After some sleep we had a late breakfast at the hotel. Our host served up some nice fruit and the usual egg/toast breakfast. He was very helpful in providing information. We are very pleased with our spacious and clean hotel rooms, by the way.

We then ventured downtown to Negombo town. The whole family squeezed into a tuk-tuk (!) and the ride downtown was breezy and pleasant. The traffic in Negombo is quite humane.
As my suitcase didnt make it through to Colombo (should arrive tonight) we had to go shopping for clothes. It turned out to be very easy and the shops had a big collection of nice looking and very cheap clothes (I could have packed a lot less in my suitcase).

Walking down the busy road with all the shops we found people to be quite friendly and smiling. Many of them took an interest in Michael.

Michael and Morten in front of a colorful bus.

We stopped for some cold lassie, ice coffee, and cake in the Icebear Century Café, which is an old colonial villa with a very nice interor. They had one of the frequent power outages when we came so that put a limit to what they could actually serve, but it was OK.

In the Icebear Century Café

The next point of interest was the fish market at the tip of the Negombo peninsula. We arrived too late (a morning thing obviously) so the only thing that remained was a nasty pungent smell... However, next to the fish market, by the beach, we saw fish spread out for drying in the sun. Men were carrying big baskets of fish to be dried and women were spreading them out and turning them. Some people were fishing by the beach and we saw a guy catching (using an empty coke bottle for fishing rod) several cat fish in one go. (Not a highly regarded fish for eating in the Western world, but we know from Florida, that they are tasty...).

People working the fish at the beach

Another pleasant tuk-tuk ride brought us back to our hotel for refreshing cold showers and chilling out in the rooms.