Malta - part 3

Our trip to Gozo ended in the town of Victoria. It is the largest city on Gozo with a population of 6,414.


Here is an aerial view of the city from Joey's helicopter. The coolest thing about the town, and the place where we spent all of our time, was the Citadel.


The church was interesting. I think it looked more like a theater than a church. But this was nothing compared to the one we would see the next day in Valetta.


The church has a trompe-l'oeil dome similar to the one we saw in Rome. I think it was at St. Ignatius. This one seems a little brighter though. Trompe-l'oeil means trick the eye. It's just a flat surface with a dome painted on it. They probably didn't have enough money.


This odd looking reliquary houses the bones of St. Lucidae, or something. You can see her ribs and various other bones through her clothes. Neat.


Here are some views from the walls of the citadel.


Some of the town outside of the citadel walls.


Sarah and Lara out at the edge of the wall, probably taking selfies.


Brad has me brainwashed. As soon as I looked down and saw these cannons I realized that I must have my picture taken looking into them. These cannons must be here in case the Gozitans get restless and decide to storm the citadel.


Some of the walls within the citadel. Everything looked so green there.


Sarah getting attacked by the wind. It was quite windy there. That is why my hair was so poofy. I wasn't trying a new look.


Brad's influence. My own style.


Sarah rides the cannon to victory. Or Victoria, while Steph, Lara, and Mary (and I) take pictures. We are very easily entertained.


Our bus technology is lightyears ahead of their's. At least they decorated it in Ohio State colors.


I really wanted to check out their lending library. I felt drawn to it. Oh well. The sign on the left shows a little bit of the interesting Maltese language that is a mix of Italian, English, Arabic, and Swahili. I think.


The inside of the buses we took didn't do anything to improve our impressions of them. Most of them sounded like they weren't going to last long. But, then again, they've been running since the 1940's so they might just keep going.
We took this bus back to Mgarr Harbour, our time with Joey having sadly ended. The ride back wasn't quite as exciting because it was pitch black out on the water.
Our journey would continue the next day in the capital of Valetta.

Malta - part 2

The next stop on our Gozitan adventure was a windmill. The excitement never stops.


Joey dropped us off so he could go do some "thing" and would pick us up in a bit. Above, Lara, Steph, Sarah, and Mary stroll through town looking like a bunch of ruffians. The locals hid in their homes so as not to catch the attention of these street toughs.


We discovered that this very old windmill was not quite in working order anymore. It is now the Ta Kola Windmill Museum, or some such nonsense.


Apparently, up until recent times bread was the main food in Malta. The average meal involved bread and maybe a little something to go with it. I'm not sure what they drank. The water at our hotel was not drinking water. We had to buy water bottles like savages. We were really roughing it.


The next place Joey took us was one of the highlights of the whole trip. He drove us down into this hole in the rock with a little lake at the bottom of it. We went out onto a boat while Joey waited for us, paid the boatman, and headed out towards a little hole in the rock wall.


The water was really clear. If we had time I would have liked to jump in. But we were on a schedule. Joey's schedule. I think he probably had a few other day-long fares around the island and he was just taking turns dropping off one group and picking up another. And the rushing around actually wasn't bad. We had a lot to see and not a lot of time in which to see it.


Sarah and Mary take their positions while the ancient seafarer waits. Actually he wasn't ancient at all and I think he was rather bored with the while arrangement. It was just a way to make some extra cash. But he was cordial enough.


We headed toward the hole and saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

The tunnel went through the rock hillside...


and out into the sea.


He's too late. See! The Cliffs of Insanity! I am probably the millionth person to say that, and the third in our little group.


The water was incredible. It was so blue and we could see quite far down underwater.


It looked delicious like blue Kool Aid. I wanted to drink it, but I figured that it might be a bad idea. I'm not even sure if I like blue Kool Aid.


Here is the Azure Window. We couldn't go under it because of the threat of falling rocks. Our boatman told us that it won't look like that for a whole lot longer because quite a bit of rock falls from it pretty often.


Plan your next vacation now, folks. Here in the distance is the beautiful, and aptly named, Fungus Rock. This is as close as we got.


After the boat trip, Joey took us to a seaside town for some seafood (chicken for those with allergies). He kind of hid at a table eating as well. He knew everyone on the island. I have a feeling that he does this every day, gets free meals for bringing in tourists, and isn't so much doing this for us, but instead is just running errands and dropping us off when it's convenient.


We would have one more long stop after lunch in the town of Victoria. We first walked along the bay and got some after lunch ice cream, then were whisked away by our tiny, bossy but kind, Gozitan driver. After "dropping off a thing for a horse", that is.

Malta - part 1

On the morning of Saturday, November 1st, Sarah and I met Mary, Lara, and Stephanie at the Santa Maria Novella train station to catch the train to Pisa. From Pisa's airport we were going to fly down to Malta for a little vacation. It was kind of a special occasion because the four of them, along with the rest of their group, had just turned in their thesis papers and could really do nothing more than wait for their professors' feedback. So most of them took little vacations.
Pisa's airport is pretty small, though not as small as Florence's, so it didn't take long to make it through the lines and security. For an incredible description of our flight and the rest of the trip you should read Sarah's blog (if you haven't already) which has a link on the left. We tried our best to make this a pirate themed weekend (for no good reason, as Malta is not known for its pirate history), and Sarah's recounting follows the theme. I won't be writing with a pirate accent because I jut can't pull it off, but here are some pictures of the proceedings.


