ROAD TRIP PART 4: MOVING ON

On day 5 it was time to say farewell to Nuwara Eliya and move on. Firstly, however, we needed to make good on a promise to take the children to a park. The park was set up like a sculpted English garden, complete with a multitude of signs telling you what you were and were not to do. A section of the park was set apart as a designated children's playground.

From the park we were to head from Nuwara Eliya to Badulla. However, I had read in a few different places about a tea factory that had been converted into a hotel and I thought that it might be a nice place to go for lunch. So it was off to the Tea Factory Hotel for us. This place is very beautiful. The managers let us have a look around. The rooms have an awesome view of the hills. There is a mini tea factory on site to explain the process of tea making to the guests. There is a playground for children and a hedge maze. The hotel has various reminders of its history on display and it has an old railway carriage on the grounds as a venue for fine dining.

After lunch we thought that we wouldn't go back through Nuwara Eliya to get to Badulla but to go the long way to see what we could see. In hindsight, what were we thinking?! As the bear teaches all small children, all that you will see is the other side of the mountain. Considering even the short way is the long way in Sri Lanka, the long way becomes the really long way. The views were absolutely amazing and I now know that there are innumerable tea plants in Sri Lanka - every hill seemed covered in them - but even the delights of amazing scenery start to wear off after several hours. The moral of the story: never, ever go the long way in Sri Lanka!