Getting Reacquainted with Gozo!

 Day 19, 20 and 21 of 59

Wednesday July 18, 2018 - Friday July 20, 2018

Well here we are again in our favourite place! I expect there won't be that many posts this month (yes! we're staying for a whole month!) because it's more like living and less like travelling 😀

Here are a few thoughts and photos from our first few days in Gozo.

When we were coming in to Marsalforn from the ferry, Steve and I saw what looked to be a path up the hill to Xaghra. This piqued our interest since our current plan when we live here, is to live in Xaghra. So one afternoon Steve set out to see if that's where the path actually went. I didn't go with him (he has way more energy... and it's HOT out there!).

Turns out the path did connect the two villages... I guess it was more like a road. He did see a couple of cars driving it!

That hill in the background is a distinct landform with a statue of Christ on the top. When I see it, I know I am getting close to Marsalforn. Rather than tell you about it I'm going to take a little shortcut here...

Now you know all about the iconic hill :) Here is a closer view of it.

One more gratuitous shot of the Handsome Man and the beautiful flowers he saw on his walk.

Things are moving very slowly these days. I took this not-so-subtle photo to illustrate it for you 😀

There is a nice little walkway by the "Marsalforn Parking Area" that has some pretty trees and flowers. They have little signs on the trees to say what type they are. My favourites are oleanders.

One evening we had a nice dinner in a restaurant down by the Marsalforn harbour. There are two things that stick in my head from this evening.

1) The food we ordered said it came with "salad and chips". This is how it looked when it arrived...

We thought perhaps that half cherry tomato and piece of lettuce was the salad! To their credit they did bring a bowl of cooked vegetables afterwards... but it gave us a laugh to see the proportion of the original "salad" to meat ratio.

2) The second thing that gave me a real chuckle was at the end. After we had paid for our meal and left a tip...

Side note: tipping does not seem to be that big a thing here. Even if we leave a small tip people are inordinately happy about it 😀

So... after we paid... this young man who worked at the restaurant came over to the table and asked us a question. Now to me it sounded like "Would you like me to come to your house?"

There was stunned silence at our table for a few seconds, when Steve said, "Pardon me?" and then we heard him correctly. What he had actually said was, "Would you like a drink on the house?"

PHEW! Crisis averted! That kept us in giggles for a while!

Our plan for most days is to head to the Kempinski Hotel. It is a lovely (fancy) hotel where we got a one month membership. This allows you to use their gym and pools. They have two lovely indoor pools and one of my favourite outdoor pools. When we go, Steve heads to the gym... maybe I will go to the gym too one day ... and then we hang out by the pool in the sun for a while. I can't think of a better way to spend lazy summer days!

We are reliant on the public buses here, which are good, but take a bit of getting used to. The first time we tried to go to the Kempinski we missed our stop. It's hard to count them because sometimes you fly by a stop and don't even see it. They have a sign in the bus that says which stop is next but it isn't always accurate. Your best bet is to tell the driver where you are trying to go so he can help you out. Both times we have taken the bus to the Kempinski it hasn't shown our stop as coming up on the sign in the bus. The first time we rode the bus all the way to the end and came back... thankfully the second time we were able to spot landmarks to help us out and managed to get off a the correct stop!

One final note is about a lovely evening we had at L-Iskoll restaurant in Sannat. Our wonderful friend Suzy is our social coordinator! She and Mike arranged for us to attend an amazing BBQ dinner with live music at this beautiful restaurant. They even kindly picked us up and dropped us off!

When we arrived they had the buffet set up, and the BBQ's were fired up getting ready to cook "the meat".

We had a lovely evening with Suzy, Mike, Julie, Richard and some new friends eating, drinking and listening to an amazing live band!

Here's the eating... there was a "meat" portion of the meal. This was served as well as the buffet of salads and pastas (which included a delicious aubergine lasagna), and a tasty dessert called Almond Charlotte.

The steak was delicious. This was a bit of a surprise to me as we are steak snobs. We've eaten steaks all over the world and they don't ever compare to North American steak... but this was REALLY good steak! I guess I know where to go now, if I'm hankering for a big slab of meat!

We were hard core drinkers tonight <insert sarcasm here> we got through three large bottles between the two of us! (Spoiler alert! It was water!)

I seem to have lost my photos of this evening, so I'm including one short video to give you a feel for the night. Steve managed to show a good overall view of the venue (which was stunning!), the terrific band (I think we're going to become groupies!) and the general feel of the evening. To top it all off there were even fireworks as this weekend was Sannat's Festa!

Side note about fireworks: On Gozo there are two kind of fireworks. The kind with "noise" and the kind where you actually see the fireworks. When they start you just hear the "noise" ones. To me it sounds a bit like a "war zone". To say it's startling is an understatement. Anyway... they did buildup to the pretty fireworks.