Week 13

Monday

This week started off with more time spent with my aunt. One thing I was really excited about doing, is walking along the Victoria Lines. The Victoria lines are a hiking/walking trail, fairly north in Malta. They follow an old wall that went from one end of the island to the other, east to west. I'd heard a lot of people talk about them at the hostel, and done my research on them. Recommendation was to start in the west, where buses don't run a lot, and make your way towards the east. Once you're about halfway through, you'll often be near well-connected cities, and can easily find your way home even if you don't finish the trek. The early west part of the trail however, may be overgrown and is a bit difficult to find your way around in. Also apparently there may be some 'private property' signs you have to walk past and ignore. I loaded my phone up with pictures, maps and routes, and we set out.

I don't have the energy to add dramatic flair to this, so here's what happened. We took the bus there. We walked a lot. The view was stunning. We walked some more. A lot more. We found the landmark-spot near the start of the trail. At this point we'd been out of the bus for an hour. Did I mention we got distracted shopping earlier in Valetta, and had to drop off our haul at the apartment before even making it to the bus stop? We may have been getting a very late start to a 12km hiking trail. But we did have some of the 'best pastizzi' in Malta at our transfer in Mdina, so I can cross that off my bucket list. Anyway, we were late, and I'm not sure we ever found the start of the trail. We kind of thought we did, for a while. But there just wasn't any trail. And sure, you're supposed to find remnants of a wall, but there's a lot of remnants of a lot of walls! The view here was still worth it, I think. You can see all the way to Gozo, you can see most of Malta, and even the area you stand in is just nice. High up, flower-covered rocks and ruins of outpost buildings. Farmland, fields of wine plants, and houses strewn across the lands. It is the best of what the island has to offer, in my opinion.

After erring around for a while, we found our way to what I think is the start of the trail, and followed that for a while. And then we reached the roads, and all the "Private Property -- Keep out" "CCTV monitored" signs, and we just couldn't. It just doesn't look public. And a touristy guide on the internet telling me to ignore the signs those silly locals put up and that I have a right to be here just wasn't enough for us. I suspect this is where we went wrong, though even at this point we really couldn't tell if we were in the right place or not.
From that point on, it wasn't so nice. For a while we still had some views, especially towards the nice bay in the west, but soon it was just high walls and roads and decrepit towns. One building had a sign that said "We grow food here, please don't shoot", and I don't want to know what that's about. I was, and still am, hugely disappointed that we didn't get to walk the trail. And finding our way towards a town with a bus connection was a pain. But early on we'd gone down quite a slippery, steep drop, that we decided we wouldn't make it back up, so we had to stick to it. Eventually on our way to the nearest town, we did come upon a crossing that I firmly believe would lead us back on track. One of the early landmarks on the trail was a fort, and this would've let us there. Should I ever decide to try this trail again, I would simply start there. It seems after that point, the trail is apparently easy to follow! On the plus side, I think I got a decent bit of tan from this venture.

Tuesday

Thanks to my aunts foresight, we had also planned our days well. Exhausting hike on Monday, relaxing swim time on Tuesday. Early in the morning, I met my aunt at the Sliema ferry, where many roundtrips along the islands start their trip. The tour we took would stop at another spot in the north of Malta, near St. Paul's Bay, then Gozo, and then the blue in Comino. The ferry then hits the different spots a few times over the day, so we could've gone to Gozo and move onto Comino later. We chose to spend the entire day in Comino though, and it was worth it.
Now to be clear, Comino probably isn't worth if it if you know better. It's become so overrun with tourists, that the beauty of the Blue Lagoon can't really keep up. Cruise ships play loud party music, there's piles of dozens of carved pineapples from fancy cocktails just rotting in the sun, and any bit of land touching the water is covered in deckchairs and umbrellas. These are rented by companies, so there's no space for you to just go and plop down your own towel anywhere on the sand. Only higher up can you claim your own turf, and it's still a well populated area, despite the fact that no towel can protect you from the spiky rock beneath. The Blue Lagoon is stunning, but there are other, smarter stunning places to visit if you know where to look.

That said, I'm still glad we went. I'm also glad that I went there with someone who had the genius idea of bringing iced coffee in a thermos for a small picnic. And I'm glad my aunt convinced me that it's worth renting two chairs and an umbrella down on the sand for 20€. I did move away and back up at some point for some sunbathing (I got properly sunburnt for the first time, I think!), but the comfort was still worth it. The water in the lagoon was stunning: bright turquoise from afar, but once you're in it it's like plastic, bright and see-through with little rainbows reflecting on every wave. Makes it difficult to see the jellyfish while you're swimming, which unfortunately made it hard for me to relax in the water. Still, it was my first time swimming since I came here, and it was very much worth it. And my sunburn eventually faded into a tan, even below the skin that's still peeling off.

After arriving back in Sliema, we took the ferry to Valetta. My aunt has been doing this, and I wish I would've known about it back when I lived in Sliema. I'm not sure it would've been the easiest way home, but it definitely seems like a pleasant option. The trip costs 1.50€, I can pay with my Tallinja card, and for all I know I may have even paid less that way. You skip all of the nasty bus traffic, and instead get a nice, cheap ferry ride that crosses the short distance via waterway. At the other end of the ride, we found a restaurant my aunt had spoken about, and decided to patronize it for its convenient location. Overlooking the water directly, it was a lovely evening view, and the food turned out very enjoyable as well. As I was back to work on Wednesday, and it was rather late, we went directly to the bus stop. The goodbye that followed was anticlimactic -- I've often waited long for my bus at the Valetta bus stop, one was in the bay as we walked around the corner, and I dashed to catch it. Helped out a tourist couple who weren't sure if they were on the right one, and off I went. 

The rest of the week was a short one for me, and I needed it. Having two visitors right after another drained me a lot, and I really just had to catch up on sleep. It was around this time also that a chat with my flatmate led to me nabbing a fan from the living room, which means my sleep situation improved immensely.

On Thursday, we did have another false fire alarm at work. We've had a few of these since the first one, but it's usually just a few rings until the issue is resolved, never long enough to even start evacuation. This one however, was insistent, to the point we weren't so convinced it was a false alarm anymore. So we went down to the assembly point and got a few minutes of fresh air, before the issue was resolved.