Sri Lanka Part 3: On the Beach at Unawatuna

On the 27th of December, after several rainy and chilly days between Polonnaruwa and Ella, we were happy to get on a bus bound for the south, where we were promised beautiful beaches and sunny weather. The ride was long - about three or so hours to the town of Matara - but the scenery and the sky indeed became nicer and nicer as we moved south. I was happy to watch out the open window as we drove past small towns, eventually hitting the sea and following the beach road for the last stretch. From Matara we hopped on a second bus, which wound westward along the south coast until we reached Unawatuna Beach. We walked through town to the hostel - passing lots of hawker stands selling beautiful batiks, bags, pants, and skirts - where we sat and had lunch while they prepared a room for us (thanks to a mix-up with our booking they hadn't been expecting us, but the staff was very helpful and accommodating and everything worked out). It was early afternoon, so I decided to take a walk along the beach to find the dive shop I'd been emailing with, so that I could pay and sort out the timing of the course I'd be taking over the next couple days. When I arrived, they plopped me down in front of a TV so I could get all the boring classroom stuff out of the way, and spend all the rest of the time in the water. I ended up spending the entire afternoon there, met my instructor and planned to meet the following morning. I made my way back to the hostel, where Megan and I met a couple other travelers and the four of us went to have dinner at one of the restaurants on the beach.

Lots of goings on at Unawatuna in the evening!

The next morning, I left early enough to grab breakfast and have the beach more or less to myself. I got to really admire the view in the daylight for the first time. The beach is pretty narrow - even at low tide. It's lined with restaurants and bars whose outermost tables can get hit by the stronger waves, and in some places there are huge collections of black rocks stretching out to the sea, so that for most of the walk across the beach you are either walking in the water, cutting through a restaurant, or scrambling over the rocks. It's possible to take the back way and walk on the road, but where's the fun in that?

When it was time to head over tot he dive shop, I did so, and the instructor and I set up our equipment for our first skills dive. It should have been in the pool, but he said it was too cold, and we'd better forget the pool and just head to the ocean. Seemed like a better option to me! We finished all the skills by lunchtime, so we took a break, agreeing to meet again after an hour or so for the first official ocean dive - we'd be going deeper and just practicing moving and breathing in the water. We were joined by one other classmate - he'd done his pool learning the previous day. The first dive was great - we saw stingrays, pufferfish, lots and lots of butterfly fish, beautiful coral, and even got to swim around a wreck down there! When we'd finished for the day, we set a time for the following day - early enough to get everything else done in one more day - and then I made my way back to the hostel. Megan and I befriended a few other guests and went out with them for another beachside dinner, but I was exhausted from the day, so headed to bed relatively early.

The next day I was up early again and out the door. I spent a little time sitting in a little patch of dry sand I found studying for the written exam I'd have to take in the afternoon, and then made my way to the dive shop. We had a busy, busy day! We did one dive in the morning, where we practiced most of the skills we'd done in the shallow water the previous day. Then we (successfully) took the exam, before we grabbed a few bananas in the way of lunch. After we'd had a long enough break, we headed back out for another dive, intending to practice a few surface skills. Unfortunately, the water had become too choppy for that, so we decided to save them for later and have a fun, skills-free dive instead. My mask was pretty foggy for that one, so I didn't get to see much, but still had a great time! When we came back in, we completed the swim test and treading water test - easy enough in the incredibly salty water! - and then went out a final time for the last dive. One of the skills necessary to pass the course is the ability to remove and replace a mask underwater, and I'd been struggling with it. It was definitely what I was most nervous about, and after a few tries I was unsuccessful. The instructor was very patient, and only said that I'd have to come back the following morning to get that done. Back underwater, I was determined to try again, so I motioned to him, forced myself to stay focused and not panic, and was able to get it off and back on! I was so thrilled with myself, and relieved that this last, final, impossible thing was finished - the rest of the dive was great, and I just kept reminding myself that everything necessary for certification was done. Back on shore, we filled out necessary paperwork, took photos for our diving cards, and celebrated with a few beers at the bar next door, with a bunch of diving people from the surrounding shops.

The next day - our last full day on the beach - I woke up early and let Megan sleep while I went for a walk on the beach. I wanted to walk up to the Buddhist temple visible from the beach, so I headed that way, just walking in the sand and water. The beach kind of opens up to be much wider in that direction, so lots more sunbathers and loungers than on the way to the dive shop.

