Thursday 21 January 2010

Thursday 21st Up nice and early, quick breakfast then off to Hagar Qim a prehistoric site. I set out from the hotel get as far as the road just a few yards from the hotel entrance, and the heavens open. The rain is coming down at a forty five degree angle being whipped up by a fierce wind. In less than a minute I'm crossing the road and I’m soaked from head to foot. I stand at the bus shelter, I’ve only just left dry and fresh now I’m a drowned rat, I feel it’s silly not to return and dry off and change. So I cut short my trip, back inside shower change into dry clothes.

An hour later I start my day again off to Valletta. The roads again in some villages have turned into rapids, we pass a parked station wagon and our bus throws up a spray of water and deposits about four gallons of water into the vehicle. It crosses my mind if the owner leaves the wagon there much longer he will have a swimming pool in the back when he returns. Now in Valletta I catch the 38 bus where I find the 138 also goes to Hagar Qim, it soon arrives at the well preserved site which has had a large cover a bit like a giant umbrella fitted over the top, so even if it’s raining you would be able to view these ancient temples in the dry. A good idea the way the weather has been lately.

The Blue Grotto is close by so I decide to kill two birds with one stone. I take the coastal road, it's a fair trek and takes about half an hour. Then there is a long sweeping road down to the grotto. The sea is too rough to take a boat out but even so the view is worth the hike. Now its back up the sweeping road but the wind is now so strong that staying on the pavement is a struggle, it's a case of head down and putting one foot in front of the other, by the time I reach the top I have worked up a sweat.

I return to the hotel on the bus from hell, there is a point where oldie worldly and quaint cross over to become tardy and almost squalid this bus had made that transmission many moons ago. One of the double seats had collapsed in fact the whole seat was missing, the leather on the rear seats is held in place by cable ties, the windows are partly open so that when the bus starts off the wind blows through the bus like a gale. You close the windows as I observe people doing, then the vibration reopens them within a few yards. People are pulling up the collars on their coats, pulling hoods up, putting hats on, it is bloody cold, if you are going terminus to terminus you have these conditions to put up with for an hour, it is not a pleasant journey.

After dinner it’s quiz night, two quizzes in one, music of the 50’s then the 60’s I team up with Sandy again, who has had a few days resting in his room due to not feeling too well. The 50’s music we feel we have not done too well on (after all I am a child of the 60’s). We score five out of ten, but even with a room full of duffers no one else can better that, so we are joint champions! We are fractionally better on the 60’s quiz, we score a creditable seven out of ten, only to find no one else is even close we win by a clear two points clear champions. We get a bottle of wine for our troubles, Sandy is not a wine drinker so I get the prize, just one problem no corkscrew.