Malta-Day 3

Woke up on day 3 to overcast skies and slightly chilly temps. Figures it would happen as this was the day we were going to Gozo, and would be out on the Med in the ferry. Oh well, can't have everything. To get to Gozo, you take a almost 1 hour bus ride to the harbor in Cirkewwa and the ferry drops you off on the island at the harbor in Mgarr.

Along the way, you go past Comino Island, which is where the spot known as the Blue Lagoon is. We didn't visit Comino on this trip, but I got a couple of pictures of it from the ferry.

The ferry ride takes about 25 minutes and drops you off in the harbor where you catch a bus into whatever part of the island you want to visit. For us it was the main town of Victoria. The bus ride is very scenic as well.

Got off at the terminal and began the short walk to the Citadel, which was built about 400 years ago as a refuge against the Turks.

The Citadel is huge and very picturesque. The views from the top are amazing. I took tons of pictures, so I'll only post a few here.

We decided to visit the old prison as well, which has a lot of graffiti supposedly done by former inmates. Simon isn't convinced that it isn't all fairly recent and a PR stunt. I'm more optimistic.

There were a couple of churches we didn't go inside but, once again, we'll see them whenever we go back. We stopped at a shop for some pasties filled with spinach, potato and local cheese then went back to the terminal and caught a bus to the Ggantija Temples. The buses usually run every 45 minutes to the temples, though the ride itself is only about 10 minutes. We caught a later bus which wouldn't return to take us back to Victoria for an hour. Once we'd had a look around, we couldn't understand why they even wait 45 minutes because you can see the whole area twice in under 20. The guides and maps suggest that there is more to see than there really is. I suppose people like to dawdle there, since it is very pretty and the views are very good.

After walking around it a couple times, we went out to the parking lot and sat around until the bus came to take us back. Then we got straight on another to go back to the ferry and, eventually, the hotel. While it was really cool, we weren't as impressed with Gozo as we were with Mdina and Valletta. Maybe it's just cause Victoria itself is a typical busy area crowded with shops and such. Most of the shops we saw there (and in other areas as well, to be fair) were no different than the ones back home, so no sense in checking them out. When we got back to the hotel, we called room service for some starters and just chilled out the rest of the night. I was really exhausted, as there's a lot of walking involved. So we goofed off on the laptop and I uploaded pix to Facebook...God I love my Blackberry!

**NOTE-I've just noticed when looking at the finished post that Blogger is cutting my pix off slightly on the right side...so I apologize if you can't read some of the signs entirely or if the pix look off. The full ones are on my FB**