Saturday 8 September - Excursion to Gozo

Steps:          13,351

The internet here at the hotel is fairly slow, hence me not posting a lot, so far.

While I think of it, I walked 3,756 steps on Thursday, because I was on a plane for a lot of that day.
Wednesday, the day I left, was 9,766 and I guess that's because I didn't leave until the afternoon/evening.
Friday was 14,143 and today, 13,351 steps. No wonder my calf muscles are complaining.

I was up early today and it was another lovely sun rise.

The weather was cooler when I poked my head outside first up this morning and almost no humidity but that changed and once again it was warm and humid.

I was picked up again today at the Victoria Gate. Pick up was due at 8am and John, the driver from yesterday arrived at 08:05.  We then went to a couple of other hotels to pick up others. Once all were on board, we headed for Cirkewwa, which is where the ferry to Gozo departs from. The journey took about 45 minutes. Roads works going on in some places but the trip to the port was enjoyable.  It was nice to see more of the countryside.

View of Gozo from Malta

Because today is a festival day and a public holiday, there were many more people than usual, taking the ferry over to Gozo.  We finally boarded the 10:40am ferry, which got us to Mgarr around 11am.

Approaching the ferry terminal in Mgarr

According to our local guide Silvia, Gozo is 14 Kilometres long and 7.25kl wide and 80% (I think) of the country is taken up with  agriculture, farming and animal husbandry, not that we saw any animals on our travels today. 

First up we visited the Ggantija Temples.

  You can read more about them here:  http://heritagemalta.org/museums-sites/ggantija-temples/

Because it is a feast day today, some of the towns had flags flying and the streets were decorated with banners and holy images.  

Unfortunately we never had the opportunity to walk any of those streets. 

From there we then visited a local craft, produce centre Fontana, before heading to lunch.  Lunch was either soup or pasta, chicken salad or omelette and fresh fruit or ice cream.

After lunch we visited the inland sea dwejra and I opted to take the boat ride through the tunnel.

The colour of the water was a deep blue, but bright too.

There were lots of divers around, as apparently it's a very popular dive place. 

From there we visited the Citadel in Ir-Rabat (Victoria) which is the capital of Gozo.  I opted for an ice cream there.  In Pjuazza Indipendenza (Independence Square), there is a small memorial to the fallen.

Judith S, I was wondering if some were past relations of Ross's??

After that visit it was back to the ferry terminal to head back to Malta. We were on the 5:15pm ferry.  Back on the mini-bus shortly before 6pm, heading back to Valletta.

One couple asked to be dropped off in the Valletta port area and as we were soon to go past the street that the Victoria Gate was on, I asked to be dropped off there and it was then just a short walk up the road and the stairs to my hotel.  It saved the driver from doing a big loop.

Later I bought a drink from the bar and came upstairs to watch tonights fireworks.

There were people sitting on the steps near the bridge bar, watching the display.

More of the fireworks.

Hopefully, now that I have free time and no excursions for the next couple of days, I'll try and be a bit more diligent about updating this daily.  All depends on internet access of course.