The capital of Sri Lanka is home to more than 5 million people, and is undergoing a boom as the country recovers from the civil war.
One of the most famous sites is Galle Face Green, a long park along the waterfront that has been the main gathering place of the city for decades. Pope Francis preached mass to hundreds of thousands of people about a month before our visit, and it’s astonishing to consider how they could have all fit into this thin strip of land. When we walked along the Green, we passed many vendors selling cold drinks, hot snacks, and toys. We weren’t quite sure why they were selling balloon penguins, but they were cute.
We also visited a lovely neighborhood temple, which was notable for the cleverly engineered automatic drumming device inside and the trained cobra outside.
The National Museum is fascinating, although like most things under construction. We enjoyed the evolution of the Sinhalese font in a series of exhibits (see the poster display below for a summary), right near the better mousetrap.
The governmental center of town has an opera house/theater in a lotus shape, seen in the background of one of the photos below, as well as the Independence Memorial Hall constructed to commemorate independence from the UK in 1948. This design is based on the council house in Kandy, including the lovely carvings on each post.
One of the most famous sites in Colombo is the Dutch Hospital, which dates from the Dutch colonial era around 1680. We have no photos of this lovely building, as it now a shopping/restaurant site and we were distracted by lunch.
