Swimming Casually Across the Shipping Lane

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Louis and Lily again pick us up and we head off to catch the ferry to Gozo. We went there when we came to Malta two years ago, and I'm feeling a lot more relaxed about going again now that I know that Issy's family was stretching the truth a bit when they told me that all Gozitans have two heads and rarely leave their cave like homes. We thought Gozo was fantastic last time, and are now starting to wonder whether the Maltese are perhaps a bit jealous of their Gozitan cousins.

We head towards the capital, Victoria, and its spectacular citadel. There was a lot of construction going on here when we visited last time, but this is now finished and the site's looking better than ever. We visit the Citadel’s Cathedral and its museum, and then walk around the ramparts and admire the excellent views across the surrounding countryside.

We were very saddened to hear that Gozo's famous Azure Window rock arch collapsed during a storm about eighteen months ago, and we suspect that most of Malta's probably still in mourning over the loss of this iconic natural wonder. Louis tells us that fortunately there are still many similar, albeit less spectacular, but at least still standing rock arches around Gozo's coastline, and we head towards one near the village of Gharb. I think that the Maltese government was probably a bit relieved that no one was standing on or under the Azure Window when it gave way, but it seems they're not taking any chances with any of the others. There's a pathway down towards this one, but a firmly locked gate's preventing us from getting anywhere near it. As we look down we can see that the lower part of the path, which it seems was once a steel walkway attached to the cliff, is now a pile of rusty metal and rubble down by the waterline being pummelled by the waves.

We head into Gharb for lunch. It's a bit hard not to notice a traditional red English phone booth in the main village square. I'm not sure that they even have any of these in London any more, and it's been quite a few years since I remember seeing one of any sort in Melbourne. I'm not entirely sure that any of our offspring would know what one was. I hope that the residents of Gharb realise how privileged they are to have one here. We'd heard that progress is sometimes a bit slow in Gozo, so we hope it's not here because phone lines haven't managed to make their way into any of the houses quite yet.

Next stop is the Ta Pinu Basilica. In 1883 a young local girl heard the voice of the Virgin Mary here, and several local miracles here have subsequently been attributed to the Virgin. We visited it when we came to Gozo previously, but some impressive mosaic murals have subsequently been added to walls in the forecourt.

We drive onto the popular and very picturesque seaside resort village of Xlendi which is built around a small bay surrounded by cliffs. I walk up some steps up the cliff face on one side of the bay to take some happy snaps. When I come back I see Issy and Lily swimming off into the distance so I decide to swim after them. I see a boat coming straight at me. It seems that I'm swimming across the main shipping channel. I wonder how I’ll go trying to get back to shore after a propeller's sawn off both my legs and half an arm. I wave vigorously at the boat and at the last minute it swerves to miss me. Disaster averted, but only just.

Back at the car park I notice a sign saying that until the early 1960s Xlendi was a small fishing village. In winter it was virtually completely deserted; the only residents were a policeman and the owner of a wine shop. I wonder how this arrangement came about. I can think of two possibilities. The first is that wine shop guy was a dangerous career criminal who required constant one on one surveillance by a dedicated member of the constabulary. The second and more likely explanation involves long lunches and the hope that police work here in the early 1960s didn’t require a lot of good hand eye coordination.

We get excellent views across to both Comino and Malta as we watch the sunset from Hondoq Bay near the ferry terminal.

Back in Malta we head to the Balzan club, where we've arranged to meet up with Louis' brother and Issy's cousin Gabriel, and his wife Maria. Issy hasn't seen Gabriel since she left Malta as a three and a half year old back in 1964. Gabriel was only five at the time, but he says he clearly remembers everyone crying on the dock as Issy's family left to start a new life in Australia. Gabriel was a decorated army officer and has been retired for five years now. He served some time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and shows us a large scar on his hand which resulted from a land mine explosion.

Louis tells us that the Balzan club has been having trouble recently getting enough staff to cook and serve meals. We order three pizzas to share. After an hour and a half the waiter comes back to tell us that they've only made enough dough for seventy pizzas today, and our order has taken the total ordered to seventy one. This is yet another excellent example of Murphy’s Law in action. The waiter offers us a hamburger and chips instead of the third pizza, and wants to know which one of the three we don't want. The other bad news about this conversation is that we're pretty sure it means they haven't started to cook any of our food yet.

Louis hasn't had a lot of luck with ordering food today. He ordered lampuki pie for lunch. Lampuki's a local fish that migrates past the Maltese islands, generally during autumn, and is regarded as a local delicacy. Louis looked like he was drooling when he saw it on the menu at lunchtime. It seems however that the waitress wrote down the wrong order, and after about an hour's wait she came out instead with pumpkin pie. She then told Louis that it would take another hour to make what he'd actually ordered, so he had to settle for a bowl of spaghetti. The recipe for lampuki pie must be very complicated..... well I hope that's the reason and it's not that Malta's restaurateurs have taken a sudden dislike to Louis.

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