This is a diary of our trip to Malta in January of 2004.
note, items in brackets {xxx} are commentary after returning home.

Departed Ottawa at eleven last night.  Wonderful meal at Jim and Catherine's, our dog sitters.  Jim will be looking after Dudley during our trip, and Jean will be looking after the house.  Hope Dudley will be all right .  We told them if he was to take a turn for the worse (not an unlikely possibility...after all, he is pretty frail, though not bad for seventeen years old) that they are not to tell us....it would ruin our vacation.  {In retrospect, this was not a good idea because I never trusted their email assurances that he was all right.  Truth is always preferable}
      This vacation is coming at a good time...my worries were starting to consume me.  Happens every year this time.  All week we have been receiving calls as a result of that article in the Winchester Press and won't be here to take advantage of the publicity.  Another opportunity lost. Oh well, there will be others  {I put a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen onto Jean who wanted to do an article on the course.  Natch, I won't be here to talk to her. Ended up being a really nice article, Jean saved it for me and it was on the table when I got home.  Nice article, but the only mention I got in the article is "Bill is the co-instructor and is not here today!  Sheesh!}  So many worries.

{The flight was nice.  Hard to sleep because of excitement but I eventually found a row in back with nobody in it...three seats side by side!  Slept a couple of hours.}

Heathrow Airport.  Big place this!  Took us three quarters of an hour to find gate 19.  We are here for eight hours.  Not enough to go anywhere, and too tired to go if I wanted to!  Slept a bit, shopped a bit.  Brenda is off to Harrods to pick up a couple of Christmas puddings.

(Brenda-->)  Just woke up from a power nap when the fire alarm went off.  No one seemed sure of what to do, so we waited at a gate that was also a fire exit.  All the excitement was over in about 1/2 hour.  We went for extra large cappucinos and watched the planes while the sun went down.  Its so overcast here that it didn't make much difference.
     What a variety of people here...Muslims in robes going on the hajj, Orthodox Jews, Indians, Jamaicans, and everything in between.  We finally got our boarding passes at 4:30.

(Bill-->) Landed in Malta.  Our fears about taxi ripoffs were allayed because now you don't pay the taxi driver.  You pay the dispatcher.
         Slept well, had a nice walk around the battlements, and a lunch of rabbit in Valletta.  Brenda had a salad with that unpasturised sheep cheese on it.  Strong!  Will clear your sinuses. Can't say I was particularly taken with the rabbit...the sauce was strong, smothered the flavour of the meat, and of course, rabbit is boney.  Interesting flavoured sauce...lots of cinnamon and cloves in a dark brown base. Think it will take some getting used to. The alternative is of course, English cooking.

(This is primarily going to be a business trip for me....as a professional body armour maker, I need to study original armours to enable me to fabricate them correctly in my business.  I am quite prepared to spend the whole two weeks of my visit in the museum, however I don't want to be a pest. As it turned out, I spent two days in the "back room" on armour, another two days photographing the collection, and the rest of the time on vacation as a tourist!  Imagine!  Me!  On holiday! This is unusual enough to justify making this diary of my trip!)

     (click on images to enlarge)

Today, I visited the Imperial Armour Museum, and had an interview with the curator, Mr. Stroud.  He is in a terrible fix!  He has no armourers, and he is forced to do what he can by himself.  I volunteered to help him out for a couple of days.  Surely he needs armour cleaned and repaired, but perhaps even more so, he needs to have somebody set up a proper armouring shop....{as opposed to a museum restoration shop....though of course he needs both since his restoration shop will be coming down in a couple of months!}  There must be equipment left over from the old days!  My mind is bubbling with the possiblilities, and I can't sleep.    I made a list of the the deficiencies I saw in his shop...which I really MUST figure out how to remedy.

