Mġarr was a loss. My proof? Only one gelateria. It really is important only as one end of the Malta-Gozo ferry link.
I cooled my heels here for a while waiting for the return bus to Victoria.
At sunset I climbed the access road to the Cittadella. From the ramparts there were panoramic views over the island. But renovations were being carried out so only part of the grounds were accessible.
Besides the cathedral, several museums are located within the cittadella complex.
This time I was determined to dine early at the Café Jubilee to taste the lampuki pie. It won't become a world-famous tasty dish, the fish is somewhat bland, but now I can say that I've tried it.
My next hop off location was Marsalforn, on the north coast. Here the holiday apartments looked newer and more were on the way. The bigger choice of restaurants also indicated more visitors.
It was time for lunch. Unfortunately the British had been there before me and sabotaged the menus with all kinds of non-food items. I didn't want all day breakfasts, burgers or pizzas. I was hoping to find aljotta, Maltese fish soup.
Finally at the very end of restaurant row I found an Italian restaurant offering it. I also ordered the seafood spaghetti. When it came I was glad the waiter hadn't heard me ask for aljotta, or I would have been unable to finish it. In fact I didn't, because the spaghetti was more like troppo dente than al dente. Still, given that the whole lunch cost what one single dish in Sydney does, I can't complain.
And more so because I had a breezy view over the bay.
Normally I dislike bus tours. However the hop on hop off tour service was my best option for reaching the coast. They give you a pair of disposable earphones but in my experience the sound quality is awful, and one should just enjoy the view.
Gozitan streets are so narrow it's a wonder the buses don't hit the balconies. We passed through San Lawrenz and Dwejra Bay again, this time with an elevated view which enabled me to snap this picture of a quarry. I didn't disembark as I had seen it all the day before.
Then the bus headed to Ta' Pinu basilica in the northwest of Gozo. The origin of the original church is unknown, but it got a huge expansion after a peasant woman heard mystical voices and miracles were attributed to the church. Peter, the Segway guide, told us that it's a site as venerated as Lourdes.
It's an impressive building visible for kilometres around.
Finally at Xlendi on the south coast I got off the bus. (The X is pronounced like sh by the way.) This is a little village situated at the head of a bay with a small beach.
It was a pleasant slightly overcast day and the water was calm and reflective.
Holiday apartments lined the waterfront. Some had seen better days but looked cozy enough.
All over Malta you can buy pastizzi from pastizzerias, what else. These are little savoury pastry snacks containing cheese or peas. The pastry is crisp rather than soft and oily like croissants. I enjoyed a couple of fresh ones from this vendor.
There is a tower guarding the bay and sea, dating from 17th century Grand Master days.
The British added this stone bridge across a ravine for better access.
It was a lovely walk and I took far more pictures than I can post here.
Gozo is not a large island, it's only 14 km by 7 km. Surely I could walk everywhere from Victoria? But one look at the topography put paid to that idea. The central plateau descends sharply into deeply indented coves, typical of a limestone island. Cycling, while feasible, would also be hard work. So I would have to take motorised transport to see the coast.
First to make use of the courtesy bus service provided by the hotel to Dwejra Bay on the west coast where the Azure Window is.
This is a natural aperture formed by erosion. What makes it more attractive is that it is also a highly rated dive spot; third in the world I was told.
Nearby is the Inland Sea, a lagoon whose connection to the sea is through a natural arch. Boat tours were offered.
Teams of divers were going in and out of the site. Lots of income for local operators it seems.
My fellow passengers on the courtesy shuttle were an elderly Norwegiian couple. The wife, a teacher, told me an interesting fact: schools are required to put the less intellectually capable students in the same classes as brighter students, even at the expense of disruption.
The driver had arranged to pick us up at 1400, giving us 4 hours. Even with paying a visit to the interesting ecological display and having lunch with a beer, this was too long, and I dozed off under one of the few pieces of shade in the grounds.
The bay got busier and busier as the sun ascended. Tour buses were constantly pouring in visitors of all nationalities. As you'd expect of a top tourist attraction.
I was taking a different tack in the afternoon. Gozo Segway tours had high satisfaction rates on Tripadvisor so I had signed up for an evening tour. I was taken to the village of San Lawrenz where we were given basic training in riding a Segway. It really is intuitive and within 30 minutes, the English couple and I were following Peter, our guide, as if we had done this all our lives.