View through the trees on the way to the temple

 The temple itself was up a small hill, and it was such beautiful weather that it was a perfect place to look out from.

Temple and shrine on top of the hill

View of the water. I couldn't leave this view, so I ended up sitting on a wall here for an hour.

 I went back down to the hostel to meet Megan for lunch, and then another guest - Wendy, a woman from the Netherlands - and I walked to famed Jungle Beach - I'd heard a lot about it, and was excited to check it out, but when we arrived we were pretty disappointed. It was far too small for the number of tourists there, and the beach and the water were dirty - full of trash. The walk over was pretty, though - through the jungle (as the name might suggest)

 It also turned out not to be too far from the Japanese Peace Pagoda, so we wandered up there to check it out. That was really beautiful - another incredibly peaceful place, with amazing views over the water.

Tip of the dome, sticking up over the jungle

View over the sea, across from the city of Galle

 Back at our beach, we picked up a few people for one last dinner at the beach, and then spent the night at the bar at our hostel. We were all exhausted from so many days in the sun - and diving, for me - so we didn't last long, but it was still a nice last night. Wendy was also leaving on an early January 1st flight, so the three of us decided to spend New Year's Eve Day on the beach at Unawatuna, and then head up toward the airport in the evening, where we'd celebrate midnight and then head to the airport.

New Year's Eve, I spent the morning on the beach with two British guests at our hostel. We were all early risers, so we were some of the first people there. It was nice to beat the crowds and grab the first beach chairs and umbrellas as they were being set up.

Early morning at Unawatuna

It was a relaxing and fun day - Megan and Wendy joined us when they woke up, and the five of us spent the day in and out of the water. We were feeling bummed to have to head back to work, but we tried to focus on our last day and enjoy it. It was some of the best, hottest weather we'd had in Sri Lanka, and the water was cool enough to feel refreshing, but not cold enough to keep us out. In the late afternoon, the three of us said goodbye, showered, took one last look at the sea, and boarded a bus bound for Galle, where we could change to the express bus to Colombo. The express bus turned out to be not, and by 7:30 we were feeling antsy. None of us really cared too much about Colombo anyway - most people we'd talked with had advised "get out of Colombo as fast as you can, there's nothing to see there" so we decided to follow my diving instructor's suggestion and get off the bus at nearby Mt. Lavinia, apparently a very nice beach town. We found the beach, but the restaurant scene didn't seem as low-key as at Unawatuna: most of the restaurants were far outside our price range, and the one we ended up at was not very good. We spent the night at a sandy BYOB restaurant, but as we had not brought our own bottle, the staff was helpful enough to run around to nearby hotels, buying beers to sell to us. It seemed that most of the tourists had found somewhere else to go, and we were surrounded by locals who were just a little too friendly as they got just a little too drunk. It was a strange but fun New Year, as we listened to the show going on at the hotel next to us. Around 2, we went back out to the main road, where we grabbed a tuk tuk to take us to the airport. We checked in, said goodbye to Wendy, who was on her way to Myanmar, and then slept at our gate until it was time to go. It was a short and easy flight, and (sooner than we'd have liked) we were back at Kuala Lumpur's International Airport, making our way back to HQ, where we've been lounging around ever since. Tomorrow we have a quick meeting, and then it's back to the jungle - classes resume on Tuesday and then I've got less than two months left! Time is going to fly!

Sri Lanka Part 2: Train Rides and Tea

Since the start of my trip planning, I had read a huge number of accounts of the train ride between Kandy and Ella, a small town in the south. The train was supposedly beautiful, cheap, and fun - through mountains and tea hills and small towns. It was one of the things I was most looking forward to about the trip, and we had planned it for Christmas Day. The night before, Megan and I went to the train station in Kandy to see about tickets. The man at the ticket booth told us that all the reservable seats were filled, but we could come at 8 am the next morning to buy a regular ticket for the 8:47 train. As instructed, we dragged ourselves out of bed and down the mountain (through the rain) early the next day, arriving exactly at 8:00 (according to the railway clock). We hopped in line, and when it was our turn, cheerfully asked for two tickets to Ella. The man - the same one we'd spoken to just twelve hours before - looked shocked and shook his head. "No, no trains to Ella today." We reminded him that the night before he'd told us to come in the morning, but he just repeated, "no, no trains." In the end, he suggested we take the train to Nuwara Eliya, then a bus to Bandarawela, and another bus to Ella. While this seemed like an awful lot of transfers, I was determined to get to Ella, and at least ride the train for part of the way down. We waited on the platform amongst a rather lot of other annoyed-looking foreign travelers.