Things required...Anvils, stakes of all kinds, High speed buffer to dress the tools, as well as tripoli and rouge..  Surface plates, wooden anvils. Body hammers, body dolllies.  Leather working supplies, Foundry for brass buckles, rivets.  Rivet making tools.  Lacquer, lacquer thinner.  Reverse electroylysis bath, cold galvanizing equipment, dremel tools. A library of patterns, catalogues and techniques.

Mr. Michael Stroud is the curator (or as he points out, one of a team!) of Heritage Malta. Thats him on the left in the above pic. He can be reached via email michaelstroud@onvol.net, or info@heritagemalta.org.  A very nice web site exists at www.heritagemalta.org.  You can write to him at Auberge de Provence, Republic Street, Valletta, VLT 04, Malta.

Evening, second day....Saw more armoury, and took dozens of pictures.  Also saw St. John's Co-Cathedral.  Never saw anything like it!  The walls were all covered in raised plaster (stucco?) devices like Maltese crosses, fleur de lyses,  and diamonds and such.

Below are some snapshots of the armour on display in the Imperial Armoury.  Please note that these are just a tiny sampling of this fine collection.....if you have specific inquiries about any of the armours, email me at stag@cyberus.ca.  I'll burn you a CD of all the pics if you make a donation  to the Imperial Museum.  These on line pics of course are all copyrighted, please don't use them without checking with me first. (please click on the images to enlarge.)

        There is a museum as well in Saint John's Co-Cathedral.  Saw illuminated books of plain song, and dozens of tapestries, designed mostly by Reubens. Absolutely stunning. 
         Back to the hotel, decided to take the hotel up on the cocktail party in the lobby.  I had some good clothes....my best black jeans....and met one of the great movers and shakers of the world, a Swedish conglomerate owner who is trying unsuccessfully to retire, and an American journalist with a lovely Japanese wife, both of whom thought the "Last Samurai" was just stupid.  I had to agree!  (click on images below to enlarge)

Morning, third day in Malta.  A lovely Friday!  We change rooms today.  Had another lousy sleep, still trying to adjust to the time change.  It is like trying to go to sleep at eight o'clock in the evening!  You just lie awake and listen to the church bells count out the hours.
       I am a little worried about Dudley.  Catherine tells me he has been howling a lot.  I guess I am more worried about Catherine...her nerves MUST be getting jangled.
       This is such a nice hotel!  Our rooms in Rome would have taken  about the same amount of space as the bathroom.  {Well, this IS the Meridian Phoenecia. Built between the wars in the grand old European hotel style, used during the war as barracks for the officers.  Beautiful gardens, cute gargoyles}

        Lots of cats in Malta.  Kay would love it!  The also seem to have lots of rats to chase...but that is to be expected. I observed a little hunter-prey scenario at the city gates of Valetta.  There isn't a lot of trash to attract rats...everything is so clean and tidy!  I saw one rat going up side of the great seige ditch, and a very attentive group of cats readying themselves for battle.  Wish I knew how it turned out.....they went into the shadows, and none of them wanted company like me!
      Fort St. Angelo.  I am standing outside the "Provence" gate, the main gate to the fort. {Actually, it is the main gate to the outworks of the fort...the fort itself we found only after walking all over "Birgu" literally, suburb of the fort.  There is actually a little moat around the fort proper, where they moored the galleys during the Great Seige.  The original bridge across to the fort proper is too shaky to accept visitor traffic,  so you have to walk all the way back to the main gates, and go along the waterfront, and into the lower gate of Fort St. Angelo.I think that little bridge was just a sally port to allow people to get to the outer walls quickly.  I don't think I would like to try to cross it under fire...it would be dreadfully exposed!  Sunday afternoon, no traffic, very few tourists.
      There seems to be a common style here...15 to 20  (to 40!) feet of battered sandstone.  Then a 4 foot stringer course, and another 6 feet of parapet. The fields of fire are all carefully controlled.  This fort is cut out of the rock!!!   Written above the entrance....MDCCXXII.  The fort is very well presented, with {directional} arrows in place from time to time. Very good and clearly expensive modern wrought iron railings in most places, though there are a few drop offs.

