We had a fair bit of a sleep in this morning and about midday we were ready to go for a little explore. Chamila picked us up and we took him for coffee at The Department of Coffee (its one of the only good coffee shops in Srilanka). After that we headed to Independence Memorial Hall which is the national monument commemerating Srilanka’s independence from Britain. It was a pretty cool monument.
We had to run back to the hotel as we had a tour picking us up. We couldn’t book into the gemstone tour we wanted but we saw another tour which apparently explained gem stone of Srilanka. We were picked up and taken to a house in the outskirts of Colombo where we met Basith who showed us through his collection of gemstones, explained the process of making gems and showed us the differences in quality. The most amazing thing was how many different natural colours of saphire there are.
I decided to get a ring made with one of the sapphires that I liked. I got to design the ring and then we got to watch it get handcrafted. It was really awesome and the guy that made it is a genius he made it perfectly. It was a good tour and we were looked after so well by all the workers there.
We had to leave for the airport at 4:30am the next morning so it was a quiet night and early to bed.