Pinnewale Elephant Orphanage, Peradeniya Botanical Gardens and the Temple Of The Tooth

A very early start for us this morning 6 .30 up bright and breezy ( well not quite ) but we wanted to see the elephants so we had to!!

A 1.5 hours drive and we got to the orphanage and bought our tickets. Luckily Emma got the last one for feeding. Yay.

There are 88 elephants which are a mixture of born in the orphanage or rescued. All are very cute including the lovely babies. Emma fed milk to one of them and was so happy. After seeing feeding we walked down to the river and sat in a lovely restaurant which had a view of the river. A cold coke In hand we waited for the 40 elephants to come charging down the small road for bath time. What a treat. We could have stayed there all day:-). Lonely Planet says "you can sit in a restaurant with a view and have an 'expensive' drink". In our view £1.50 for a coke with this view is a bargain.

Back towards Kandy we had the Botanical Gardens to see. Dating back to 1371 it a beautiful collection of trees, plants, orchids and gardens . So beautiful and green considering this country is only 1 degree north of the equator. We had lunch in the cafe and felt very colonial sitting in the verandah with a light breeze blowing across the gardens,

After the gardens and a drive (crawl) through rush hour in Kandy town we visited the Temple of the Tooth. A very old Buddhist temple dating back to 1500's which is also home to the old kings' palace. Again some beautiful Buddhas, inscriptions and carvings all around 500 years old. There is a procession of the priests every evening but we chose to miss this as it would have meant a very late dinner back at the hotel. 

Back to hotel in time for a lovely well earned swim and drinks by the pool. Probably our first couple of hours relaxing all week so far.