    Met a nice family from New Brunswick, they are visiting their son, a chemist who married a nice Maltese lady.  They were just showing off the fort to his parents.  This is a huge fort!  Words fail me!  It has the sheer size of, say, Dover Castle in England, and the anti-cannon layout of Fort Henry in Kingston, here in Canada.  Imagine if you will, a dozen Fort Henry's spaced side to side and in depth!  There is a lot of renovations going on here.  Former officer's quarters being gutted and re-built. (click on images below to enlarge)  The pics below are nice and big...and make good wallpapers.  I consider them as public domain....and encourage you to use them on your PC. 

{Discussions with Mr. Farrugia later on indicated that this was a long overdue project by the Government, and government buildings will be going in there.  One thing you can count on in Malta, is that there will be growth in Government!  And perhaps logically so, considering that here is a nation with the population of say, Kingston Ontario that has to maintain a Navy, Army and Air Force, coast guard, search and rescue, police force, customs, and everything else a modern government needs!  I have friends who are house poor...poor because they own a big house and have to make payments on it. The Maltese people seem to be house poor as well, but they bought a republic!  Well, as in all such cases, it should be a tempory condition, and they are doing remarkably well considering their limited resources!}

Monday....Valletta on the express bus.  Walked the west wall, looked out over Silema.  So much fortification, so much needs to be repaired!  Found the war rooms under the Lascaris Bastion.  It is not easy to get to!  The war rooms are very evocataive--->with mannekins dressed  in period clothing, re-enacting significant events in the history of WWII. The attack on Tarento Harbour, which destroyed 3/4 of the Italian Navy, the "e-boat" attack on ships in the Grand Harbour, and operation Husky...the invasion of Europe.

(click on the above thumbnail to enlarge)
       Then a tour through the Casa Rocco Picolo...a house built by one of the knights 400 years ago, and still occupied.  Really interesting....with deep bomb shelters under the house.  They were needed too!  {Lots of nice antiques, like Maltese clocks which only had one hand, and had big square painted faces.  Also, a display of silver medical instruments that Napoleon somehow didn't find to melt down, and some other items I confess I had difficulty figuring out their uses!}
        Took a bus to the temples at Hagar Quim.  Never made it, missed our stop, went to the Blue Grotto instead.  Very pretty, but hardly worth the long downhill walk.

 Faced with the long uphill walk, I took a cabbie up on his offer to drive us to the bus station.  Poor guy, trying to make a living, and nobody visiting the place!  It was worth the trip because there was a fruit vendor working out of his truck there, and we saved more than our cab fare by the savings on fruit, which was half the price of our little super market next door to the hotel.  The guy was doing a bang up business, even though this was around four in the afternoon.  Most market stalls close up around noon.
         Brenda has still emerged unsuccessful in her search for a dishcloth.  Next time we bring our own!   I am sure these things are sold here, but just where?  Perhaps in the hardware stores. They call them iron mongers here.

This seems like a good place to talk about our hotel.  We bought a time share, and are staying at the Hotel Santana. This is a gold crown RCI resort.  I am thinking that this was the best investment I have ever made.  This is a great hotel, with a kitchenette, and a balcony on the top floor.  Two balconies...one off the bedroom and the other enclosed in the living room.  It is so nice to start the day with bacon and eggs....cooked properly.   There was that breakfast at the Kings Own Band Hall with the burnt toast, runny eggs and raw bacon in a smoky bar.  (shudder) A good breakfast helps you get through the rest of the day without collapsing, though we did develop raging appetites later on.  Fortunatly, there were always nice place to eat. It was a little surprising that there were some deficiencies in our little apartment...like no salt or pepper in the salt and pepper shakers, no tea towel,  scrubbies, dishcloths or washing up liquid.  I guess this is normal, though there were lots of cutlery, pots and pans and knives and such. I'll just have to make sure I bring these next time I go to a resort.  Our RCI rep had an office in the hotel, and was amazingly friendly and accessible...though busy as a beaver the whole time!  I felt that I had somebody on my side! {have decided that buying an RCI timeshare was the best thing I have ever done. Ask me again next year!}

Tuesday, Today, Brenda wants to go to Mdina.  The former capital of Malta.  I figured Mr. Stroud would still be ill...he had been ill for a couple of days....and I didn't want to push him.  He has enough on his plate without some bozo from Canada bugging him!
        Walked the walls of Mdina.  You can see the whole island from up there!

