Milano Grand New Rest House

Wherever we travel, we stay well clear of the expensive hotel chains that look exactly the same as the ones we see in our home town, opting instead for the value-for-money establishments which we hoped, in this instance, would typify the "real" Sri Lanka. And, in Dambulla, we hit the jackpot. The Milano Grand Rest Inn is the one we're going to remember with most fondness, a decade from now. It's the kind of place where you feel like you're a friend of the family, not just a guest, and you tear yourself away with promises to keep in touch and, hopefully, to return one day. I remember feeling like that when we stayed at Shahi Palace in Jaisalmer twenty years ago, and we still keep in touch with the owners of that establishment. I hope that in another twenty years we will still be keeping in touch with 'Lucky' Laxmann at Milano Grand. We were happy with just about everyone we met in Sri Lanka -- it's a friendly country full of helpful, welcoming people -- but 'Lucky' stood out, even in this company. He looked after us as if he didn't have another thing to do with his day (which, I saw, starts early and ends late... he works alongside his staff); he didn't just advise us on which bus to catch to get to the surrounding sights; he took us to the stop, waited with us, hailed the bus for us, and saw us safely seated, every morning (we stayed three nights in Dambulla, longer than even the major centres, because the bus service to the nearby towns -- Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa, Minneriya, and Anuradhapura -- is frequent, fast, and foolproof... and moving on every night can be exhausting!). 'Lucky' includes breakfast in the accommodation price (which would have been more than reasonable, even without it), and ensured that we had a different variety of fresh fruit to try each day, just to enrich our experience. He was born and bred in Dambulla, and knows everyone in town, so when I needed something unexpectedly, he took us to the right person to fix things up. Just after we left, he had some guests who expressed their wish to do something to help some less-fortunate children in the district, and he was able to help them in that quest too (I envied them that experience, and wish we'd stayed longer so we could have shared it with them... another reason for us to plan on a return to 'Lucky' Laxmann and the Milano Grand!). In short, one of the two best decisions we made in the two-and-a-half weeks we spent in Sri Lanka.