On Saturday, we headed to Gozo.
Gozo is part of the country of Malta, but a separate island. We had to take a ferry. We were picked up at the hotel by our guide, Rose and her driver. We were given lots of information about Malta as we made our way to the first temple complex, the oldest one in Malta- Ggantija.
When we arrived there was no one there but us. Rose was very knowledgable, both about Malta in general, but she is also very interested in the temples herself. We got about 15 minutes in the temples alone before a busload of German tourists arrived. It was a a truly awe inspiring experience to hear the theories of how the temples were built and how the stones were moved. Ggantija is on a beautiful hilltop with an amazing view. It was named Ggantija because the first people to discover it guessed it must have been made by giants since the rocks that form it are so huge.
From there we made a short drive to Ninu’s cave. This was a real surprise. Yes, it was on our itinerary, but I had no idea what it was. Apparantly a man was working on his house and found a cave when he was digging for a well. And not just any cave, it had stalagtites and stalagmites, it was lovely. Not too large but amazing. What was truly surprising was that his descendants still live above this cave and just charge people a few Euro to come in and see the cave. His great granddaughter lives there now and had just finished washing the tile floors when we showed up. That was OK, she let us through anyway, we went down to the cave, looked around, came up and thanked her.
Then we headed to Dwejra Bay to see the Inland Sea & Azure Window. I was totally blown away by the beauty of this place. A huge rock formation frames the sea and the coast. Rose said it was nominated as one of the new seven wonders of the world. I took a 360 degree video of it which can be found on my flickr feed.
From there we headed towards the Gozo Museum of Archeology. It’s a little place, housed in a former private residence. There were plenty of amphorae, which Gwen has been learning to identify in her archeology class as well as artifacts taken from the Ggantija site. The scale model was especially helpful.
Then we took a walk around the Citadel of the small walled city where the Museum was located, taking lots of pictures of the amazing views.
Then it was time for a late lunch and back to the Ferry. Our restaurant was overlooking Xlendi Bay, another picturesque view. (Sensing a pattern here?)
A ferry ride back to Malta, we were dropped at the hotel and crashed.
This three day adventure was too much to squeeze into one post, so this is the second of four. Here are links to the others.
Part I
Part III
Part IV