Peter took us on offroad country tracks where we saw parts of Gozo impossible to reach without own transport and a bit of walking. Peter took hundreds of pictures of our ride with his smartphone, then later a conventional camera. I'll need to download the album at home before I can select and post pictures from it. Stay tuned.
This is the Azure Window again but from the north, in the much gentler evening light.
Peter and my fellow riders.
Another natural arch. These arches are being created and destroyed with time.
Our Segways and the Ta' Ġurdan Lighthouse on the north coast of the island in the distance. It is said that on clear nights it is possible to see the lights of cars on the Sicilian coast.
Part of the west coast of Gozo.
Somewhere along the way Peter plucked a couple of prickly pears for us to taste. Quite fragrant but full of seeds. These cacti grow profusely on Malta. I had bought a kg box in a Dutch market a few days before. Those came from Sicily. I had solved the seed problem by extracting the juice with a colander and used the juice on dessert and with tequila.
Sadly sundown meant the end of our most enjoyable excursion and we were back at San Lawrenz with the church now floodlit.
Back in Victoria, Café Jubilee was recommended to me for dinner. This turned out to be an establishment full of old charm.
Spotting lampuki pie on the menu, I asked to try this Maltese dish. Unfortunately it was all sold out, so I had to settle for another specialty, rabbit.
This came baked with citrus peel and bay leaves, and accompanied by potato cubes. It looked and tasted somewhat like dark chicken meat. So now I have eaten a bunny.
From the air, the colour of Malta is mud yellow. Buildings are constructed with quarried yellow limestone so the overall impression is a yellow landscape.
Passengers rushed off the bus and ran up the boarding ramp of the ferry about to depart. I decided to hang back and take photos. In the cafeteria I enjoyed a tuna and salad sandwich and a coffee, not having eaten since the small snack on the flight.
As it turned out, crossings were frequent anyway. I was also hoping to photograph the moon at dusk, knowing that it was full from the fact that the Moon Festival had just been celebrated, but it was too early for that.
Between Malta and Gozo is the small, practically uninhabited island of Comino. Tour boats bring visitors to the blue lagoon for its cyan waters.
A connecting bus took me to Victoria, a.k.a. Rabat, the capital, in the middle of the island. Unfortunately there was no map on my booking confirmation for Downtown Hotel. You'd think from the name it would be in the centre of town, but in the description some rooms had a "country view" so I suspected that it was actually in the outskirts.
Luck was still with me; I happened upon an open WiFi AP and was able pull up GPS and maps and find that Downtown was only 5 minutes walk in the same direction.
The hotel was at only partial occupancy, the summer season being over. Temperatures were near perfect, at around 24C. A bit more humid than I'd like, but this is a cavil. At last a room all to myself to swing a cat. But no cat to hand.
I unpacked and headed back to the old town for a bite. Cozy bistros and cafés were scattered here and there. Customers were drinking though. I got lost in twisty alleys lit only by yellow street lamps at intervals. Silent enough to hear my own heartbeat if I paused. I never felt anxious though. Eventually I emerged outside San Ġorġ where there were al fresco diners. Later this plaza was independently recommended to me. Lucky again.
I didn't feel like a full cooked meal so I ordered a fisherman's platter which was smoked octopus, swordfish and salmon on salad, accompanied by Gozitan bread and the local Cisk lager. It was still quite filling as the portion was ample.
Malta came up on my radar when I was toying with the idea of living in Europe. It ranked highly on some liveability tables. There is no consistency between tables; depending the measures, different countries will come up on top. It was unclear to me why it ranked well. It gets extremely hot in summer, though some might prefer that to freezing winters; the shortage of water means desalination; and electricity costs are high. On the plus side, it has friendly people, heaps of cultural activities, and excellent communications due to being a junction for sub-Mediterranean cables. Perhaps the ratings were done by British ex-pats, as the British heritage is comfortable for them. Anyway my curiosity was piqued and I noted that the land and sea scapes are lovely, especially on Gozo, so I picked Malta out of my bucket list, even though I'm not an aficionado of Knights Hospitaller history.
When I was researching Malta, practically all the results of a library search were to do with the sieges of Malta, most recently in WWII and also further back. Well, I'm not that keen on military history, so I won't get started here, but I will remark on memorials to significant events as I encounter them.
Maltese is a Semitic language, the only one written in Latin script. It has inherited words from Italian and Sicilian, as well as Arabic, as you can see from these greetings: merħba, aw habib, bonġu, bonswa. No surprise what grazzi and skuzi mean. The rest of the language is illegible and unintelligible to me as I don't know enough Arabic. In any case English is widely spoken and I'm sure locals don't expect visitors to speak Maltese.
