We had a boring 4 hours car ride from Habarana to Negombo (close to the airport), with no interesting sights to stop at on the way. We were staying at Beach Lodge, a rustic and quirky small hotel at the beach. The location was good, but the service was very slow, they often closed the doors early and they messed up our booking (because we cancelled the first night), so it took us a lot of time to sort it out and avoid being overcharged. It was nice to be back at the beach though, and we spent quite some time playing in the big waves, relaxing on the sunbeds, watching the sunset and people going out in the traditional wooden catamarans.
It was also nice to be back in a city, where we could get our laundry done, buy a few more gifts, and have plenty of restaurants to chose from. One of our waiters in Habarana Village had recommended the Waves restaurant, and we went there on our first night. We talked a lot to the owner, who had been working as a chef all over the world, and we ordered a big seafood platter, with a lot of delicious food. The waiter who recommended the place also came to visit us in our hotel on our last day there, since he was in town visiting family.
We had a short trip to Negombo City, but it was warm, chaotic and noisy, so we didn’t spend much time there. Instead we enjoyed the quiet, small beach restaurants in our neighborhood. On Christmas Eve we went to the highest rated restaurant in the area, Lords, where they had live Christmas music, the waiters were wearing Christmas hats and there were a lot of happy people celebrating. We spent most of the evening together with a Canadian with a lot of great travel stories to tell. At the end of the evening we all wrote wishes on lanterns and sent them up from the back yard. We also had some Norwegian craft beer and aquavit that we had carried around for 4 weeks, and called home to our families in Norway.
December 25th was kind of a sad day, since Linda was going back to Norway and I would continue to the Maldives. We finished the craft beer, gave away our left-over beer to a happy tourist (no alcohol sales on Christmas day), packed our bags, shared photos and talked about everything we had seen and done the past few weeks. We had such an amazing trip, and it will be very strange to continue alone.