The rest of the afternoon was visiting historical Polonnaruwa, which was the capital of Sri Lanka from the 11th through the 13th century, replacing Anuradhapura. Consisting of monasteries, temples, gardens, palaces and manmade lakes, it was quite a place to walk around. You could rent bikes, but we encountered more than a few lost and exhausted bikers along the way, I'm kind of glad we went the spoiled tourist way and had a car and guide.
This place is called the Nissankalata Mandapaya (or Council Chamber), where all sorts of important meetings were held. The pavilion was reportedly used for chanting Buddha's teachings. I think they probably argued about taxes.
All those columns are engraved with who was supposed to stand where.
And the King's place is right up front, of course.
On to our next stop, the world's largest book!
"What does it say?" I asked. "Oh, those are words, it's a story." "Right, but about what?" "A story, about the king, I suppose." I guess if you're going to carve something into a rock it'd better be about the king, and not some trite love story or something.
This place is called a Vatadage, which usually enshrined relics, and only 10 are left in Sri Lanka. It's been a thousand years, so the relics were probably stolen long ago, but it's pretty neat. It's a round stupa surrounded by four buddhas facing each of the directions. For some reason I was tired of taking my shoes off, so David took these pictures.
Moving on, we came to this small structure. Wait, what is that in the middle there? Is that what I think it is?
Yes, yes it is...
This little guy followed us all over the park. I started calling him Hershey, not sure why, but look at those ears, don't you just want to take him home?
The royal private bath.
The royal private pisser.
We were watched at various places by jungle creatures. I'd like to think he was trying to smile at me.
And what's that back there?
I know what my dad would be thinking. Ka-blam! Dinner is served.
This place is called Lankatilakaya. It's hard to describe how huge this thing is, by far some of the coolest thing we saw most of the day. He's missing his head, but with it he would be over 40 feet high.
Some detail carved into the side has survived a bit better.
The last site of the day was Galviharaya, containing four "great masterpieces of buddhist sculpture", all carved into a single piece of granite.
According to our guide, the pose and the facial expression of Buddha show his supreme compassion towards suffering.
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And thus ends our last full day in Sri Lanka. We got up early the next morning to hit one last site in the pouring rain - good thing it was caves!
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