A beach is quite a rarity in Malta as the coastline is mainly made up of chunky rocks that are definitely not as comfortable as lying on the sand. However there are a few beaches in Malta and we got a bus to a lovely beach today called ‘Golden Bay’.

The beach has just one hotel as a companion that is just tittering on the edge of the sand. Surprisingly a town has not been built around the beach and it is devoid of anything else except the odd beach hut cafe.

Picture a beautiful clear day, bright blue skies, clear crisp waters and wonderful sand! We hired a sun lounger and relaxed under an umbrella whilst eating fresh fruit and sipping drinks, bliss.

The beach was quite peaceful today but no doubt this will soon change as we get further into the summer months as this is a prime spot for locals and tourists alike.

We cannot wait to return, we might be tempted to hire a car next time though as the combination of the roads to the beach and the old clapped out bus meant we were certainly ready to have a lie down once we reached the beach. Anyway don’t get me started on these crazy buses again!!

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We have been living in Malta a few weeks now, well nine weeks but who’s counting? With each week we seem to come across a creature/bug that we have not seen here before.

As the title suggests the most beautiful, none bug we have seen is a white dove. We were just having a stroll in St Pauls Bay and stopped for a rest on a bench looking out to sea when a dove came and sat on the railing in front of us and cocked it’s head to one side just checking us out. It was that close we could have touched it but seemed curious of our presence there. Now maybe this was the doves spot for three o’clock in an afternoon and wondered what on earth we were doing in his or her spot. We eventually felt that we were intruding and continued with our walk leaving the dove to it’s view.

We also came across a humongous Dragonfly, just sat on the pavement. I actually nearly squished it, what it was doing there we cannot say. It had no intention of moving so waited until we walked around it and then proceeded to follow us, maybe it knew we were on the way to get ice cream!

We tend to see little lizards everywhere. They are usually running about darting into cracks and crevasses as we are walking around, mainly in the late afternoon or evening. Luckily they are more scared of us than the other way round.

Today we have seen what we think was a huge locust sat on someones doorstep. We had to do a double take as it did not seem real. It was huge and just did not move even though we got really close. I am hoping we won’t see too many of these about.

No doubt there will be a lot more bugs crawling and flying about soon as the weather gets even hotter, not something that we are particularly looking forward to.

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We visited Mdina today, drawn by the fact that this is also named the Silent City. If you have read our previous posts you will know this is something we have been searching for in Malta, a bit of peace and quiet.

We were hoping to visit late afternoon into the evening as the guide books state this is the best time to visit, once the tourists have gone home. Unfortunately as we were traveling under the winter bus schedule times we could not stay for the evening as the last bus was at 5.30pm to get back home. However, yes there were a few tourists but quite often we found ourselves on our own wandering along some beautiful alley. This was surprising really as the walled city of Mdina is such a small place but so peaceful. We found a lovely cafe at the edge of the wall with amazing views and great home made cakes-perfect!

Just outside the walled city was an oasis of a lovely tranquil garden with huge trees offering plenty of shade whilst you rest on a bench feeling all relaxed-bliss.

We will definitely be back to Mdina and hopefully next time we will also explore the town outside Mdina called Rabat.

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We were puzzled as we started to explore Malta by the vast amount of old buildings in a state of disrepair. We don’t just mean the odd one, but lots in every town we visited. This is something we just could not understand as you could see that most of these buildings used to be beautiful, full of history and character.

We soon discovered from the Maltese that the cost is too great to restore these old buildings and homes. They explained that they wait until the property is in that bad a state that they are allowed to knock it down. This process apparently is very cheap. They then build an apartment block that houses six or eight homes in the same space that one house stood. They then sell each apartment and make good money. This is why everywhere in Malta there is building work and why many locals comment on Malta as being a continuous building site.

We cannot see this effect in the walled city of Valletta, is this because it is the capital city or because it is where the tourists flood for the history. If it is the latter then surely they can see that it pays to keep these historic beautiful buildings well maintained in all towns and not just in Valletta.

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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.

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What is it with Malta and Noise? We are having a moan today as the noise is driving us crazy!

First of all the apartment block we live in is relatively new and the ground floor is for commercial space. Well someone has brought one of the units and they have jack hammers and goodness knows what else going from early in the morning to very late at night, everyday even Sunday! Even though we are on the third floor it feels and sounds like they are in the same room with us. Okay this is understandable and the building work won’t last for ever, we hope!

We therefore decided to try to escape today and find a nice quiet sanctuary somewhere, no such luck. Whenever we thought we had found somewhere we would hear either building work or cars. Now this may not be too surprising as everywhere you look in Malta there is building work. Malta does also have the most vehicles per person in the world, yet it is such a small island. We therefore guess noise is going to be part of or lives for now, we will just have to dream of (when we can sleep) a nice oasis of a quiet park.

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