The Little Migration

Why little? Because we only had to go the length of the island of Malta (not much), ferry to Gozo (again, not much. I didn’t even dread the boat)

Pretty substantial ferry for a 20 minute crossing. But as we saw on the Blue Lagoon trip, it can get pretty wicked out there! And for those that equate ferry with the Washington State Ferries – that nose opening is where the cars go in and out. This was the ferry coming in to dock as we were leaving…as opposed to me levitating off of our ferry.

And drive to the village of Fontana (really, really not much). We are now settled into our new digs and are really enjoying it. Why?

Once inside the gate this is the front entrance. Up the stairs are the bedrooms. I’m sure this will suck when it rains, but for now it’s pretty cool.

Terrace off of our bedroom. And we have window screens!!!!

And this is our backyard and view. Not too shabby at all.

This is the Husband’s favorite bit though

The house was a mill a couple of hundred years ago. Actually I think it was a mill until maybe fifty years ago or so. How do we know this? Perhaps this is best illustrated with photos –

In the middle of the living room there is the….geez I don’t know what it’s called…the part the donkey was hooked to, walked in a circle driving the grindstone. Husband says it’s a drive shaft – thank you Google

Gear is still there. Although from the looks of it, that’s a modern bit (last hundred years maybe?).

So, yeah, we live in an old mill. It’s way too much space for the two of us but it’s what we rented back when we were expecting guests. So we are enjoying it. It’s light and airy, plus the grocery store is just a short walk up the street.

We did rent a car for the time we are on Gozo. We do not want to use mass transit and there is a lot to explore here. A lot is off the main roads too. Unfortunately, for those of us raised in an area where roads are wide and orderly, driving here is an…experience. Not in the same way that driving on Malta is though. They’re just crazy over there and there is a lot of people on the roads. Here, well, the villages and towns existed long before cars. So the roads were squeezed in and there the adventure begins. I even had a Maltese person (he knows who he is!) tell me he hated driving in Victoria/Rabat (the capitol of Gozo) and I now know why. I needed a sedative!

This is our street (the red Fiesta is our rental). It is a two way street. It gets narrower down at the far end. It’s still two way down there. I’ll have to get photos of the road down the hill…

Saturday evening (the day we arrived) we made dinner reservations (that I need to remember are called bookings. Another remnant of British influence) at a lovely restaurant at Xlendi Bay, which is just down the hill from us. Xlendi Bay is one of the tourist hotspots on Gozo. Just minus most of the tourists. It’s a cute little village on a beautiful bay (duh).

Those crazy stairs go up to the top of the rocks for a stunning view. Our restaurant was the one with the tables along the water. We were out at the end, just as we hoped. Drink too much wine and you would definitely be going for a swim!

From the path up above. The railing was…less than secure. But what a view!

We didn’t walk around too much before dinner. Just enough to get a few good photos (of course).

There were apartments at the top off these stairs. Can you imagine carrying the groceries up there? Good thing there’s no Costco!

On Sunday we made our way to Victoria/Rabat (one is the British name and is perhaps a bit more commonly used, one is the Gozitan’s name for the city). We will do more of an explore there soon. First stop was to stock up at one of the bigger grocery stores, and where we saw this:

Did anyone want an entire swordfish for dinner?

After dropping off the groceries back at the house we headed over to Ramla Bay, which is on the other side of the island. Took us about 20 minutes to do that drive – mainly because the fastest speed is about 50 kph (31 mph). And most roads are too terrifying to go that fast. Wished we had gotten photos of the road down to the bay…oh well, we try. There were quite a few people at the beach itself but that wasn’t our focus anyway. We walked along the path that took us up into the hills for this view!

Beautiful Ramla Bay. It’s hard to tell with the shade, but the beach is red sand.

Looking the other direction. The cliffs are impressive.

Ramla Bay is a gorgeous location. There’s a cave way high up in the hillside (if you can expand the first photo you should be able to see it) that we are talking about hiking up to. On the subject of caves…there is another cave, rooted in mythology, in this area.

Up on this hill somewhere is a rather famous cave

In Homer’s Odyssey, Calypso kept Odysseus in her cave as a prisoner of love (😶) for seven years. This is purportedly the cave, which is super cool. I love when history, mythology and real places come together! It would be even super cooler if you could actually see the cave. Unfortunately, it has been closed for the last year or two due to seismic instability. Okay, I’d rather not be buried alive in said cave, but it would have been nice to see something!

As we were driving back to the house we stopped along the road to take this photo. The town of Nadur is what you see on the right. The rest is agriculture fields. So pretty.

After our hike we were ready for a good dinner, so a return to the house to make ourselves presentable was in order. The nights are getting a bit chilly so I am happily getting good use out of my beautiful wrap the Husband bought me in Galway! The restaurant that we had a booking at was in a neighboring village of Sannat. Again, not too far away. We drove over there early so we could walk around for a bit before dinner. Very glad we did that. The village church, which is massive just like all the other Maltese churches was preparing for All Soul’s Day. They had teams of people out setting up candles outside on the porch and stairs. It was a beautiful sight!

Candles beautifully displayed on the church stairs

It was a nice introductory weekend to Gozo. My list is long though of places still to see! And we’re only here three weeks. We will definitely need to get out in the mornings to get it all done. Time to get organized. It’s hard to believe we will head home in a month…

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