Sunset @ The Galle Face Hotel

After we settled into our room at the Hilton, which overlooked the Colombo Fort and a beautiful stretch of the city’s coastline, we ate a sublime lunch of Kothu Rotti, then took a much needed nap. We planned on spending our first sunset in Sri Lanka at the legendary Galle Face Hotel just a few minutes away. This hotel claims to be “the oldest hotel east of the Suez,” which strikes me as a rather difficult claim to verify. It is, however, indubitably a place of great beauty, and as it’s been open since 1864, it’s an institution renowned all over the world. Famous guests over the years include Richard Nixon, Arthur C Clarke, Roger Moore, and other movie stars and assorted royalty from across the planet. The buildings are stately and the grounds are meticulously manicured. While I wanted to have high tea, Becky was more interested in visiting the hotel’s famous bar called the Veranda, which is perched along the water and offers a magnificent view of the sunset. We sat by the water and had a few drinks (Elephant Ginger Beer is quite delicious), ate some tasty batter-fried prawns, and watched a glorious sunset unfold over the course of an hour. The colors of the sky shifted, the clouds took on gorgeous hues, and the reflections on the water took our breath away. Sunsets are a serious business here in Sri Lanka, and the highly populated west coast offers up some of the best places on earth to watch the sun descending into the distant waters of the west. We spent our first evening in Sri Lanka enchanted and slightly tipsy, and just as the sun disappeared, it began to rain. We gathered our things, paid our bill, and slipped away, with gratitude in our hearts for the opportunity to visit this astonishingly beautiful country.