Oh Yeah. . .Malta!!

Was beautiful!! And hot. VERY hot. I don't think it got below thirty degrees the whole time there!
We were staying in a hostel so we didn't have any air-conditioning which often made sleeping rather difficult. On the upside the hostel did have a swimming pool and we got to swim in the Mediterranean every day (at least twice a day). Our routine was thus: Wake up, shower, dress with togs underneath, walk to our "local" (a dairy that had air-conditioning and was just a couple of doors down from the hostel) where we would buy breakfast which would either be fresh, delicious Lemon doughnuts (yeah we know, but we were on holiday!) or fresh crusty bread with Peach Ice tea (We didn't have coffee for the whole week as it's just way too hot to even contemplate hot drinks!!); so that was breakfast sorted. We would then continue to the bus stop which was about ten minutes down the road but felt like we'd been trekking for three hours in the Sahara by the time we got there. We would catch a bus to Sliema where we would go for our first swim of the day in a beautiful little bay we discovered on our first day out. We swam there so often we called it "our bay". . .have a look at it:

AND, we had a beautiful view to go with it:
I did find out the name of this church but right now I can't quite remember it. . .it was very pretty though and chimed out every quarter of the hour!!
After our first swim of the day we would catch another bus to whichever area of Malta we were exploring that day. Such as Mdina (The Silent City) which is the old capital city of Malta:

Which had a very pretty Cathedral which was built in 1693:

Oh - the two clocks thing. . .You may be able to tell that they tell different time. One is correct and the other isn't to confuse the devil so he doesn't know what the correct time is. Every church we saw in Malta had them!!
Another place we visited on our travels was the current capital of Malta, Valetta:


As you can see from the top photo; there were people EVERYWHERE. There are also shops, shops and more shops. Shelley WAS happy with this but then we discovered that we couldn't reach the sea and had nowhere to swim. It was so hot Shelley actually said she'd rather be swimming than shopping (shock, horror!!) so we went back to "our bay" for some more swimming.
On our last day there we did a cruise around the island of Malta (which is the largest of the three islands in the archipelago that makes up the country of Malta) to the little island of Comino (which is the smallest of the three islands) and this little place called the Blue Lagoon. We thought that Our Bay had clear water. . .then we saw this place:


As you can see, it was clearer than clear! It was like bath water or something, it was absolutely beautiful!! A bit disconcerting though as we're so used to only being able to see the bottom in shallow water so we kept thinking that it was really shallow and that we'd be able to stand on the bottom. We were wrong. We're not sure exactly how deep it was as we couldn't actually sink enough to touch the bottom. We really didn't want to leave there. And actually, while we were there we discovered what we wanna do when we grow up!!
We noticed a boat going around the lagoon, stopping to "visit" other boats and then continuing along again. It had this logo on it:
We thought it must have been a coincedence or something, but then we saw them actually giving ice-creams to some of the people on the boats. They were boat ice-cream sellers!! Imagine that for a life. . .Staying in a beautiful bay, selling ice-creams, visiting people, swimming in the Mediterranean when you want. . .That's what we want to do when we grow up!!!!
So anyway, that was our trip to Malta. Beautiful, hot, lots of swimming and GREAT food!! (woopsies, I haven't mentioned the food yet!! They have these FANTASTIC outdoor eatery places that are set up permanently, you can smoke in the outdoor places (not that many people reading this will care about that) and no one will glare at you as if you are a nazi and the food that they bring you is. . .I'm not quite sure how to spell it but picture Homer Simpson dreaming about Doughnuts. . .Fantastic Pizza with crispy, amazing, bases. Wonderful toppings with lots of Mozarella and Parma Ham and Proscuitto. . .mmmmmmmmmmm. . .and the WINE!!! Oh, the wine!!! And cheap!!). . .
Our next stop will hopefully be Turkey, but we have to get. . .jobs . . .first.