our next stop was Kelaniya Raja Maha Viharaya, a Buddhist temple. Seeing 3 major religions, and their beautiful buildings in one day was great. Note that in a lot of these places, you will have to remove any hats and shoes. TIP: If you don’t want to walk around barefoot or in socks, I recommend bringing plastic booties or even shower caps from the hotel (this is what I did).

Before coming to this country, I had no idea that the main religion in Sri Lanka was Buddhism. After this temple, we checked out city hall and went for a nice walk at a park across the street.

Next, we went to Independence Square.

After this it was time for lunch. We went to a local favorite called Upali’s. Here was the menu and some pics of the food:

I will make a separate post about Sri Lanka food, but its, as expected, comprised of a lot of curry. We started with some king coconuts (Sri Lanka is the first country I have been to with orange coconuts). King coconuts are indigenous to the country.

One thing we had here which was on my list of Sri Lanka food to try was Kottu. Its basically like a Sri Lankan “fried rice” but made with chopped up rotti instead of rice.

We also had various other local dishes:

One of the staples of most meals in the country can been seen in the pic above. 1. papadum – deep fried lentil flour. It becomes like a crisp cracker and is perfect for dipping in curry. 2. Coconut sambol – like a salsa (when properly made). I will post more about the food later. To end, a typical dessert:

This is called watalappan. Its like a custard and was just OK. While service was good at the restaurant, I found the food to be just ok. In general, I find that cooks in Sri Lanka will dumb down their food for tourists which is a shame. They will either make it less spicy, less seasoning or both. In the evening, we went to the Lotus Tower to see the sunset.

The views were incredible.

For dinner, we went to an amazing seafood restaurant. I will post about that tomorrow. Overall, it was an amazing first full day in the capital, and I would highly recommend you stay at least one day exploring Colombo!