Malta contd

On Thursday we wanted to visit the Ghadira Nature reserve. We took a bus and travelled along East coast up North. When we got off the bus, we found ourselves before the locked gate. Nature reserve was closed. Somehow I overlooked it on Internet. This was all that we saw over the fence, it is an area where the birds and the insects gather, among them also dragonflies.

There was nothing worth visiting in vicinity, so we needed a plan B. Captain suggested we hop on bus again, ride to the ferry and then sail across to the island of Gozo. And so we did.

On our sail to Gozo we passed the small island of Comino wit its famous Blue Lagoon, we only saw it from afar, but we could see the blue water.

We docked at the Mgarr...

...and took the bus to the capital of the island, town of Victoria.

It is a pretty town with many old buildings like the Teathre.

We walked to the top of the hill where the Citadel is. It is walled area with a church, some palaces...

...more walls...

...and great view of the surroundings, that were green and pretty.

But there was again a church on every other hill as well.

Behind this gate we found a restaurant, where we ate some very nice local pasty and had a drink, to our surprise for a very reasonable price for the location.

Next day was a holiday, Independence day, and everything was closed. But there was a regatta of historic rowing boats in Valetta, so we went there to see it. We walked again by some big churches...

...and this strange thing - these are Graineries, an underground silo carved in rock they could store huge amounts os grains that helped them survive in case of siege.

By chance we also discovered the botanical garden, that was of course closed, but there was plenty to be seen over and through the fence.

In this area there were plenty of cats, we also saw some bowls with water for them.

This is the water storage, in old times Valetta had the aqueduct that brought water from the inland. Again very useful in case of a siege.

And another church with very ornate entrance. Now it's used as the hall where the Maltese national philharmonics are practising.

The regata took place in Grand Harbour so we walked to the waterfront. This is near the cruise ship terminal.

The competition was already in full swing. We watched for a while...

...and then took an elevator to Upper Barrakka garden with great views over the harbour.

We then walked through the streets of Valetta to the other side to ferry that took us back to Sliema.

Next day we visited Mdina, that was once the capital of Malta. This is the famous gate that had its moment in Games of thrones.

Contrary to Citadel on Gozo here there are people living in old houses that are behind the walls, even cars of inhabitants are allowed there.

It is still very pretty.

From the walls one can almost see Valetta in the SE.

There are several very old doors in the walls.

It cracked Captain up every time he saw the sign Pulizija. It means police in Maltese and in Slovene it would be policija and pulizija is how maybe a child would misspell policija. Captain thought it was the best joke of the week and he said he would have a hard time taking anyone seriously that would had a sign like that.

We walked through Mdina for a while, but one can only enjoy so many old stone buildings and churches. Since it was still early in the day we decided to take bus to the Dingli cliffs that were not too far away. It still turned out to be a long journey, because we had to wait for a bus for a whole hour. Because it was Saturday the busses ran even more rarely and of course not to the schedule.

But finally we got there. The views were not as spectacular as we expected, because the day was a bit cloudy and hazy.

But we saw some very pretty flowers...

...and had the best local deserts in the restaurant by the street. I was again surprised that one could get such great food for normal prices on such a tourist spot.

The weather forecast for Sunday was not very nice, with even some rain. So we decided to walk to the Manoel island and maybe do some shopping - this was of course my idea, Captain didn't want anything to do with it. On Manoel island we saw some pretty flowers, but it was already cloudy and I didn't take many photos.

Later in the afternoon we walked to Marks & Spencer and had a quick byte on the way. Rain was slowly moving closer and in the evening everything was wet and all the lights were reflecting on wet streets.

Next day we took the taxi to the airport and flew back to Treviso, then we drove home and arrived there just before night. It was really a great and eventful week. And since there is still so much in Malta we haven't seen yet, we might have to go back some day.