 I have seen paintings of the crusaders entering Jerusalem, and in front of them, there is always this bishop carrying a gold cross.  Brenda made it her mission to find this cross, and a very nice gentleman at the cathedral let us into the closed off transept where it was kept.  She was just thrilled. Seems she had just missed it in the procession last week!

        Across the road is the museum.  It is called the "Cathedral Museum", and it has, among other things, a large number of Albrecht Drurer prints.  48 of them!  Plus a whole bunch more stuff, like papal bulls, music books, wood carvings, inlay work. They even had three of the Knights' swords!  Rapiers...very pretty!  I have never seen a real papal bull before!  They are done on real parchment.  The music books are beautifully illuminated.

Typical floor in the great cathedrals in Malta.....this is a headstone made from multicoloured marbles.

And across to the museum.  And what a museum!  Any other city in the world would give up their hockey team to have such a museum.   Well, any city other than a Canadian City I suppose.....grin! 

    Cannons in MDina, apparently pulled out of the big bay to the south.  Click on the thumbnails to see the full glory of these bronze beauties!

       Like a lot of museum spaces in Malta, the Cathedral Museum shows signs of recent and good renovation.  Clean toilets are always a good thing in MY book! 
       Walked through St. Agatha's catacombs.  Scary!  Skeletons!  4th century frescos.  {didn't smell like death like the catacombs in Rome, and one American visitor said he could not possibly take the 2 hour tour, his back would not take the constant bending over from low ceilings!}

  A display of  one of the actual finds from the catacombs.  They don't want you taking pictures of the actual remains in situe...they are scary enough without flasbulbs going off!  And of course, a little respect of the gravesite is appropriate.  This display is in the little museum cum gatehouse where you wait your turn to go in. 

  A view north.  Our hotel is there...on the horizon, just behind the idiot walking on top of the wall.

Wednesday...Valetta?  Well, went to Mosta Dome.  Saw the replica of the bomb which fell through the dome and failed to go off.  Now there would have been an event which would have made every person in there into a devout Catholic.  A five hundred pound bomb!  This would have removed the dome.  The church is very well kept, clearly the church in general is revered here in Malta.  Lovely marble floors, and even marble slabs on the walls....not the trompe l'oil of so many churches.  Outside, there is a pretty little square surrounded by well kept shops, they seem to be all selling ladies underwear or fruit.....

