Entries about fish

One of the main reasons for me coming to this island, was because of those beautiful tiny fishing boats Malta is so famous for. They are just way beautiful in my book and now that I was on the island, I sure wanted to see lots of them.

According to my guidebook as well as the talk of the locals, the best place to see them is at the tiny fishing village of Marsaxlokk, so this was definitely the place for us.

Like yesterday, we once again took a bus from across the hotel, but this time around, we had to change busses at the capital city.

We found the right bus towards Marsaxlokk in no time, but the worse part of it all was the waiting. It seemed that this wasn’t a bus where you could hop on every 5 minutes or so. In total we had to wait almost half an hour, of which I made the most of just looking up a few things in my guidebook.

Our driver towards the south-east was an older chap, but a very friendly one. Besides a few locals, we were the only ones on the bus, so we had a more than pleasant drive with a great view on the local fields and yet again huge cacti … it just kept on amazing me how big they really are, there are no words for it.

It took us almost an hour to get to the tiny traditional fishing village and once there you could smell the fish already. We were definitely in the right place!

We just had to walk one street down and there they were. I could easily say that there were hundreds of small fishing boats, but that would be exaggerating of course!

Nevertheless, there were many of them and they came in all shapes and sizes. It was just beautiful seeing so many boats together and we even saw such a tiny boat that I could easily believe that it was especially made for little children. I don’t know if this was true, but it was so cute.

We first visited the local market with it’s thousand and one souvenirs and afterwards, the fishing boats got all my attention, need I say, that more than hundred pictures were taking … I think not!

It really is a beautiful fishing village, but it is also a tiny one, so we just relaxed for a while on one of the many terraces before we walked down the boulevard of the village and watched how the fishermen repaired their nets.

Looking at all that hard work made us hungry after a while and now that we were at the right place to taste some fish, we did just that. It took a bit for the fish to arrive, but once it did, yummy was the only word that popped up in my head.

After lunch we decided to go back to Valetta and take another bus towards Vittoriosa or Birgu like it is called in Maltese, where we arrived in no time really.

It was still early in the afternoon and as we were walking through the streets of this old fortified city, I couldn’t help but noticing that nobody was around except for the many street workers with more than a good mood.

We walked up to the main square and from there it was down again towards the marina. If you want to see boats, this is definitely the place to be!

A few days ago my father saw a huge yacht and he hoped to have a closer look of the vessel, but it was no where to be found. On the other hand, there were hundreds of other boats going from being petit, to small, to large … to what the hell !?

I can’t help but noticing that there are still people on this world who just have too much money on their hands. This is not normal in my book!

At the end of the marina, we saw another fortified castle called St. Angelo which was also being renovated. It seems we were not going to be able to visit one single fort this holiday.

On the other hand, there was always a terrace in the vicinity of which we were more than happy to make use of, especially when they have divine cakes!

After this moment of indulgence, we just walked back towards the busstop and found our way back again to Valetta and half an hour later even to Sliema.

Because it was still a bit early to have dinner, we decided that this evening we had a drink at the bar of the hotel. We saw a few other Belgians and from one came another, it seems that we all had lots to talk about.

Dinner was special this evening, the hotel organised a Maltese night, with Maltese food and music and so on … it was fun, but I have to admit that not all the typical dishes were something for me, at least I gave it a try so to speak.

Since we had an early day tomorrow, we just skipped our daily night cap and went to bed at a decent hour coz tomorrow we had another island to visit, a smaller one, but nevertheless still an island!