The Hotel Solana in Mellieha is quite pleasant, it’s a surprisingly big place given its location in the centre (pretty much) of town. Where we had booked with a holiday company and were only staging through, we had been allocated a basic room. We were offered an upgrade that would give us a balcony and a sea view – the price seemed quite reasonable and as we were there for two nights we decided to take it. I’m glad we did. The view wasn’t spectacular, but certainly better than four plain walls.
We had been disappointed to find that the Solana wasn’t as we thought in Valletta. Mellieha is probably the biggest town that far north on Malta. The next stop is the island of Gozo.
That kind of dictated what we were going to to do on our first free day. As you might expect the hotel staff were very helpful. Busses are very reasonable, €2 buys you two hours, which would normally be enough to get almost anywhere on the island and there was a bus stop outside the hotel with the busses going in the direction we wanted. A 20 minute bus ride saw us at the Gozo Ferry terminal.
Riding from Malta to Gozo is free, you just get on (I might as well tell you a ticket back costs €4.80, but they don’t tell you that going. I said to Elayne tickets coming back are probably a thousand euros. The Maltese are happy for you to go, just not to come back!). The ferries are very good, frequent, roll-o roll-off with double ended bows. They don’t turn round.
We decided that we would take the hop-on, hop-off bus and do a circuit of the island. Just a by-note to say that we hoped on. And only hoped off once roughly in the middle of the island at the Capital, Victoria (there is still a huge amount of British influence here)
The geology of the Maltese islands is pretty much just limestone. A lot, most, nearly all the buildings are constructed out of a wonderfully golden yellow rock that is mined locally. that gives a common timbre to the way villages and towns look, but each has its own characteristics. Most villages are dominated by a magnificent church, 85% of the population of the islands is Roman Catholic, and quite devout.
On the bus, it soon became very apparent that the villages and the roads through them were not built with modern transport in mind. The bus had no difficulty in making any of the turns even those that appeared to be right-angled or thereabouts. It’s that the roads and the level of traffic have significantly influenced the attitude towards driving, especially the concept of give-way.
What appears to be the case is that of when you are approaching a place where to give-way might be expected, under no circumstances must you do so. Instead accelerate to the highest possible speed to reach that point in the road where it is physically impossible for two of even the smallest vehicles to pass, and sit there. And wait for the other vehicle to inch past. Thus it becomes a battle of wills between drivers to see who is likely to dink your car first. Having said that, I saw very few “dinked” cars.
There really was only one place where I would quite liked to have hopped off, at the site of one of the oldest megalithic structures in Europe. We didn’t as by the then we just wanted to get back to the ferry.
Gozo is a fascinating place, and there is clearly much more to see than we saw. I would be quite happy to stay there for a couple of days and explore. I don’t think I would hire a car though.
Bills Posts 