Malta!

I am way behind on these posts... so I had a little help from http://www.visitmalta.com/ on this one.

Megaliths, medieval dungeons and Calypso's Cave – The Maltese Islands are positively mythic. The narrow meandering streets of their towns and villages are crowded with Renaissance cathedrals and Baroque palaces. As the countryside is dotted with the oldest known human structures in the world, the Islands have rightly been described as an open-air museum.

The Maltese archipelago lies virtually at the centre of the Mediterranean, with Malta 93km south of Sicily and 288km north of Africa. The archipelago consists of three islands: Malta, Gozo and Comino with a total population of 400,000 inhabitants over an area of 316sq km and a coastline of 196.8km (not including 56.01 km for the island of Gozo).

Malta is the largest island and the cultural, commercial and administrative centre. Gozo is the second largest island and is more rural, characterised by fishing, tourism, crafts and agriculture while Comino is largely uninhabited. With 7,000 years of history, the Maltese Islands are steeped in culture and heritage. The Islands went through a golden Neolithic period, the remains of which are the mysterious megalithic temples dedicated to the goddess of fertility. Later on, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans and the Byzantines, all left their traces on the Islands.

In 60 A.D. St. Paul was shipwrecked on the island while on his way to Rome and brought Christianity to Malta. The Arabs conquered the islands in 870 A.D. and left an important mark on the language of the Maltese. Until 1530 Malta was an extension of Sicily, the Normans, the Aragonese and other conquerors who ruled over Sicily also governed the Maltese Islands.
In 1798 Bonaparte, on his way to Egypt, took over Malta from the Knights. The French presence on the islands was short lived as the English, who were requested by the Maltese to help them against the French, blockaded the islands in 1800. British rule in Malta lasted until 1964 when Malta became independent. The Maltese adapted the British system of administration, education and legislation. Malta became a Republic in 1974 and a member state of the European Union in May 2004.

I loved the local buses!

The village of Mdina

On our way to Comino.


The Blue Grotto...

"Popeye village" Where the film Popey was filmed in the 50's(?). The islands are used for filming quite a bit from what we were told.

Here we are standing on the island of Comino.

This is the boat we chartered to get there.... ok - along with about 30 other people.

There are loads of Jellyfish in the water - luckily I forgot my swim trunks!

Edinburgh

Trying to stay dry in Edinburgh... Is this a working cannon?



In April Marina had a event to attend for work on a Saturday in Edinburgh; having never been there, I decided to tag along. I scheduled a tee time at the local course, but as you can see I was rained out! Dang! In liu of golfing I wandered the city most of the day, on my own, ducking into pubs when it started raining too bad. Unfortunately, I didn't wind up with many pictures due to the weather, but I thought I would share what I have.

I was thinking about buying a traditional kilt, just for a bit of a laugh, but after seeing the prices for the real thing I thought again. A decent quality kilt cost around $800 with the full getup running right around $1,200. That would have been one expensive Holloween costume!

We toured a tarten factory and these were some of the cheaper tourist type kilts; they were still up around $150 so I left them on the rack.

Rain, rain, go away... awe whom I kidding, this is Edinburgh! Anyone fancy a pint and some haggis?

Portugal

This Easter, after not travelling for a few months, Marina and I started to feel a little stir crazy. We scratched our heads a bit about where we wanted to go, but ultimately we decided on Portugal. The whole country you ask? Well… no. We didn’t visit Faro or the islands, but we did spend some time in Porto and Lisbon and a few towns in between the two.

We started our trip in Porto, the country’s second largest city, not knowing what to expect – thankfully we were pleasantly surprised! The city is famous for its port wine, named after the city and not the other way around, which is a fortified desert wine, meaning brandy is added during the production process to cease the fermentation process. The city of Porto made much of its fortune on the wine, beginning with trading with the English who promptly took over most of the industry- bloody imperialists, starting as early as the 13th century and lasting right through to today.

Marina booked a nice hotel on the river, on the Porto side, with a view of Vila Nova de Gaia and its port wine aging warehouses. Here is a photo of our hotel and one of the views westward from our balcony.

Here Marina poses in front of some port wine aging barrels during our tour of a wine warehouse.

Here are some random churches- in addition to wine, it seems the city was big in the Jesus business. We climbed to the top of the tower of the one church and were blessed – pardon – with a great view of the city. (sacrilege Scott, sacrilege)

Here I am sitting in front of the Dom Luis bridge and some of the old port wine transport boats which are now only used as decorations.




This is a view of Porto from the Dom Luis bridge -designed by a student of Gustave Eiffel.



This is an eastward view from our hotel balcony of the Dom Luis bridge and the monastery. Nice huh?!

In order to stick to our itinerary it was time to leave Porto, so we rented a car in the morning and started to make our way down the coast. Here is a light house at our first pit stop

We eventually made our way to Obidos, a small picturesque village. Unfortunately, it was raining at the time so we don’t have many pictures from our stop there.





On our way to Nazare, a beach town about half way between Porto and Lisbon, we made a wrong turn and ended up at Pedro do Guilham. It turned out ok because we got out for a look around and saw this nice church, and after looking over the cliff we saw Nazare down below!


Near the end of our day, and right outside Lisbon, we stopped at the town of Sintra. It was a pretty little town and apparently draws big tourist crowds, but as it was late in the evening I don’t have any good pictures. Dang!

Eventually we made it to Lisbon, the biggest city in Portugal. While I enjoyed Lisbon it was a bit of a let down after the charming towns before. Here are the Lisbon photo’s!

Nice hair Scott!