        From Mosta to Valetta. Trouble with the phones.  {I never did get a phone to work for me during my stay in Malta! )  The phone boxes were just like the ones in London, right down to the urine smell and the wonky unserviceable phones. I tried to call Mr. Spineri, but the phone just would not work.  So, wandered back to the bus "scrum", admired the city coming awake.  The government women in their pin stripe skirt sets and stern looks, the German tourists window shopping, and the shop girls trying to be efficient in their high heels and mostly succeeding.  The little old men just kind of wandering aimlessly.  A city which I think actually works.  Most of Valetta is pedestrian only, and certainly all of republic street is, though if there is a place to drive a car, somebody is doing it!  One is reminded of driving a vehicle through a large crowd, like a fairground.  The people get out of the way, sort of ignoring the car, going around it like it was a stationary obstacle, which of course, it very nearly is!
           Took the number four bus to Kalkala.  {Bus does not quite go to the fort...the walk is simple and only about 5 or 10 minutes, but of course you don't know exactly where you are going, and you are always wondering if you have perhaps made a wrong turn.  Especially when you seem to be going past an industrial area, and a re-cycling yard.  The sidewalks became blocked with trash, and you had to walk out in the street...which admitedly was quite large, and well metalled...obviously a main road into the fort at the end of Grand Harbour.  Just when the fears became alarming, the sign for the fort was visible over the rise in the road, and we knew we were in the right place!  The walk went beside some fields, and the stones which were pushed to the side sometimes had some interesting shapes...they had obviously been shaped into pillar tops and so forth at some stage.  Perhaps an old Roman Villa now totally destroyed and the space being farmed.  Nice location, high up, overlooking the ocean...lots of romantic ideas!} {Once I got into the fort, and wandered around it a bit, I was impressed.  Somebody had spent a great deal of time fixing and maintaining this fort!  Very clean, very tidy!  Very military!  Had a nice Shandy and a bag of crisps while enjoying the day.  Later on, I met the fellow who had done all the fixing and maintaining...his name is Mario Farrugia, and he is the Executive Director of Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna....which in English would be the "Malta Heritage Trust". }
        Chatted with Mr. Farrugia, who let me hold his guns.  {these are the ones they use for re-enactments on Saturdays, and are the same ones they used in the movie Zulu!  My favorite movie!}  Mario is the Executive Director of the Malta Heritage Trust, (Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna), and he can be reached by writing to him at "Fort Rinella, St. Rocco Road, Kalkara CSP 11, Malta.  Email fwa@waldonet.net.mt.  A visit to his web site will be worth your time....www.wirtartna.org. He has a howitzer right now which he fires off every Saturday!

He also showed me around his fort....where the new exhibits are going...men's barracks room, the officer's barracks room, the "hygene" room, and "food" or "dining" room. {What we would call a canteen in the Canadian Military}He also has an exhibit planned with a pastiche of photographs called "A Little Corner of the Empire".  He set up an interview with Mr. Spineri for the next morning, and told me that if I were to set up a workshop, he would supply the the space and the people "by the coachload"!  What a bombshell!   {This is do-able...I have done this before and know how to do it.}  Of course, I would have to see what they have, what I can supply, and what is the vision of the hosts.  {I have been thinking hard about this ever since!}

Thursday....missed Mr. Spineri by only a couple of minutes.  Most annoying and very embarassing,  the busses were just so nutty that morning!  So, I went for brunch across the street from the armoury, and was pleasantly surprised when Mr. Stroud dropped in to tell me he would see me in the afternoon!  The fine gentlemen who guided the tour groups around had taken it upon themselves to tell Mr. Stroud that I was here, and quite handy.  Wonderful!  I had assumed that he was still recovering from his illness, and did not want to trouble him, but clearly it takes more than a little flue bug to put this fellow out of business!
       Brenda had left her laundry in the hands of a local expert and came to have lunch with me.  She found me in the armoury, of course!  {ahh, the story of how she got her laundry done...this is a saga in itself!  First she had to haul the bag all the way up the street, find the laundry place, discover that there were only two washers, and a long line, and a frazzled Malti woman who ran the place who was running everybody's washing through for them.  Wisely, Brenda decided that she did not come six thousand miles to do laundry, so she left it in the woman's capable hands, and came to have lunch with me.  We got the laundry back wet, and it had to be dried in the hotel room on temporary clothes lines...a system which worked perfectly!} We went to a local internet cafe run by the local YMCA about three doors down from the Armoury.  Interesting place....a relic of the late sixties!  Che Guevera with a crown of barbed wire on the wall, sofas salvaged from the local rubbish heaps, but clean and reasonably vibrant with 60's music blaring from behind the bar.  Smokey though.  Definitly took me back...I loved it!  Hope I didn't pick up fleas from that sofa though...!
           The guides were so nice I brought them a couple of presents, and when Mr. Stroud was freed up after lunch, he invited me in to do some curatorial work.  {This proved to be the highlight of my trip!}

Brenda loves that picture of me!  I look like kid in a candy store!  And that is Mr. Stroud, looking competent and right in his element.  This little room is a temporary enclosure which takes space away from the museum.  The museum of course, is now in the basement, the former stables of the palace,  and it is not climate controlled.  This little area is scheduled to be dismantled sometime in the late spring,  Mr. Stroud is not really sure where this facility is going to go...there IS an old restoration room but it is very small, and incapable of being ventilated.  This little fume hood is all there is!  In the background, you can see the mannikens that Mr. Stroud is preparing for the equestrian display planned for the summer. 