Arrival and customs were perfunctory. I had to wait a while for the bus to Ċirkewwa for the Gozo ferry as they only run twice an hour. The worst part was being downwind from smokers, looks like Maltese bus stops are not smoke-free zones.
(Continued in Gozo post.)
A few pictures from Rotterdam, where my cousin lives near the city centre. I was quite impressed by Rotterdam. It seems to have undergone a lot of urban renewal, and offers a good quality of life. Unlike Amsterdam, Rotterdam carries no weight of architectural history as it was bombed out in WWII. So architects have had free rein with their imaginations.
The entrance of the modern central station, which I had not used before.
The Markthal is a horseshoe shaped building containing residences and offices. On the ground level is an open air market with produce and food stalls. Glass facades at both ends of the horseshoe admit light but not the cold, allowing al fresco shopping in all weathers.
The interior of the horseshoe is covered by a painting by Arno Coenen. A secular Sistine Chapel if you like.
Markthal is only a year old so novel not just to me but many Dutch too.
Nearby are the Cube Houses almost 40 years old but which I had not seen before. One of the owners decided to turn his house into a show cube and make a living out of charging entrance of curious visitors.
A short train ride to Amsterdam to reacquaint myself with her. Many years ago I thought it would be cool to live in Amsterdam after having spent a few months there. But Amsterdam is not the Netherlands, she is sui generis. She is a world tourist city. It will be interesting to see what changes 11 years have wrought.
The interior of Haarlem train station, my starting point.
Except for the new lettering, the exterior of Centraal looked the same. However the interior has had a makeover with bright new passageways and shiny shops.
The metro network has been extended. I also noted that I could reach Science Park by a new train station after Muiderpoort instead of taking tram 9 to Watergrafsmeer.
The Jordaan is a neighbourhood to the west of Centraal that has been gentrified and is a trendy sought after quarter, especially by the young. It has many art galleries, specialist shops, ethnic restaurants and cool cafés.
Cool guard cats too.
I viewed many an arthouse film at this cinema back in the day. They were still showing Koyaanisqatsi, which tells you something about the clientele.
I forgot that in Amsterdam bicyclists can come from any direction and I almost got run into a couple of times, saved only by shouts.
Unfortunately the Lindengracht markets weren't operating but the Melkmeisjesbrug (Milkmaid Bridge) was still there, as always.
Then a walk down the main pedestrian shopping street of Nieuwendijk which segues into Kalverstraat, running parallel to Damrak and Rokin respectively.
The upmarket Magma, behind the National Palace, was already there when I passed through on my way to Spain in 1993 and still looked as classy as ever, although the mix of shops had changed. It was the same story with Kalverstraat. The American Book Centre, the largest English language bookshop in the Netherlands, where I once bought all 7 volumes of Anaïs Nin's Journals, prompting the sales assistant to exclaim: the one who takes it all, had relocated to a cheaper location on the Spui.
At the end of Kalverstraat is the Munttoren and the start of the Bloemen Markt.
The flower market, on the bank of the Singel canal, is where tourists buy bulbs to take home (where allowed).
I had no such desires so I crossed over to Leidsestraat where there are a couple of single tram crossings.
At a Febo I had a snack of fries with knoflooksaus for nostalgia.
The Bulldog Cafe at Leidseplein looked the same as ever. This plaza gets lively in the evenings.
I recalled reading that the portable street urinals had been removed. Spotting a hotel, I strode in purposefully and headed towards the conference rooms, turning when I spotted the toilets.
The Stadsschouwburg faces the plaza. I attended one or three concerts here back in the day.
I walked back to Centraal along the Rokin, bought some gifts at a Chinese supermarket, and found an adana kebab lunch at a Turkish restaurant. Although authentic enough, pretty much any restaurant in the centre caters to the tourist traffic so you pay above the odds.
I had been told that the area where I once interned for a few months had been redeveloped into a Science Park so I was curious to see what it looked like after 30 years.
The CWI looked the same as ever with the twin lambdas in front. The cafeteria and open air balcony where we had many a Friday afternoon beer looked the same. No doubt all the people I knew were gone.
It looks like if you are after a cloud computing job, you should consult your local street snack bar first.
On the opposite side of the street is Anna Hoeve, the only building left of a historic farm, and now on the outskirts of a research park.
The ducks will still be there long after I'm gone. Tempus fugit.
