B&B Colombo

One of the worst apartments I’ve stayed in. It was run down and dirty, and the kitchen couldn’t be used because the stove wasn’t working. The manager wasn’t a nice guy either.

This private B&B is clean and neat, with comfortable rooms and access to a large terrace. It’s on the sixth floor of a block close to the train station. There are a couple of rooms that share a bathroom, plus one with a private bathroom outside the room. Breakfast is made yourself from the food provided, and the kitchen has all the necessary utensils. The price is good, and it’s about 2 km from the tower.

The Airbnb photos don’t match what we found, so avoid this place. One of the managers, who was presented as the “landlord,” gave us a key and the address of a nearby apartment. It was awkward to reach with heavy luggage, next to the train station, and difficult to find even with Google Maps because the same house number appears at two locations, one of them a shop. The building was very old, smelly, and dirty, and the lift was tiny. The bed linen had stains, the floor and kitchen were dirty, the kitchen was oily, and the bathroom was awful. There was no light in the toilet, so we had to use our phone flashlights. We contacted the guy straight away but he never replied. The walls were paper-thin, and we could hear everything outside. One room in the apartment slept five people, so you can imagine how quiet our night was.

I don’t recommend this for women traveling alone. My room’s lock had been violently broken, and the landlord seemed to care very little about security. When someone rings the door twice, the main entrance opens automatically, and the flat keys are left in the umbrella box. The area felt rough, homeless people slept at the entrance, and it was noisy at night. The previous guest had left period blood in the bathroom.