Rita Speaks


Malta has been on Geoff’s “have to - travel list” for a long time, finally this spring it was time for Malta. We found a great place to stay in Valletta, the capital of Malta.  Central but quiet, opposite a convent where lovely singing nuns woke me (not Geoff) at 6.30am – quite beautiful. The tall but narrow townhouse counted 100 marble steps from the bottom to the top floor. Luckily it included a lift which we used twice, once to bring the luggage up and once to bring it down. We incorporated the stairs as part of our daily exercise! The house was beautifully restored and included a terrace with fantastic views over the Three Cities, perfect for my early morning coffee or our evening Happy Hour, it served us as a fantastic base. We enjoyed strolling through the clean old town of Valletta and various other, easy accessible parts of this small Island. Lot’s of café’s and bars, not so many supermarkets. Thanks to the Brit’s, we found a M&S and stocked up. We got there at a great time of the year, mid April. Not crowded and not too hot. We were told that temperatures could reach 40C in high season! A week was the perfect time to spend here. We saw what we came to see – ready to pack up for Bella Italia!

Our short flight to Bari was uneventful, Geoff went to get the rental car, I waited for the luggage. Once at our small car, perfect for this part of the world, I went to “work”! It is my job to get the GPS programed, be the GPS assistant - I take my role very seriously. Our drive to our Trulli, through beautiful country side, colorful with red, yellow, blue wild flowers, was calculated to be a bit over an hour - Cisternino, Puglia. Once the GPS announced “you have reached your destination”……we were in the middle of nowhere, except for a countryside café. I wanted to try and re-program the GPS, try to find our location but Geoff, normally quite patient, barked at me: “call the landlord”. I called Sergio and with the help from a lady in the café, he was able to locate us and said he would come to pick us up. About 15 minutes later, a car pulled up. I approached the guy asking “Hi, are you Sergio?” he said yes, shook my hand and said, lets have a gelato “first”, (that should have given it away!). I thought that was funny but hey, who refuses gelato in Italy? I told Sergio I would get Geoff, my husband. They shook hands and we all went into the café. Sergio was either shy or his English not good, he withdrew, spoke to the lady in the café who took us aside to tell us he wasn’t “our” Sergio. He was waiting to meet someone else, quite possibly a “blind date”. Very funny, made us laugh all week! OUR Sergio turned up a few minutes later, we followed him to his gorgeous Trulli, a renovated farmhouse set in 26.000 square meters of garden & farmland. A beauty we knew we would feel very comfortable in. We settled in, went for our first pizza in Italy. It was Sunday, all the supermarkets were closed, grocery shopping would had to wait till Monday.

We knew that the driving times to some of the villages and ancient cities on our list were about 1.5 hours or more. But rather than moving around, unpacking and packing multiple times, we decided to position ourselves smack in the middle of “Trulli country”, enjoy the peace and quiet after each day of touring – mostly with an “Al Fresco” dinner. Some of my favorite spots we visited were Monopoli, Pogliano a Mare, Otranto, Lecce, Alberobello just to name a few, as well as the stunning scenery driving around the heel.  Being the navigator is my responsibility and included inserting our next destination in our GPS.  I still have not figured out how and why the GPS came up with the routes it sent us on!!!!  I checked on “shortest versus fastest” routes, made all kinds of adjustments, still we were sent on some pretty rough rural roads with no names, one lane traffic and we hardly ever recognized the same route twice – even after two weeks!!!!!  Clenched teeth as well as other body parts were a daily occurrence when it became reallyyyy tight or backing up was required. I am sure there will be more of that when we reach the Amalfi Coast. We are both looking forward to re-visiting a place we went to during our trip in 2007 but didn’t see all of it.  Arrivederci.

 Looking across at the convent, Grand Canal and the three cities from our wonderful apartment  
Looking across the Grand Canal at Valletta from the ramparts of Fort St. Angelo in Vittoriosa


One of the many single lane-two way traffic country roads our GPS sent us on.  Beautiful but scary!!!

 Waiting for Geoff to finish taking that "perfect" shot in the quaint Trulli village of Alberobello








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Classic Walk from Ravello to Amalfi

Image
Today we are going to take the 50 minute walk from Ravello down to the seaside town of Atrani, the second smallest town in Italy, and then onto the main town on the Amalfi Coast, Amali.  The route we are taking is the one that locals used before the construction of the main road in 1935 and parts of it are not in the best of shape.  However, we made it down without incident.  This was a longer walk than our previous one and were not prepared to hike back up, especially after spending a few hours exploring Amalfi and so we took the public bus, which was a unique experience in its own right as it navigated its way back up the very narrow and windy road to Ravello.  All in all it was a very nice day out exploring.  On the way down were lots of lemon orchards and houses, all with spectacular views of the Med.  The iconic St. Mary Magdalene Bell Tower guiding us down the last remaining steps into Atrani   Originally built in 1...
Read more

A Day on Gozo

Image
Gozo is a small island (1/3 the size of Malta) that is accessible by a 20 minute ferry ride.  The island is part of Malta but the 30,000 locals consider themselves Gozitans first.  We took a taxi to the northern tip of Malta to catch the ferry and had booked a private jeep tour of Gozo.  It was a beautiful sunny day and we had a very knowledgeable guide in Ken who spoke excellent English.  We covered a lot of ground and saw most of the island in our six hour tour and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  We took the ferry back to Malta and decided to take the bus back to Valletta which took 90 minutes instead of the 50 minute taxi ride.    Unloaded from the ferry at lovely Mgaar Harbor with the Church of our Lady of Lourdes (built in 1893) sitting on a promitory overlooking the harbor.  Gozo is much greener and a lot more pastoral than Malta.   Looking down at Ramla Bay with its beautiful sandy beach and colorful blue Mediterr...
Read more

Walking Ravello

Image
Ravello was founded in the 5th century as a shelter against Barbarian invasions which marked the end of the Roman Empire.  Between the 9th and 12th centuries it was an important trading power within the maritime Republic of Amalfi.  In 1086 Pope Victor lll separated Ravello from Amalfi making it a Duchy answerable to the Holy See.  In the 12th century the population was 25,000 and most of its major palaces and churches were built during these wealthy times.  In 1137 the Duchy was attacked and destroyed by the Republic of Pisa.  After this a demographic and economic decline set in and it never recovered to its former glory.  Today the population is around 3,000 permanent residents and the town is almost entirely dedicated to tourism. We are about a 10 minute walk from the town center (1,355 steps) which is quite easy on the way down as we are apartment is higher up the mountain than the town.  But it is a slog to come back up, especially after a l...
Read more