At least it was a pretty place to wait!

 When the train arrived, we were able to get on, but all the seats were already filled - I don't think anyone who boarded in Kandy was able to find a seat. We were all standing in the aisles, as close together as possible, and it was looking like it would be a very uncomfortable four hours on Christmas morning. Fortunately, it seemed a Sri Lankan custom to trade seats on and off, so after only about 30 minutes, a man who was sitting next to us offered us his seat, and most people on the train were happy just to rotate seats - a half hour, and then it's your turn to sit down. The views out the window were worth standing up for too, and even when I did have a seat I spent most of my time at the window.

So much of the trip was through tea plantation!

The best seat in the train was in the door - every doorway was filled with two or three people hanging out of it, where we could admire the scenery, get a little fresh air, and let our feet dangle out - sometimes smacking into bushes and trees.

When Amtrak lets you ride like this (and tickets cost $1), I'll come home.

At one point, almost everyone on the train got out, so we figured it was time for us to get out too. On the platform, though, we realized we were not at the station we intended to be at, so we asked around for Nuwara Eliya, only to be told the train wouldn't go there. We were given different advice by several different people, and finally opted to just get back on the train and see what would happen. Fortunately, a man we were sitting next to could tell we were lost and helped us out. He confirmed that the train wouldn't go to Nuwara Eliya - due to broken train tracks, apparently - but that we could go to a station called Haptuale, and from there take a bus to Bandarawela. We got off in the pouring rain and terrible wind, and made our way to a little tea shop where we warmed up with a few cups of tea, and had a a small, delicious lunch of rotti and curries. Then we made our way to the bus station, to Bandarawela, and finally to Ella, without any further mishaps.

Arriving in the main street of Ella, I thought it was not at all what I'd expected. Wikitravel promised it to be a "beautiful small sleepy town" but actually the street was bustling with tourist bars and restaurants, blinking Christmas lights, and loud music. In my opinion, the busiest town of the trip so far! It was still raining, and had become quite cold as we moved into the hills, so we hopped in a tuk tuk and headed to the guesthouse. We drove away from the main drag, further up into the hills along a winding road, finally spotting the house. It was perched up on the mountainside, rather precariously, and the owners were standing on the porch as though waiting for us. As we got out of the tuk tuk, we noticed a small problem - a large tree had fallen across the path leading up to the house. We waited there while it was cleared, and then made our way up to the house. Unfortunately, we were told that there was no electricity. Actually shivering, we felt in desperate need of a hot shower, so the owners graciously offered to call around and find another place for us to stay. We ended up at a guesthouse much closer to the main road, which was nice but required the climbing of several flights of stone steps - very slippery and muddy in the storm. We checked in, had our hot showers, and promptly lost power there too. Eventually, we decided to head out to the restaurants, where we had a delicious Christmas dinner, and a couple of drinks. We met someone who managed one of the tea plantations, who offered to show us around the plantation and factory the next day, so we arranged to meet him and went home.

The following day, the three of us - Megan, the tea plantation manager, and I - headed up into the hills of tea. There was the most beautiful view from where we were - out over the tea bushes and the town. The rain even stopped for the day, and even though the sun never came out, it still felt like beautiful weather after the days and days of rain!

 We went into the tea factory - most people weren't working because of the rain (the manager told us that most of their houses had been severely damaged, or they couldn't get up the mountain in the bad weather) so it was pretty empty, except a handful of people bustling around.

Piles of tea... just sitting on the floor. Sanitary? Maybe.

Megan was feeling tired, so she decided to head back to the hotel for a nap. I decided to take advantage of the lack of rain and follow one of the many hiking trails from Ella. I settled on climbing Mini Adam's Peak, a relatively easy and short climb, but one that promised more beautiful views of tea fields. There were a handful of other hikers, but not too many, so that it turned out to be a pretty peaceful walk up.

The trail led through forests of pine and palm trees

 It took about 45 minutes to reach the top, moving at a slowish pace to take in all the scenery. The last stretch was up a set of stairs, which were pretty steep and definitely left me out of breath. The view from the top was worth it though:

On a clear day, I think you could see forever, but I love the blueish mountains in the background here

King of the hill

 I returned to town in the afternoon, and Megan and I had scheduled a cooking class with the owner of the guesthouse. It turned out to be less of a class and more of him cooking while we watched, but he did let me cut up the eggplants! The food was delicious - lots of different kinds of curry, spicy potatoes  rice with coconut milk, and poppadoms, fried with curry leaves. Not to mention a salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, and the sweetest pineapples I'd ever tasted!

