The Last Bits from Gozo

Here's the final post from Gozo for this year. Thought I'd wrap up with a few bits and pieces of other things that happened.

We loved our little apartment in St. George's Square. It had a beautiful terrace, and the location was perfect. We both loved hearing the church bells ring, and I found it quite fascinating that we were close enough to actually catch a glimpse of the person ringing the big bell!

You can just see his red, blue and white striped shirt through the railing on this photo!

Steve has a theory that the church is somehow related to Optimus Prime based on this emblem on the front. Only Transformer's fans will understand this apparently. I just smiled and nodded whenever he talked about it 🤷

One afternoon we were able to watch the preparations and celebrations for a wedding that took place in the Cathedral. These people definitely went all out for this wedding! Fancy clothes and cars, a Scottish band, a red carpet, church bells and even confetti guns were used for the celebration.

We loved watching the life in St. George's Square which often started at 4:45 in the morning with the old men waiting to go to first mass until well after midnight with people enjoying drinks, ice cream and dinner in the square.

We also discovered a new little village that we loved, called Xaghra (pronounced zjara). This is where our friends have decided to make their home, and we were very close to buying our own place for retirement here. In the end we decided to wait... but this is definitely where we are going to end up.

We had a few nice meals in Xaghra including a lunch with these tasty treats!

The village is built around a town square with the church, restaurants and shops.

I was quite fascinated by the gas station!  Just like any other store on the street with gas pumps on the sidewalk!

The night we ALMOST bought a place in Xaghra the town had some sort of festival celebrating the history of the village.

Although this was convincing... we still have to wait to retire 😀

Just a few of my favourite random pics from Gozo.

This little place had two things I love in one!

This is the green grocer truck. He drives from village to village and sells food to the locals. (The truck in the background, not the front!)

We also loved spending the day at the Kempinski. Suzy and Michael took us at the beginning of our time in Gozo, and Steve and I went one more time on our last day. We enjoyed a massage and a wonderful day by the pool.

The final event I wanted to document so I don't forget is the night we watched the sunset in Dwerja. This is the site where the Azure window used to be. We were lucky to have seen it last year, because the stone arch finally collapsed in March. Now it looks like this!

Yep... it's gone.

Suzy and Michael tried to take us earlier in the week, but there was some sort of festival in San Lawrenz (I think) and the roads were closed so we couldn't make it down. That's the thing about Gozo, you just never know when a festival will pop up and block your road 😀

Nevertheless, we did make it down one night. We took some snacks and drinks and settled in to watch the sunset. Steve took many MANY beautiful photos that night. I'm going to include a few. Just trust that this is a small percentage of the actual photos taken when you are wondering if they will ever end! Even without the Azure Window it is still a beautiful site. Our plan for next year is to go down for some evening swims at sunset.

 

Beautiful right? I almost felt like there was some sort of symbolic ending to this by watching the sun slowly set at the end of my Gozo post... but of course I blew it by adding just one more photo.

It's true. We'll be back next summer 😎