He picked out a very nice backplate which would have belonged to one of the knights.  It did not need much cleaning, but there was some rust towards the bottom.  It bugs me, and it will always bug me to use steel wool on ancient armour, but you must remove the rust.  (even if you electrolisize the oxide, you will still be left with the black rust which you must still remove mechanically....and this means a gentle hand and 0000 steel wool. Steel is used in preference to copper wool so that there is no metalic transfer to the old iron.) and this really is the only way.  Great care must be used to make sure the armour does not lose any detail.  This usually means simply not scrubbing the detail parts, and when in doubt, leave it.  Perhaps in fifty years, they will "put it into the machine and have the robot do it"!  I worked for about two and a half hours with Mr. Stroud supervising the whole time, and am rather proud of the results
 
 

....expecially considering I did it all with a massive migraine headache!  Brenda had an advil gel-cap which cured it in about a half hour.  {Made me a little dozy though, so I won't use it too often}  This is the first migraine I have had in a long while.

Friday   Walked all around the headland at Qawra.  Got salt spray on my glasses, and was a little worried about the camera.  The previous night there was quite a storm, and still plenty of gale force winds in the morning.

       Went to Mdina, and decided to do the "Dungeon".  It was not so bad as the guide books think it is. {quote...if you have a bunch of bored kids and it is a rainy day and you have seen everything else...grin!} And it was a bit of a learning experience...I didn't know for instance that La Valette had been de-frocked in his younger days and had been jailed on Gozo for three years!

Saturday...Fort Rinella.  Nice re-enactment, lots of signal men, and an excellent running commentary.  Met Denis the Button Man.  {(Denis A. Darmanin, Militaria Collector and Researcher, Specialist in uniform buttons...If you have any buttons to trade, his address is 38C, Apt. 8, Old Mint Street, Valletta, VLT12, Malta, G.C.) He and Mario Farrugia (and many others) work very hard to re-create a time when the British Empire was at its peak, black powder was still the propellant of choice in rifles and cannons, and red coats were the uniform of the day. {That's Denis, with the band on his helmet in the pic below.}

  Denis gave us a drive up to the the bus station, and one ride with him was worth five guide books!  Details I never would have thought about asking, like where does the power come from, and who makes the water?  Is that really a cemetary where Muslims and Jews lie silently side by side?  (yup...it is...the current difficulties are actually only quite recent compared to the rich history of this land!) He showed us where the modern roads covered up old gateways, and the bolt holes into the interior arcades inside the walls where folks could dive into comparative cover during bombing raids.

Sunday Feb 1st....Went on the world's shortest ferry ride.  Well, actually, I think the ferry in Toronto Harbour is shorter, but hey, this probably IS the shortest ferry ride in the Mediterranian.  Discovered that I could buy a ticket for the Captain Morgan's Cruise around the harbour on the ferry boat, and they even called ahead to hold the boat for us. Picked up all kinds of pictures and such...from the point of view of the harbour.

Monday Feb 2, 2004, Went to Valetta to get football scarves. Finally found them....Brenda was thrilled!  She is getting quite a collection.  Had to get to Birgu to see the things we missed on our trip to Fort St. Angelo.  Discovered the church was closed (it seemed to be closed a lot!!) but the museum at the side was open, and lets face it, that is what we really wanted to see!  A magnificent church is, well, as common on Malta as yellow sandstone walls, but a WWII samurai sword brought home as a souvenier and given to the church in thanks of a safe home coming, well, you don't see that everyday.  This is a lovely little museum...it has La Vallette's sword, easily recognizable by the cross on the hilt {actually, it is a saltere cross rather than a Christian Cross but still its a cross, and it is the only rapier hilt I have ever seen with that particular guard on the back of the hand.  It is quite distinctive.}We had heard that the busses were going on strike that day, so we had to make sure we got back to our hotel before six o'clock.  The bus driver finished his run, even though it took him until about 6:45 due to traffic.

