Negombo Lagoon
Jetwing Lagoon hotel
After our long journey to Sri Lanka – a la “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” via Yatton, Reading, Gatwick, Dubai and ultimately Colombo – we were greeted by our Selective Asia guide (Geehan) with flower garlands; taken to our car, (a 7-seater – so plenty of room for luggage and the kids to spread out), and presented with a large fruit basket.
I suddenly remembered how crazy driving on the roads were in Sri Lanka – throw the highway code out the window and swerve all the tuktuks!
Less than half an hour to our hotel, Lydia already fell fast asleep in the car. Lots of great scenery on the way, the bustling town; the lagoon; fishing boats – we had to pinch ourselves to make sure we were really there. Months of planning, we were finally here.
We arrived at Jetwing Lagoon, welcomed with drinks – iced tea or coconut water – Katelyn wasn’t sure, she’d been told by a friend at school that coconut water was horrid. We’d told Katelyn that she would have to try a lot of new things on this holiday, so she gave it a taste… “Bleugh!”
When we booked our tour, we knew that the hotels would be nice, but I think we set our expectations quite low. I’m not sure how to describe the hotel, so I’ll leave it to the hotel’s promotional video.
The girls were in awe of the 100 metre swimming pool; they couldn’t wait to try it out – although they had to wait until the next morning as we still had to check-in, refresh and have dinner.
Our room, cough deluxe suite, was very luxurious, very impressive. It had separated sectioned rooms for the beds between the kids and us; the main bathroom even had a jacuzzi – which the kids did convince us to all try out before having dinner!
Dinner was okay, we didn’t go too adventurous with our food – since we were all pretty tired. First night’s sleep was a bit disrupted with our body clocks figuring out what time it was.
I woke around 5am the next morning, not wanting to wake everyone else up, I went outside to enjoy the sunrise, and took this time-lapse video.
I did manage to get back to sleep, we all pretty much slept until about noon, then headed out for a swim in the pool.
Later in the afternoon we headed over to the beach-side swimming pool. We were advised not to be careful on the beach itself, as the waves could be quite unpredictable. We stayed on the beach until sunset, then headed back over to the hotel for dinner.
Next morning, we packed up and set off to the Cultural Triangle.