Yesterday I gave a gift to myself and postponed some blogging to fire up Hollow Knight on the Switch. Turns out the game is really good, so I spend some time this morning while the others slept and managed to beat the first boss. We still weren’t hungry despite skipping dinner so went to the beach and pick up some Yoghurt on the way. Turns out stores were closed and the beach full of locals celebrating Christmas Day.

We decided we perhaps were a bit hungry after all so took a tuk-tuk to Salty Swamis – and here found the full hipster community of Hikkaduwa gathered for brunches and breakfasts. There was the British accents, healthy and environmental conscious food, the good looking clientele taking photos of themselves and blogging about their travels and even the playlists were embarrassingly similar to “best of Way out West festival 2012-2016” with Alt-J dominating. Did I say that the café also was a combined gallery and surf/clothing shop?

I succumbed to some shopping, and found two shorts that I liked – and wasn’t even surprised that off course this was a hipster nature-friendly-posing brand that sold things over Instagram and focused on lifestyles. After that splurge we went back to our base camp for some *drumrolls* pool lounging.

Mona was later off to prepare some nice chimichurri that we would bring with us to a Christmas dinner at Deepthi we had been invited to. We had been told by Kalle & Gunnel on how home dinners are performed in Sri Lanka but were still a bit taken back by the concept. Basically the guests (us + a pair of Russian ladies) are seated at the table, and after some time (which can be quite some time) dinner is served to the guests, while the hosts observe. Similar to middle-eastern concepts food is refilled until you wildly protest and it’s considered rude/embarrassing if you don’t leave at least some food on your plate.

The dinner was nice, and the food tasted really good. Unfortunately the Russian ladies could zero, zilch, nada English and since Deepthi wasn’t present that made conversation a bit more interesting. I got some help from a friend with basic Russian skills over messenger (downloading a translation app would have taken too long) which contributed to the conversation and of course smiles and gestures are universal.

Once dinner was done, it was time for entertainment and Kalle to get a haircut, the girls were fond of Juni and also intrigued by the Netflix cartoons she brought. The oldest girl also had a tube of Henna color and wanted to practice Mehndi so Gunnel and Mona volunteered their hands for some patterns. This of course led to Juni wanted to have some as well, she got a heart on her shoulder and a pattern on her hand – and told that she absolutely needed to not touch the color for at least ten minutes, but ideally ten more.

To get the true Christmas feeling we had asked for the AC to be turned on and lowered the temperature last night, it worked really well so we had to turn it off sometime during the night to avoid frostbite. Juni’s first words as she woke was “Today’s Christmas!” followed by the “Today we can eat Christmas candy!!”, then she also stated that there was snow outside which we considered unlikely but two out of three isn’t a bad start.

We did some usual lounging at the beach, and today apparently was the day a boat that had undergone renovations would finally be tested if she was sea-worthy. I had a prime spot in watching the endeavor from the inflatable couch, and contributed with well-timed “Now push” instruction – it’s important that we all help each other in the ways we’re best suited to. We went back to the hotel and pool as the sun got stronger and Mona went to Kalle and Gunnel to assist in preparing the traditional Christmas feast.

Gunnel was still feeling ill, so it was only Kalle that joined us on our balcony where we enjoyed the main traditional courses, and after food Juni was pleasantly surprised that there were gifts to be unwrapped. We also did some FaceTime calls to relatives and managed despite the time difference say our hellos and wish merry Christmas.

After the nice lunch we rested as one should, and then took a stroll down to the beach to have a look at the sunset. Later we managed to squeeze in the last FaceTime call for the day and concluded that it had been a nice Christmas Eve despite the lack of snow and my family.

The night was ok, but we should probably try to remember ask for the AC today, not to be turned on during the night but to lower the temperature as we go to sleep and then a slow almost silent fan could be the secret sauce. And perhaps some treats for the dogs that enjoy barking at night.

Juni woke just before seven, and I had managed to not stay up too long reading so when she wanted to explore outside and had no interest in any slacking with iPad I got quickly dressed and left Mona to get some additional sleep.

We realized that this could be the day when we beat Kalle & Gunnel to the beach by a fair margin so we headed our strolling that way. Juni was happy to be first but explained that she missed her pacifier a bit. The same pacifier she loudly explained she would give up earlier in the morning. After taking some photos of each other we headed back and on our way back we bought some water for Juni to carry.

Mona was awake and after some preparations we headed back towards the beach – some simple yoghurt from the convenience store would suffice as brunch today.

At the beach it was same old, with the addition of the landlord Mapa and her kids Sanuki and Sazen. After intense playing Juni took a nap on the beach while Mona did Christmas food shopping with Kalle. Gunnel wasn’t feeling well so had headed home to rest.

As we packed our stuff and headed out for lunch we were just a bit too late and got caught in intense rain, luckily we aren’t made out of paper and it’s 28° degrees warm. We took a tuk-tuk to Neela’s where I forgot their definition of noodle soup is different from mine (but still OK, just more like minestrone soup) – on the other hand I had in my indecision also ordered some fried rice and got a really big and nice portion which I somehow managed to fit in my stomach.

On they way back we split up for some Christmas shopping and Juni wanted to play in the pool in the rain again. Which was fine until we saw lightning and remembered something about avoiding pools in such weather.

Gunnel was still resting but Kalle joined us for dinner, we had seen an Indian restaurant the day before and wanted to check that out. It was Paradiso Hotel and reviews were so-so and we were the only guests there (for both hotel and restaurant) so decided we would reconsider our choice so went to Moonshine that. Which was way to loud for Mona so we finally ended up at JHL, a place also recommend by Jippe The Villa. Unfortunately Kalle’s schnitzel was really bad, my chop suey wasn’t anything to write home about and service somewhat lacking. The price was high at least however, but at least when we got the bill the schnitzel wasn’t there and the staff apologized.

Not all dinners can be awesome but at least we remembered to get the A/C enabled as a pre-christmas gift to ourselves when we got home.