This shot from the plane is not of Malta but a spot along the west coast of Italy. I found it on the map. It is Punta Ala, which is close to nothing. It is almost 20 miles west of Grosseto which is almost 90 miles west of Spoleto, which is about 50 miles north of Rome and was once the seat of a Lombard duke. Moving on...
I took the middle seat on the plane, with Sarah takng the window seat. I watched the other passengers file in, wondering who would take the spot next to me. A couple of decent applicants walked by but took other seats. One tiny person even teased me by puting her bag in the compartment above my head then sitting somewhere else. Then, of all the seats, in all the Pisa to Malta planes in the sky, he had to sit next to me. His name was Jimmy. He was from Scotland but now lives in Malta. He is a truckdriver on the continent, spending his free time at his island home. He is very friendly, very loud, he spits when he talks, and he seemed to like me. A lot. So we chatted for most of the trip. He ate and drank. The more he drank, the more he spit. The more he ate, the larger the chunks that were flying onto my arm. I suppressed my disgust and denied my urges to jerk my arm out of the way. I was pleasant and talkative, but the first thing I did when we got into the terminal was wash my arm. So...that was fun.


Jimmy was right about the cabs though. But we had no choice. We had no idea how else to get to our hotel, so we took one. Two actually, because they wouldn't stuff us into one. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't as bad as Jimmy's third or fourth predicted price.
We didn't do much that day. We kind of explored the area, ate dinner, shopped, and of course we checked out the water. Above is one of the rocky "beaches" that was cool but actually kind of dangerous. People were not following the rules of "keep clean the pool". There was trash everywhere. Quite unfortunate. It reminded me of Daytona Beach right after all the spring breakers leave.


On Sunday we decided to spend the day on Malta's second island of Gozo. We got to experience the Maltese buses, which will be shown in later pictures, and just missed a ferry to Gozo. So we had to wait around for a while before we could get on the next one. Above is a picture of the interior of one of the ferries. People and cars were herded into the same entrance. Luckily the people were allowed to go above to the upper decks. The poor cars had to stay below like common animals.


Our first view of Gozo. It's really not the far. We weren't far from Malta when I took this.


I think that the box-like building on the right (on the island of Comino, between Malta and Gozo) might be a watchtower. Or not. I didn't study enough before we left for this trip.


GOZO! A hub of transportation!


We are entering Mgarr Harbour. This name provided us with hours of fun. First of all, some of the grad students (Sarah included) enjoy using the term "magar" which is close to the Italian word for perhaps. So when they found out that we would be going to a city with this name they were estatic. Especially because, due to the pirate theme, they would pronounce it as Mgarrrrr. You had to be there.


We were going to explore this tiny town for a bit, but Joey the cab driver told us that there was nothing to see here and that even the church was closed. He then told us where he would take us. We were powerless to resist.


Here is my only shot of the elusive Joey. He drove us up here for the view and for Calypso's Cave. He then told us that it was pointless to go down into the cave because it was too dark to see anything. Then he herded us back into the cab and off to the next location.


Sarah and Lara overlook the beautiful Mediterranean.


The Gozitan countryside.


Here's Calypso's Cave. Gozo's nicknam is the Isle of Calypso because it is rumored to be the island controlled by Calypso in the Odyssey. But we will never know because Joey wouldn't let us.


Ancient stuctures were not built for those six foot tall and above. Especially when they have poofy hair.


Malta and Gozo are home to a number of ancient structures. We explored the most famous one called the Ggantija Temples, purported to be the oldest free-standing structure in the world. The temples were built over 5500 years ago. Apparently to be called free-standing they neglected to mention the structure on the right of the picture.


They are also supposed to be the oldest religious structures in the world. Here are the remains of an altar.

Anniversary

On October 26th we celebrated our 6th anniversary. Sarah was pretty busy with school work but she managed to pencil me in for a dinner. We had an idea of where we wanted to go but they were closed. So we ended up wandering around, figuring that we would see something good eventually.


We walked across the river because we had a few ideas of good places. We decided to go up to the Piazza Michelangelo first, both because I thought there was a restaurant up there and because it was something fun to do. The view is amazing from up there. But the world seems to have been a little crooked. For some reason I still have a hard time taking perfectly level pictures.


You can see the lights along the Arno, the tower above the Palazzo Vecchio, and the Duomo.


You can't really see the old city wall winding its way up and down the hills. And some authentic Florentine trash receptacles.


We finally ordered the Steak Florentine. Many restaurants offer it, always by the gram or kilogram or whatever. So you never really know how much it's going to be. It was a lot. But it was really good and the side dishes were delicious. The company was alright. You can kind of see how bloody the steak is in the picture. Oddly enough I came down with my stomach virus shortly after our anniversary.


Here we are posing like we're going to a school dance. You can buy prints if you want.


That's me being cool, talking on my cell phone with my laundry hanging in the background. You can buy prints if you want.








This is me wearing Sarah's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mask. You are correct. Donatello did wear the red mask. I don't remember when this was, but I figured that the world needed to see it. You can buy prints if you want.
Happy Anniversary Sarah!