I had enjoyed Ella, and could have spent a few more sunny days there, but the gloomy weather had both of us feeling ready for our last stop - the beach in the south!

Sri Lanka Part 1: Ruins and Buddhism (and Christmas)

First views: from the air!

I've decided I'll need to split up my retelling of the amazing adventure that was my 10 day trip to Sri Lanka, for your reading pleasure as much as for my own sanity. We saw so much, had so many silly encounters, and took so many pictures that I just wouldn't be able to do it justice in only one post. So here goes:

For a little bit of background: My office more or less closed from December 20 until it reopens on January 5, minus a handful of people hanging around the headquarters holding down the fort. With no classes going on at our centers, most of the teachers took off for a couple weeks to various places: some went home, many went to Thailand, a handful to Indonesia. With holiday flights from KL to Newark at roughly an arm and a leg, plus a firstborn child in airport taxes, and feeling that I wanted to go somewhere a little further from Malaysia, I settled on Sri Lanka. I even coerced a Canadian coworker into coming with me. The travel agent in me started planning the trip months ago - I booked my flight in August - and after making my way from the jungle to KL two weeks ago, I boarded the plane on the 21st.

Polonnaruwa

Ruins of the Royal Palace

Though we flew into the capital, Colombo, after hearing and reading nothing good about the city, we traveled immediately north to Polonnaruwa, an ancient city boasting a huge collection of ruins to explore and rocks to climb on. Because I landed late in the afternoon and it was something of a trek (6-8 hours by train or bus, I'd read) up to the city, we hired a driver to take us there. It seemed faster and much easier to get a door to door transfer, especially given the late hour and the small but still meaningful time difference. We met the driver, and he told us that he needed to call the guesthouse we'd booked because there had been dime flooding and it might not be possible to get there. Not a great start, but in the end he decided that the roads were above water, but might just be a little slower than usual. We headed out, and I watched the town out the window as the sun set. It seemed lively, with lots of small stands and hawkers. As we got into smaller towns (highways didn't seem common) Buddhist statues and temples started to become commonplace - pretty white domes (stupas, I learned) and massive idols carved in stone. The rain picked up, and we were traveling quite slowly, so that I checked the clock and realized we'd been driving six hours, although the driver had told us three, four to be safe. Megan and I were both starving - we hadn't eaten since the morning - and we were driving into what seemed to be jungle. The driver didn't seem to be completely confident about where we were going - several times he called someone, asking questions in an asking-for-directions voice (I know that voice when I hear it). Just as Megan and I were beginning to shoot each other dubious looks and raised eyebrows, a tuk tuk driver appeared in front of us on the otherwise deserted dirt road, and we began following him. This turned out to be the owner of the guesthouse, leading us there. More relieved than I was willing to admit at the time, we got out of the car and were shown to our room. The inn was set up motel-style, with the doors to the rooms all leading out to a common patio in the front, where two dining tables stood. We asked the owner whether there was anywhere to get something to eat, and he said "I'll try" and walked off. We weren't sure exactly what he meant, and we would have been happy with a slice of bread or a piece of fruit, but about a half hour later he showed up with a full meal that he'd prepared - the best rice (from his own rice paddies, he told us), curries (daal and chicken), poppadoms... It was so delicious - we ate as much as we could, but hardly made a dent. He sat out with us chatting away, as though it wasn't the middle of the night, until we'd finished, then gathered up our dishes and told us there'd be breakfast in the morning. We turned in, exhausted from the day of travel, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Elephant carving at the Council Chamber

