June 27,

Today, we awoke and had our coffee/hot chocolate. I have had to buy some generic – Island Coffee, it is called. It is not very tasty, and a bit bitter. So I mixed the last bits of a fine grind Ginger Coffee and a last bits of my good Toscana Ceylon (Sri Lankan) Coffee. It has made it way more palatable. Anyway, we had ordered breakfast again – it was same, even the watermelon, but it is all so good. 😋

As we were eating, I noticed the same couple was here still and eating as well. I could hear and understand them, so English-speaking, but I could not place their accent. I was leaning toward Aussie, but not quite. It kept bugging me. So when we finished eating and they were still out on the front porch area, I went down and introduced myself and asked. Well, I was wrong they are Irish (so it would be a brogue not an accent). They were receptive to conversation and well we talked for probably one hour. They are young – she is 26 – as this came out in the conversation. He is older – early 30's maybe, but he never said. Anyway, they quit their jobs and have been travelling 1.5 yrs. They are due to return back to Ireland in August as I recall. As we were winding up our chat, they had previously said they had no plans today. I put out an invite to them. We were going to make a run down to Trincomalee for pizza and stuff later. They accepted and we all went back to our rooms for a couple of hours to cool off.

Around 1345 I went and cleaned up CB's windows and cleared out the backseat. Jeff was busy trying to send an email. At 1400, we four loaded up into CB and took off to the big city (It is around 100,000 according to Google). It hit me on the way that they could be our kids! But we continued conversing. We seemed to get along well, hope they felt the same with us “old fogies”. They were appreciative as they had not been down in Trincomalee – they do not have a car. The young man did state how much he enjoyed just riding in a car.

We went to the get Pizza first. We stopped at Nero's Kitchen. Jeff and I had seen their sign and wanted to try their Wood-'Fried' Pizza. (I am sure they meant wood-fired.) It was okay, and probably better because of the company with us! They both had a medium pizza – each – the metabolism of youth. Jeff and I split a medium and had a starter of onion rings. We offered to share, but they declined. Finished we all loaded back into CB. We squired them to Fort Frederick. The deer were out and they enjoyed seeing them. We offered to let them go to the temple, but were not interested.  So we left the fort and drove some along the harbor. It was fun, they were fun – a refreshing, fun change. We did stop at “Wine Shop” as Sri Lankans call them. Jeff got some Arrack. There was a local minimarket across the street and the Irish couple went in there. I stayed in the car. When everyone was back in the car, we went back to our place in Nilaveli.  It was around 1730.  A good day. We separated to our own rooms, both thanking the other couple for the company.