Sri Lanka

In 2006 we made plans for another vacation. Due to our job schedules, we had to pick April to break away, but that early in the season you'll have to travel far to get some sunshine and fine weather. I wanted to explore a country instead of  staying at the beach all the time (you can do that everywhere, from Spain to Turkey), but my DH wanted to have some relax time at the beach as well and so we came up with Sri Lanka (Asia). The journey we choose offered both and it was the greatest vacation ever. We drove around the island in an airconditioned bus, got to see the major cities (Colombo, Galle, Banderawela, Unawatuna, Kandy) and attractions and spent the last few days at the Koggala beach. My best memory of this vacation is our visit to the Elephant Orphanage in Pinnawela, where people take care of old elephants as well as orphans. They take a bath every morning and afternoon in the river and it is great to see how much the elephants enjoy it. Also we got our Elephant drivers license here, when we took a ride on the Elephant's back. This was a fun excursion, because our Elly wanted to take a swim, when she was in the water and she almost submerged with us on the back! Also we went to a children's orphanage (Holland House), founded by the Dutch, for the Tsunami victims, that lost their parents at this disaster. One of the many excursions took us to Kandy, where we visited the Temple of Buddha's tooth. We used tuk-tuks to get around, taking us to Galle and took another excursion to Cinnamon Island.