dripping with passion

paradise found! we spent four night and five days on this tiny, pristine, tropical island ^^ and looking back it seriously feels like a dream. and actually it felt like a dream while we were there, too. we had been looking forward to our time at this place for over a year and all our expectations were exceeded. it was truly a magical five days. as i mentioned in an earlier post, the reason we went to the maldives (and, by extension, sri lanka) was because we we “earned” free nights at an island resort through credit card rewards. both ian and i applied for hyatt gold passport cards and then completed the sign-up spending requirement, and so we each qualified for two free nights at any hyatt in the world. to really max out on this, we chose to spend our free nights at the most exotic hyatt on earth – on a private island in the maldives. and it. was. awesome. i have to say that it was also a bit uncomfortable in some ways because we were a little out of our element as non-fancy peo...

we went to sri lanka because we were going to the maldives – it really started out as a bonus tack-on (since we were going so far around the world anyway…) – but by the time we left that incredible island nation, it was so so so much more. we experienced such a huge dose of unique and striking beauty in the landscape, people, history and culture of sri lanka. it is a jewel of wonder in the indian ocean, and even though we only saw a tiny bit of the awesomeness, i’m so very glad we went! on our last night in sri lanka, we slept in a treehouse in the middle of the jungle. on our last day in sri lanka, we climbed to the top of an ancient rock fortress, visited an amazing buddhist temple built into a cave, and drove through beautiful and fascinating nature and towns on the way to the airport. here’s some photos … and at the bottom of this post i’ve included some details about how we planned this trip and got around, for those who asked and/or are interested!     sigiriya roc...