Tuesday, Feb 3, 2004...up at 0430 to get the bus to Sicily.  Slept most of the way there, but enjoyed the countryside.  Very rugged.  Went over the 2nd and 3rd highest bridges in Europe (the highest of course is in Austria).

Our bus wound its way up Mt. Etna...stopped breifly at a little spot with lots of vendors selling overpriced souvenirs of Etna.  I picked up my little dragon, and a bottle of the fire water you could use as fuel in a spirit lamp.
     Etna is so awesome....it defies description.  {It takes up a quarter of the land mass of Sicily!}No photographs can clearly do it justice.

{Above is a tiny crater...there must be hundreds of them.  The block of "stuff" in the centre is pumice.}
There is an ever present odor of brimstone all around, and the black pumice dust keeps getting in your eyes.  The sand is fine and crackly, like  coarse emery.  We had nothing to put it in or I would have brought some home...it is jet black! {Had a nice chat with a British fellow named Bernard on the way back...very nice man.  Hope he didn't feel I was too standoffish though...I slept part of the trip back and was seasick the other part!)  We dropped into a little Sicilian town I never did catch the name of, took lots of pictures, and sampled several Sicilian wines.  Brought home most of a case!}

{They just keep building up and up and up!}
Bernard offered to carry in the wine for us as an EU citizen, but I declined his kind offer!  And I was right...the EU does not regard wine with the same puritanical dread as the US or Canada, and the Maltese border guards were quick to point out the Malta wine was cheaper.  {And dollar for dollar, I found that Maltese wine was just as good.  (Though there WAS that experience with a 58 cent bottle of wine which made a barely acceptable mouthwash...but hey....it WAS 58 cents ... roughly a buck and a half Canadian!  )}
 
Wednesday Feb 4, 2004....went to Gozo.  Took our RCI rep's advice, and went on the bus tour.  {Nice place, but I thought, pushing the envelope of how much to charge us tourists for stuff like cookies in the bakery!  I am gradually learning to inquire the price of something before I buy it!  I still don't think 4 cookies per lira is a reasonable price.  (1 lira equals four Canadian Dollars, or three US dollars) Bet she does not sell it to her friends at that price!  Oh well, vote with your feet.}  Saw the Azure window, {decided it was just a little too cold to go swimming (fifteen degrees C. air and water....would normally never had stopped me in Canada, but hey, I was tired and besides, I would have had all that salt on my skin the whole rest of the day!}and walked the walls of the fortress at Victoria.  Visited the church at Ta'Pinu.

This is a very holy place, Pope John Paul II had visited there in 1990.  The walls are all covered in gorgeous carved figures. {This is just a tiny sample of the gorgeous work in this comparatively tiny church  All that raised work on the freize and column heads is carved into the stone...its not an applicque or casting of any kind}

Thursday, Feb 5 2004
    Brenda---> Cancelled the appointment with Susan, our RCI rep, and then went on the roof to take pics.  There were some people sun bathing up there!  This is February don't forget!!!  Then went two doors down to Alexander's to book my taxi to the airport.  it's only 6 LM there and it was 12 LM through the hotel.  Then back to the grocery store to buy wine and Bajta. {Prickly pear liqueur}  They have the best prices around. Then I went back up to the room to collect Bill.  On the way to the bus, I stopped to take a picture of the sign at the pub next to our hotel.  Its "The Little Waster, Qawra".  The temp today is 17 degrees Celsius, and the sun strong.