The following day, we woke up reasonably early. We only had one day in the city, so we wanted to get to the ruins as quickly as possible, to give ourselves the whole day to explore. We didn't end up making it out so early, though, as we went out to the patio to find a huge, delicious Sri Lankan breakfast - sweet rice with coconut honey, pineapple, and wonderful tea - laid out for us. We ate slowly, chatting with the owner and two other guests, and didn't end up leaving until around 10. We decided to walk the (rainy) 5 kilometers to the ruins. By the time we reached the museum entrance, we were soaked, so we decided to warm up with a cup of tea and a vegetable curry pastry in a cafe there. As we were leaving, we grabbed a tuk tuk driver to act as our tour guide for the ruins, as they are quite spread out (on a nicer day we may have used bicycles, but in the rain that seemed unpleasant). Our first stop was the museum, although we didn't spend long in there (it was interesting to read about the history of the place, but it seemed silly to spend any time looking at pictures of the things we were about to see in real life). From there we drove on into the ancient city. We saw the Royal Palace (two enormous structures - the 3 remaining stories of the former 7), the Council Chamber (four walls covered in beautifully carved elephants and lions, and a gorgeous staircase guarded by some ferocious looking stone animals), and the King's Bath (beautiful bathhouses, but I'm still partial to the Romans). Then we drove on to through the rest of the ruins, making short stops every so often to walk around. My favorite was the Vattadage, a holy structure originally built to hold the Tooth Relic (now residing in Kandy... more on that later). There were lots of beautiful carvings (including a Moonstone - a semi-circular stone piece that sits on the floor at the entrance to a sacred site, for cleansing one's feet before he or she enters) and four Buddha statues inside. Although the place was swarming with tourists, it still seemed peaceful to walk around (there is something about walking barefoot). Our last stop was an enormous carving - four figures in various positions. They were absolutely immense - the largest is 46 feet long. The same driver returned us to our hotel, where we picked up our bags, and then dropped us at the bus stand to await our bus to Sigiriya.

Council Chamber

Staircase to the Council Chamber

Royal Bath

Ruins of the Vattadage

Sigiriya

The bus ride was easy and short - although rather cramped, as the bus was completely full and we were lucky to nab two of the last available seats. When we got off, we found ourselves in a quiet town, with a few tea shops and not much else. The famous Sigiriya Rock, our reason for making the trip there, was about 8 kilometers further down the road, but we wouldn't be heading there until the next day. We grabbed a tuk tuk and made our way to the guesthouse, which turned out to be a massage spa, with a couple of rooms behind. It's possible that during the dry season it is quite a nice area, but with all the rain the walk back behind the spa turned into a trudge through a swamp (at some places the water was ankle-deep) so that everything was muddy and wet by the time we reached the room. We didn't have any big plans for the evening, so we just relaxed for a couple of hours before venturing out into the rain to find some dinner. The rain discouraged us from traveling very far - we ended up just walking to the hotel across the street. Their buffet was not set up yet, but they invited us to sit and were at least accommodating enough to serve us tea while we waited for the dinner to be ready. It didn't end up being prepared until around 7:30, so by the time we were on our way back to the guesthouse it was pretty late and very dark (streetlights don't seem to be a popular commodity in Sri Lanka). It was still raining. Suddenly, as we made our way across the yard, the spa's many dogs started barking like crazy and running at us. Unsure what to do, we brandished our umbrellas at them, yelling for someone to come. The owners of the spa were standing on the porch, calling and calling for them to come back (although without the appropriate level of worry, I think). Finally they slowed down, and the owners shouted to us "No problem, they're nice dogs!" One came trotting up to us with his tail wagging and followed us all the way back to our room, where we locked the door quickly and went to bed.

We woke up pretty early the next day, checked out of the room, and headed down the road to catch the bus to the rock. The bus was full, again, but this time with a lot of foreign tourists, so we figured we were on the right track. Along the way, I saw out the window a huge group of people gathered around a bridge, looking at something. I looked, too, and was reasonably sure it had been an elephant, except for the fact that that seemed ridiculous. Our stop was not too far beyond that, so Megan and I walked back to check it out, and it was indeed an elephant, having a bath on the side of the road.

We had breakfast - unbelievably spicy, even by our Malaysian standards - and then headed over to the rock. The rain started (of course) but not too hard, just hard enough to make walking in it a little unpleasant. The road led us around a pond, boasting a sign that warned: "No Swimming: Crocodiles Go About." Finally, we rounded a bend and the massive rock came into view:

The site was the palace of the King in the 5th century, and promised gardens at the top, as well as murals and frescoes along the wall of the rock on the way up. We did another quick walkthrough of the museum, and then headed up. It was pretty crowded, and the rain was on and off (better than just on) but the stream of people moved quickly, despite the slippery stone steps. At every pause, we just turned around and admired the incredible view.

View from about halfway up. That tiny white speck near the center of the photo is an enormous Buddha statue in the distance.

