Saints, bands, flowers and fairy-lights
It was village Festa week here last week – and we had a truly wonderful time. Festas are a big deal in Malta and Gozo, a celebration of the village’s patron saint with events and processions over a weekend or more. Our village Gharb really goes to town with a seven-day celebration of the visitation […]
Atop Ta Għammar
I am often asked by friends visiting Gozo for top tips for special places to go, secret spots that leap less often from the pages of a tourist guide. This morning, I strode to one of my favourites and I’m happy to share it. There’s a ring of amazing mosaics that glimmer with gold and […]
Dahlet Qorrot – a secret spot
Ask me today for my top five places on the island and I can’t guarantee I’ll give you the same five as I would have done yesterday or might tomorrow. What I can be sure of, though, is that the lesser-known Dahlet Qorrot, a particularly beautiful bay on the North Eastern edge of the island […]
Gozo’s new Jedi
As a tourist to Gozo in the early days, baked mid-brown with a dash of lobster, I was surprised to see the warm woollen jumpers amongst the traditional lace hanging from stalls in the market place. They seemed an unlikely purchase for the summer stroller or sun-worshipper. I was bemused and amused in equal measure. […]
The Chef is not my wife
Well, what d’ya know? For nearly three years The Significant Other and I have enjoyed the Gharb Rangers Bar’s hospitality, whether that’s on the upstairs terrace with fresh fish whilst gazing across open countryside to the Ta Pinu Basilica or winter-wrapped over a delicious pizza in a damp wet February (only 60 miles from Italy, pizzas […]
Phoenician drinking habits
It’s a speck of an island, hardly visible on a map of the Med, yet Gozo’s history runs deep: just over a decade ago divers discovered the remains of a Phoenician wreck dating back to 700BC. Beyond a popular bay on the south of the island, this is the oldest known wreck in the central […]
The Busman’s Holiday
Definition of ‘a busman’s holiday’: a form of recreation in which one does something very similar to what one does for a living. One of my favourite ways to spend time in Gozo is aimless wandering through the back streets of Victoria, through the jumble of resplendent houses, from rickety-ramshackle to richly-renovated, that jostle for […]
The wonders of the weather
Gozo is a wonderland: whilst Lewis Carroll’s Alice wouldn’t recognise its terrain she surely would feel at home here. It may be a small and gentle Mediterranean island, but on this three-dimensional chequerboard of green and golden-browns, the roads take you in directions you’d never expect as secret ravines and valleys divert your route according […]
Keeping an eye on Gozo
Tucked away on the side of St George’s Basilica in Gozo’s Victoria I have just discovered a museum I must have walked past a hundred times before and never noticed and I feel apologetic that I haven’t been shouting about it from the rooftops. I confess I first ventured into the Heart of Gozo/Il-Ħaġar Museum […]
Gozo’s pomskizillious Citadel
A couple of weeks ago we caught up with some good friends over a Cisk in Xerri’s*, watching the evening roll in over the sea to Comino, the twinkling lights of Malta beyond. One of these friends grew up on the island and is an absolute repository of Gozo stories – captured within book covers, he’d […]
Open Water Certification
The Mediterranean island of Gozo crams a huge amount of geological interest into its pocket-sized landmass from the smooth space-age rock formation on Marsalforn’s western side, best viewed across ix-Xwejni bay and the age-old salt pans on the coast road, to the large limestone arch, fifteen men tall, that juts out into the sea less […]
Reflecting upon Science in the Citadel
Last weekend The Significant Other and I went to the ‘Science in the Citadel’ event in Gozo’s Victoria. In this stunning setting, both inside and alongside the honeyed-gold medieval bastions which went some way to keeping a challenging breeze at bay, a multitude of stands offered scientific interest and inspiration to both those who were […]
Gozo’s story book beach
When The Boys were small, we had a children’s book (The Runaway Dinner by Allan Ahlberg) in which, unobtrusively in the backdrop of one of the early pages, a Spider-Man costume hung on the washing line between the everyday socks and vests and common-or-garden T-shirts. It made me smile every time I read the story as I […]
The heart, the head and the feet
Ask anyone who has ever been to the Maltese Islands and, whether they’re young or old, they’ll wax lyrical. There are so many adventures and activities to be found there, and all on an archipelago with a land area that’s smaller of the Isle of Wight. Where else can you stand and find so much […]