Today we saw a lot of beauty in our surroundings and a lot of ugliness in our fellow British travelers.
We got the ferry to the beautiful island of Gozo today, which is just a short 25 minute ferry journey from Malta with lovely views en route. On arriving in Gozo we were hit with how beautiful the place was and this was just at the Mgarr harbour. We then headed for the bus to take us into Victoria, which is the capital.
We could not understand what was happening at first as nearly everyone was jostling and pushing to get on the bus. It transpired that it was just due to the fact that these people wanted to get on the bus first at any cost. We are serious when we say pushing, as in pushing people aside so that they can get on first! We must point out the even sadder point to this is that there was a bus just behind this one ready to load with visitors too and the buses ran regularly so it is not as though this was the only bus for several hours and if it was this is of no excuse. What made us feel ashamed is that by the voices we heard they all seemed to be English. We tried to shake off the feeling this gave us and enjoyed the views from the bus on the journey to Victoria.
From what we could see Gozo seems to be alot greener than Malta and seemed generally cleaner. When we arrived in Victoria we headed from the main street, which was a bit busy with traffic onto the back streets which were lovely. They were small peaceful alleys with nice shops and beautiful buildings and we spent some hours wondering around. We stopped for lunch in a nice little Sicilian restaurant situated in a quaint courtyard. We then headed up to St John’s Demi-Bastion which offers the best panorama we have seen since arriving in Malta. We then strolled down through the market to the Rundle gardens to sit under the shade of a tree and relax until heading back to the bus.
Unfortunately the departure for the bus trip back to the ferry terminal was worse than the one here. There was a queue that had formed for the bus and at the front of the queue was a lady in a wheelchair with her husband. When the bus arrived the driver beckoned these people to enter the bus. As the lady took a small amount of time to get out of her wheelchair, people in the queue could just not wait and started pushing past this couple to get on the bus, actually hindering the husband trying to help his wife out of the chair. Even the bus driver looked shocked and of course again there was plenty of room for everyone to have a seat. We have no idea what makes people behave this way and again they all seemed to be British and I must say I was embarrassed as I embarked the bus to be British too. I regret strongly not having said anything to these people at the time but would they have felt any guilt or shame, we very much doubt it.
Maybe next time we visit Gozo we will go by car and not have to encounter this ugly scene which tainted our trip to beautiful Gozo.