Malta Trip #7 – The Bridge of Disharmony

 

 The English lady Barbara was a lovely person who was retired and had been living in Gozo for many years. She was going to Malta for a couple of weeks to live in a flat a friend of hers had offered her. While she was waiting for her bus, she stopped us and started chatting with us. We were only too happy to chat because....well, we usually are.

 

While she was telling us about public transport and which ferry to take back to Malta, she casually mentioned that there is a ferry that goes from Malta to Sicily (an Island of Italy). It takes 90 minutes to get there and if one wants, they can take a ferry back at night after spending the day in Sicily. I have never been to Italy and this sort of thing really appeals to me. Roberta could see the mad gleam in my eye and she immediately put a stop to it.

 

“Sunny! No! We don’t have time.” Those were her exact words.

 

And I responded “Roberta, this is my bridge this time!”

 

Ok, the bridge, that was from our Copenhag

en trip. That’s a long story in itself but in short, there is a bridge that goes from Copenhagen in Denmark to Malmo in Sweden. Half an hour by train and you are in a different country. Roberta told me about it and I went crazy for it. That created lots of debate between us but ultimately we took the train that goes over that bridge. Both of us enjoyed it but Roberta had to do a lot of “Beautiful Mind” type calculations to make that fit in our plans. The Copenhagen trip was only two days. Later, in the lockdown days we were both glad we had been to Sweden even if for a few hours before all travel got stopped.

 

But this was different. We really didn’t have enough time even to see Malta properly and Sicily would be a big complication but come on, imagine one ferry, a ninety minute ride, and you are in a different country! I grew up in the central city of Delhi which is completely landlocked and even if you travel for four hours you would still be in India. Europe just drives me crazy that way.

 

Even after we left Barbara, we talked about it a little bit. I didn’t tell Roberta this because I like pulling her leg but I dropped that idea very quickly after I did some research on it and found that while the trip is all that Barbara indicated, in the current climate Sicily had more formalities and processes for Covid-19 precautions. I didn’t want to go through that hassle and I also knew we were short on time.

 

That afternoon, we went back to the Mgarr harbour and took a Hop-On-Hop-Off tour bus for Gozo sightseeing. Because it was only for the afternoon, the nice lady selling the tickets only charged us €10 each. She did want it in cash though. There was an ATM there so cash was no problem. I saw a lot of free ATMs in Malta that didn’t charge us for withdrawals and I was using my Monzo card so I didn’t have to worry about currency conversation rates or non-sterling transaction charges. Monzo is fantastic if you travel.

 

If I am completely honest, the HOHO bus was a bit of a snoozefest. Later we agreed that it was kind of a slow way to go sightseeing. I don’t have any data for a comparison that was just a feeling. One big problem is that although you can see a lot from the open deck of the bus, you can’t actually take any good pictures. I have tried that before in Glasgow and it didn’t really work. Here are a couple of examples of photos taken from the moving bus in Gozo, you can decide for yourself if they are any good.

 

We drove through Victoria and passed the remnants of a big, historical viaduct. Then we left the bus at Dwejra (pronounced: dwayraa). This was the site of the old Azure Window. I didn’t know about the Azure Window until Roberta told me before the trip. It was on her list of things to see and when I read about it, I was fascinated as well.

The Azure Window was a natural rock formation that looked like a window (hence the name) which was a unique natural feature. I am using past tense because unfortunately the window collapsed in 2017 in a storm. Now it’s a site for people to take photos of the hillside that remains while braver souls go scuba diving there to look at the ruins of the window in the water. Nevertheless, it was a nice spot, very pretty.

 

After we were done taking the photos we had to wait for the next HOHO bus to pick us up. In the meantime, we had ice creams, well, I had a milkshake. It was ok. The HOHO bus in Gozo has two routes - purple and blue. The funny thing is where they meet, in Victoria, nothing changes. You stay on the same bus and it starts driving on the Blue route. Yep. It must make sense to somebody somewhere.

 We stopped at a big church, Ta’Pinu, just for 10 minutes to take photos. Then back to Victoria. 

Victoria is the capital of Gozo, a small city. I can’t say whether it’s great or not great because, well, it’s just a city. It has the famous Citadella (or Citadel, if you wanna be English about it.) Roberta wanted to get there but she was not ready for the bus to become Blue route and carry on before we could get off. We left that behind and stayed with the bus as far as Marsalforn (pronounced: Marsaal-forn) which is a seafront. I don’t want to be disparaging about it but it was just a seafront. There were some kids learning to dive there so it was more for doing than looking. Actually, I changed my mind the next day but we will get to that.

 

From Marsalforn, we took a Bolt taxi to Wied-il-Mielah (I am leaving out accents in my laziness) which is another natural window like the Azure Window except that it’s still standing. Well, we tried to get there. Remember I told you there’s always work going on everywhere in Malta? That’s what happened to us here. Our taxi could not take us to the window because the road was blocked. The taxi driver dumped us there saying it was just a ten minutes walk from there.

 

We didn’t have any choice except to get out but neither of us is the doe-eyed innocent bumpkin that we used to be. Roberta checked on Google Maps and it was showing 23 minutes to walk down. We started walking down and it was all downhill. But before going much further we asked the road workers how far down was the window. Have I mentioned that the Maltese people were really easy to talk to? You could ask directions from anybody, you could chat with anybody, you could ask stupid questions, they were always friendly and responsive. One of the best things that I liked about Malta was the people.

 

One of the road workers told us that it was straight down on that road about 15 minutes walk. His colleague said it was more like 30 minutes. We raised this point with the first guy.

 

“Yess...fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, like that.” He said.

 

What? There’s a huge different between 15 and 30. We talked about it. Roberta raised the point that going down was all downhill but a 30 minute walk uphill to come back? We had been doing a lot of walking, climbing etc. all day today so that was not a good prospect. My objection was that the light was already fading. In 30 minutes it would fade even more. I had seen the photos of the window, it needed good light for photography. You will see what I mean. But given our tour plan, if we didn’t go to see the window today, we wouldn’t be able to fit it in our itinerary again because we were leaving Gozo the next day at noon.

 

Have you heard the expression “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”?

 

Retreating gracefully, we walked back to the road closure and called a taxi. And that taxi changed the course of history! Ok, I am exaggerating so you would read the next post but honestly, that taxi ride did have a big impact on our Gozo trip the next day.