Awesome Adventure 2016: September 2016

We had a quieter day on Wednesday, with a visit to Tarxien Temple and a look around some of the sites in Valletta. Sophie has a mild infection at the base of her ear, for which we picked up some antibiotics today. It isn't bothering her too much but worth treating before she gets on a flight on Saturday. Large parts of Tarxien have been rebuilt and most of the original items that were recovered are now in the Archaeological Museum in Valletta, along with many from Hagar Qim, etc... We visited the Museum and then dropped in briefly to the Co-cathedral. It was far more impressive than we expected, with large areas decorated in gold - in a building which is large but fairly drab from the outside. The weather has been building up to a storm over the last day or two - warm and humid - so, even though we got wet getting to the bus stop, it was nice to see some rain for a change.

On Thursday, we visited Ghar Dalam, which is a cave containing prehistoric objects, including the bones of hippos and small elephants that are now well and truly extinct. Sophie's ear/gland infection has improved dramatically but even so, we started the day quietly, booking a cab at the tourist info centre for our trip to the airport on Saturday and a nice lunch at Duncan's before visiting Ghar Dalam. We are hoping that the cab driver will find our apartment and given our uncertainty, the lady at the tourist info centre was fabulous - getting a cab driver to come into the office and discuss the trip with us, over a map!

Tarxien Temple

Oldest parts of Tarxien

Tarxien

Takeaway pizza for lunch

National Archaeological Museum

Archaeological Museum

Learning about wheel ruts

Egyptian influence on Malta

St John's Co-cathedral

A decent thunderstorm - finally!

Before lunch at Duncan's

Town square

Ball games while waiting for a bus

Ghar Dalam

Hippo and mini-elephant bones

Hippo bones

Stalactites and stalacmites

Hippo molars

Teeth from true cave men

Will with the Luzzu boats

As most historic sites are open on Mondays, we caught the bus out to Hagar Qim and the neighboring Mnajdra Temple. We tossed up between a local 119 bus to the airport and a change but decided to go via Valletta as there are more options out to Hagar Qim (including the 74) - although we were unlucky with connections and arrived around 11am. Hagar Qim (pronounced Hajar Im) is a Neolithic structure built about 1000 years before the pyramids and 1600+ years before Stonehenge. The 4D video and museum didn't take long to go through but had plenty of detail about the likely purpose of the buildings, from calendars to tracking the stars - with some carved dots showing the exact days between movement of planets and holes letting the sun through on summer and winter solstice. We had lunch at the cafe near the museum before exploring both of the sites.

We then walked down the hill to Blue Grotto. The boats weren't running but we had a good look down at the grotto from the hill above before we walked down to the water. We we planning on catching a bus back but a cab came past looking for a return fare - so we haggled and got him down to 15 euro ($23) for all four of us to save about and hour and a half of bus rides. We went out for dinner in Marsaxlokk - Duncan's wasn't open, so we opted for tables along the waterfront.

As storms were forecast for Wednesday, we went out to Gozo the following day (Tuesday), We again transited through Valletta and after the second bus, caught the ferry across to the other main Maltese island. We passed Comino which is the third largest island and has the Blue Lagoon. On Gozo, our easiest option was to catch the Big Red Bus. We went across to the Azure Window on the other side of the island, visited a small aquarium museum with a video that helps you to 'see under the ocean without getting wet' and then caught a local tourist boat out to the arch and into the caves with dark blue water. We changed buses back in Victoria (the old capital city of Gozo), after lunch in a cafe there, then saw the windmill (another historic site) and the Ggantija Temple - which is claimed to slightly pre-date Hagar Qim.