(click on above image to enlarge)
   We took the bus into Valetta.  We went straight to the Palace Armoury and found Mr. Stroud in conference with the "Great Men in Suits" of the Musum in Malta.  He sang Bill's praises to them, and showed off the backplate he cleaned.  We gave him some maple syrup which I had brought just for this purpose, and he told me he had tried it many years ago.  He insisted that Bill's work was gift enough!  What a gentleman!

Brenda-->We said our goodbyes to the two kind men who work at the front, then went to the Air Malta office in Freedom Square.  It was quite a job getting around the bleachers they are setting up for St. Paul's Shipwreck Day.  The office was too full, so went off in search of the bus to the Tarxien Temples.
    We took the #11 bone-shaker and hiked off to the temple.  It is full of New-Ager's and Pagans, humming, chanting and sprinkling water over the energy fields.One British couple was quite disgusted by it all.  {bloody Pagans!!} The temple complex is large and interesting.

{This pic is an incised buffalo. You have to look at it for a bit to make it out...his horns look like they are coming right out of the middle of his head like a Rhino's!   It also shows how good the joinery is between the rocks! This carving is likely more than five thousand years old!}
 

Brenda--->Afer that, we walked to the Hypogeum, but it was booked for the day.  {Brenda became quite ill from the exhaust fumes along this street!  I rather enjoyed a snack of a pizza in the little palazzo down from the Hypogeum------Bill} We walked back to the bus stop, and took a bus to Valetta.  this time the wait was short at the Air Malta office, and I got our flight confirmed. We took another rattler back to Qawra and Bill went shopping for nougat.
      We went to the Mongolian Margeque for dinner.  Its just like the one in Ottawa, but has Maltese Sausage on the buffet.  {Bill--->Two nice British fellows there...very friendly. One of them seemed to be a prize fighter...broken teeth, bent nose, inarticulate, or maybe just Welsh (evil grin!), and the other might have been his manager, both of them had such thick accents that I could barely understand them.  It was like watching two characters out of the movie Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels!}
Bill-----> Brought the last of that mouthwash that calls itself wine down to the bar tender and he was touched by the present.  Notice he didn't drink it though, he put it aside "for later".  Possibly to scrub out the sink with.  I found a nice new Malta pin, all white with fleur de lyses at the intersection of the cross.  Very pretty.  This replaces the one I got at Mosta dome that I managed to lose! We are leaving at a good time....the internet is totally down now, and one of the elevators is unserviceable.
       Packing went fairly quickly.  Still did not get a good sleep, but tomorrow...home! We discovered that there are good Maltese wines after all ....they cost more than 58 cents a bottle (grin!)....and of course, packed some with us for home.  I don't think the local wine stores here in Canada have ever even heard of it.

Friday...Feb 6, 2004.  Sitting in Heathrow airport.  So many people are leaving from here to Toronto and Montreal.  Not a really good airport unless you really like shopping at Hugo Boss, Herrods, or Fortnam and Mason's.
Brenda----> After all that careful packing we had to undo our big suitcase and take out 6 kilos of weight!  Just what I wanted to do at 6:30 in the morning, sit on the floor of the airport and pull out my dirty socks and underwear in front of everyone!  That's when I discovered that Bill's beloved nougat weighs 3 kilos by itself.
Bill---->{They were a little late in announcing the departure of the aircraft, and Brenda was quite concerned about me being lost or something.  I made it though, once they had announced the departure of my flight, I went to the gate right away.  No harm done, except that Brenda had a little cardio workout!}
      {Jim picked us up at the airport.  There had just been a serious snow storm...it had started when we were in Heathrow, and ended only just before we got in!  Glad we did not get diverted to Toronto!  The dog was fine...Catherine was not too frazzled from looking after the pup, and we got caught up on some of the gossip...like Jim got a new job!  When we got home, we found the driveway had been shoveled out, and that the alarm system really did its job correctly!  Once the door had been blown open by the wind, and once somebody was trying the door to the shop!  Both times Jean had responded and everything was made right. Its good to be home.}

End of the Malta Journal, Spring of 2004