The walls were covered in these frescoes - fantastically preserved

Found this guy eating a banana - peel and all

It took maybe 45 minutes to reach the top, including pauses to admire the frescoes, and to catch our breath every now and then. The gardens at the top were more like a series of terraces and pools, but they were still beautiful!

We made our way back down, then walked out to the main road. We had lunch, then made our way to the bus stand to continue on our way to Kandy. I was pretty excited about Kandy - I'd heard lots of good things about the supposed "cultural capital" of Sri Lanka, so I was expecting a kind of bustling tourist city.

Kandy
After the 3+ hour bus ride was over, we disembarked in what I supposed to be Kandy's downtown area. It was rather quiet, but there were shops and restaurants along the main street. We grabbed another tuk tuk, which took us around the beautiful lake and up a steep mountainside, finally depositing us at our hotel. After checking in, having a shower, and cleaning up a bit, we decided to head out, find some dinner, and see the city by night. Judging by our host's reaction, that doesn't seem to be a common thing to do. He suggested that we just order food and beers to our room, but we were persistent and set off down the road. We followed the edge of the lake in the dark, finally returning to the place where the bus had left us, and then just made our way down the main street. After being misdirected several times, we found only one bar/restaurant (The Pub), which was filled almost exclusively with tourists and whose menu featured almost exclusively (expensive) Western food. Still, we were happy to have a dry place to sit for a while, and the staff was friendly and helpful - one server even invited us to his church's Midnight Christmas Eve Mass the following night. We hung out for a couple hours, then headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

The following morning, Megan and I split up - she wanted to go to the nearby elephant orphanage, but I wasn't too interested in that - so after a breakfast on the way into town, I headed to the Temple of the Tooth - a Buddhist temple that now houses a tooth taken from Buddha's mouth after his death. The temple itself was beautiful - all white outside, matching all the white that the worshippers were wearing.

Outer wall of the temple

Front gate, with elephant carvings

Inside was even more beautiful: a kind of covered courtyard, with various shrines and buildings around it.

To see the place where the relic itself is kept, I walked up a staircase, and then joined a line which wrapped around the edges of the wall on the second floor. The center of the space was reserved for people praying - a group of men and women holding infants and young children was sitting there, and other worshippers were placing flowers, food, and coins on a table already laden with beautiful gifts. The shrine was beautiful, although the line was kept moving so that we weren't able to stop and stare and really appreciate it, but the room was decorated with silver and gold, and beautifully painted murals. Leaving the temple, I continued on to a museum which documented the movement of the relic into and around Sri Lanka - a story told through some fifteen or so beautiful paintings with short descriptions beneath them. The walls were also decorated with these guys with strong noses:

From there I spent a couple hours in the Museum of World Buddhism, which was interesting just because I don't know that much about Buddhism or its spread around the world. The museum is the only one in the world of its kind and describes first the basic principles of Buddhism and its beginnings, and then is divided into rooms dedicated to each country with a significant Buddhist population. The national museums of each have donated from their collections various artifacts important to their home country's celebration of the religion, so that each room is fabulously decorated with national Buddhist symbols. Some countries - like China - are absolutely filled, floor to ceiling, with such things, while others - like Myanmar - were rather small, but still beautiful:

Tapestry in the Myanmar display

Once I'd finished walking through the museum, I headed back outside into the rain. I walked a short while around the lake, determined to get the most out of the day, despite the terrible weather. I'm sure it's very beautiful on a sunny day, but as it was, the water and the sky were grey. Still worth the walk though: 

Palm trees and gardens on a small island in the lake

Hillside houses in Kandy

Once Megan found me again, we grabbed a quick Christmas Eve dinner of noodles and rice and then went back to the hotel to get ready for the midnight service we'd been invited to. We went down early, hoping to find a cup of tea to warm us back up - once the sun went down and the rain became torrential it was pretty cold! - but found that not a single shop was open. Defeated, we just went to the church and waited there. We were greeted by one of the ushers, sat down, and waited. As more and more people arrived, we met the server from the previous night, who wished us a Merry Christmas and introduced us to his family. The service started, and with the singing of "O Come All Ye Faithful" we both really felt that it was Christmas, despite the lack of snow, families, and pine trees. After the service ended, as we were making our way out, we met two older British women, who offered us a sip of "water" from the plastic water bottle they were sharing. It seemed strange to me, and as it turned out they were actually sipping gin and tonic, and had been all throughout the Mass. Merry Christmas.