A sign of things to come....

One thing that is worth mentioning about Malta is their signs are wonderfully malapropriate. I puzzled at the bus time table which had bus times from fri-sat and then the Sunday times. Either they meant mon-sat or bus drivers have the cushiest job on the island!

That pales into insignificance when you visit one car mechanic though and his sign reassuringly offers you "free punctures" with every set of tyres bought. That is a business model which you have to applaud really. I wonder if the customers buy the second set of tyres off of him.....

When you add that to the church which seems to branched out and now offers manicures and pedicures - nuns like nice nails too i am guessing or, slightly more worrying, maybe the monks do! Anyway, there is a wonderful array of signs to enjoy here and any that I see and get a chance to snap will be posted up here.

By the lack of action thus far into the blog post you might have guessed that today has been a rather sedate day really, and you would be right. All we have done is a bit of sitting by the pool and drinking cocktails. Engrossed in a book, I forgot about the suns evil rays, and now have lobster legs. This wouldn't be so bad apart from the fact that I must have sat on the lounger in a rather silly way, as only half my leg got exposed, so I have one side, from thigh to ankle, lobster red, and the other side paler that a goth girl's complexion ......

Also, it seemed a rather good idea to look at the temple on our doorstep in order to whet our appetites for the temples to come. Our hotel was actually built around a small megalithic temple, and it seems rather a shame to admit it, but in fact this is the quietest and least visited part of the hotel. If you go to the sun loungers you find them filled with Germans and east European tourists cooking themselves slowly by the pool, but the only person other than us who drank from the cultural cup was a small child (nationality: unknown) who I think was actually lost and was looking for a way back to the pool.

The temple ruins are small, but rather lovely in their own right. The cynic in me suspected that they might actually be a modern reconstruct by the hoteliers in order to get some extra business, but they are in fact pukka 5000 year old stones. Anyway, here are some snaps of Bugibba Temple.

 

 

 

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The Plan

This tour is only a ten day excursion, and so to be completely efficient in seeing everything I want to, I need to sketch out a loose plan of things to do. Brace yourself Sarah - this is where you realise what you have let yourself in for....

For those who don't know, Malta might be a small island in the Mediterranean, but it is packed with a rich history. One of the key reasons I wanted to go there is that it has some wonderful megalithic temples which date from around the time of our own Stonehenge. I love my temples, so it will be nice to tick these off in my EyeSpy book of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

So this is a rough itinerary:

Day 1 - Arrive at hotel, and visit Dolmen temple (this is actually a bit of a cheat really, as the temple is in the hotel grounds).

Day 2 - Acquaint ourselves with the Maltesers, and the local area (i.e. find out where the nearest MacDonalds is etc.) and just relax a bit.

Day 3 - Visit the Tarxien temple complex and also see the Hypogeum (they are near each other)

Day 4 - Visit Hagar Qim and Mnajdra temples

Day 5 - Visit Ggantija temple and explore Gozo island

Day 6 - Day spent enjoying Valletta (I think it is probably sensible to take a break from temples to prevent fatigue!)

Day 7 - Visit Skorba temples and go to M'dina

Days 8-10 - Relax and recharge those batteries (and update blog!)

This is of course a very loose plan and is subject to alterations as we work our way through things - I don't want to be beholden to time, like I was in my whirlwind tour of the wonderful Karnak temple, but similarly, I wouldn't want to allot a whole day to something that amounts to two rocks set parallel to each other, which some Oxbridge scholar has proclaimed to be a temple.

There are other things to see too, and fortunately, the Maltese bus system (I am assured) is a fantastic way of travelling around the island, so it is fairly certain we will end up in some interesting places without intentionally listing them down. I have to admit that I am getting quite excited now that the holiday is within touching distance, and will hopefully get some nice pictures to share with you all, instead of these dry, pictureless posts!!!

Well, that is all for now folks, the next time I post I will be in the Med, with my string shirt and Union Jack shorts on.......