Today was the day for our trip to Gozo. It was supposed to be a beautiful sunny day, and it certainly was very bright and sunny, with a dazzling blue sky. Unfortunately, there was a really cold wind, which cut like a knife - and we were supposed to be going out in an open-topped bus!
Our pickup arrived promptly in our hotel as arranged, and was a coach for this part, rather than an open-topped bus; it took us to the north of the island to the ferry departure point for Gozo. The trip up to the north of the island took about an hour, and gave us a chance to appreciate this less populated part of Malta. It is rural in parts, with Mediterranean vegetation such as prickly pears, and very rocky; in some areas, dry-stone walls are used to demarcate the fields. It might seem that agriculture doesn't necessarily pay; we passed what looked like an abandoned sisal farm, with sisal plants in rows, but all overgrown and gone to seed, so there were huge poles sprouting from many of them. The lack of agricultural success in this part of the island could account for the fact that in some areas it almost looks as if Malta might sink under the weight of new tourist hotels clustered thickly round every bay or patch of sand beach.
The ferry across the 8 km to Gozo took around half an hour, so we barely had time to drink a cup of coffee and consult the guide book before it was time to get off. This was where we were met by the open-topped bus, but quite a few of us played safe and stayed downstairs inside the bus where it was a bit warmer.
Many of the older villages in Gozo were on heavily fortified hill tops, so the villagers could protect themselves from pirates. This is Mgarr town, just above the harbour.
Our first optional stop was at Nadur, a village that had a Maritime museum, but we knew we didn't have time to get off there if we wanted to see the whole island. Likewise, nobody got off at Ramla Bay, one of the places Napoleon landed when he captured the island on his way to Egypt. However, half the people on the bus got off at at the next stop, Xaghra, to see the prehistoric Gganttija temples. I mentioned the temple builders yesterday, as the temples are dated to 3600 BC and hence are older than the Great Pyramid (2530 BC) or Stonehenge, for that matter (2000 BC).
The best way to describe these temples is to show a birds-eye view of them - this model is in the Archeology museum, which we visited later.
You can see there are two temples, each of which is divided into a series of 'rooms'. The stones used to build them are really massive, making you wonder how they were moved in the first place.
Some of the rooms have stone tables or altars,
but everything that is suggested about their use or their building is only speculation, since the people who built them seem completely to have disappeared. Later bronze age peoples and even Romans seem to have reused the temples as a cremation site, but nobody knows what became of the original people.
After this, we encountered something of a problem. Our tour is described as 'hop off, hop on. And we had hopped off; however, we failed to hop on! The bus we intended to hop on to was more than 5 minutes early, so when 4 of us arrived with a couple of minutes to spare, the bus had already gone. When this became clear about 20 minutes later, we all shared a taxi into Victoria, missing out a photo stop in the north at a place referred to as 'Calypso's Cave'. We were very irritated by this, but we might miss seeing other things if we didn't manage to catch up with the bus.
Victoria is the capital and has a citadel, and the surrounding houses near the citadel are also old and rather charming.
This is typical Maltese architecture, with balconies, some of which are enclosed.
We climbed up the steep hill to the citadel (quite glad we didn't have to do it in medieval armour, it's very steep). There is a cathedral which is apparently worth a visit, but it was shut today - it's Sunday...
We very much enjoyed wandering round the citadel. All the streets are little narrow medieval alleyways with almost no windows overlooking them, so they are more easily defended.
They clearly haven't changed much in centuries. The views from the ramparts to surrounding towns are wonderful, though we were nearly blown off at various spots, the wind was so strong.
The archeology museum had some interesting exhibits.
I was particularly interested in this one above, because I have no idea what it is. Neither does the museum I suppose, as it has no label. It is a solid piece of stone, with those two cup-shaped depressions in the top, and a little hole bored through the stone leading into each cup. All suggestions welcome!
We also visited the Folklore Museum, for relics of the island's agricultural past. The apparatus below was used for grinding the wheat to flour; there's a harness for the missing donkey, and the sack to catch the flour is out of sight, on the left.
When we came down from the citadel, we did manage to find the Church of St George which was open. It had a very baroque interior, with what my sister thinks is a copy of the Baldicchino in St Peter's in Rome.
We took care to be VERY early for the next bus, so we were able to see the rest of the island, though there wasn't time to hop off anywhere else. We braved the top of the bus this time, but we weren't able to manage it for long, it was just too cold.
We visited the 'Inland Sea', a shallow lagoon popular for swimming which is connected to the sea by a cave; it was too cold to contemplate any swimming today, and anyway the extreme beauty of the spot had been spoiled by strange buildings that looked like nothing so much as concrete shipping containers.
Another charming spot where we might have spent time was the village of Xlendi, which used to be a little fishing village and is now a tourist spot. It is lovely at present, but there are many more hotels to come.
After this, we were on our way home through the countryside and back to Mgarr for the 5.15 ferry; when we arrived back in Malta, another coach picked us up and drove us back to our hotel. There is more to see on Gozo, we enjoyed it very much and just wished we had had more time.
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