January 2015 Blog
Monday 26th to Saturday 31st January 2015
Monday we looked at a couple more apartments. The first was in St Paul’s Bay and was very nice but the bedrooms backed onto the main road, so are too noisy. The second was in XimXija. It was huge and strange but had fantastic views; it’s too far off the beaten track, though. Vegetable soup for dinner.
Tuesday we went to Sliema and on the bus there we saw a run-over pedestrian being treated by an ambulance team. We viewed an apartment that had amazing views across the bay to Valetta. Although the views were stunning, the apartment was way too small. Blackened chicken and chips for dinner.
Wednesday we had success flat hunting! We went for a second viewing of a penthouse apartment in St Paul’s Bay. We had viewed it a few weeks ago and discounted it as too large but having looked at quite a few properties we realise how well it compares. It directly faces the sea and has a large terrace running the width of the property with 180° views across the sea to St Paul’s Island. There are two sets of double glass doors onto the terrace from the living and dining areas and a glass door out from the kitchen area, so we can see the sea from there too. There are three bedrooms and an office, so plenty of room for us to work and play! It’s a lovely apartment and we have paid a small deposit to secure it while we wait for contracts to be drawn up. Another bonus is that it is quite near the good fish shop so for dinner we had pan fried salmon with green beans and sliced potatoes cooked with stock and onions.
Thursday I went for a hike and Sam went to her art class in Mosta. I paid the first month’s rent, the deposit and the agents fee for the new flat (ouch!). We worked, studied, cooked and painted and ate chilli for dinner.
Friday more working and walking. The weather was unusually grey, so outdoors really wasn’t calling to us for a change. I eat apples, oranges, bananas and grapefruits every day but now I am also eating a lot of seedless green grapes. They are fantastic – huge and juicy and sweet, and the skins aren’t at all chewy. I’ve seen recipes like Veronique sauce that call for peeled grapes and I’ve always thought life is too short for that. But now I understand. The grapes here are so big you could peel them very quickly and easily. Left over chilli for dinner.
Saturday Sam and I went for a long (time rather than distance) walk all around the St Paul’s Bay area, checking out the shops and restaurants there. I bought a new knapsack and Sam bought a ceramic plate to mix her watercolours on. Actually, it is a plate for serving snails on – 19 hollows on a normal size dinner plate. We strolled along the promenades taking in the views across the water. The horizon is still full of huge tankers and container ships sheltering from the stiff south-easterlies. But the south-easterlies mean it’s lovely and warm and we are sheltered from the worst of them on this side of the island. There are benches along the promenades and we stopped occasionally to soak up the warm sunshine. St Paul’s Bay is a haven of peace compared to touristy Bugibba.
Now, I must tell you about Portobello. It is an Italian restaurant situated on the ground floor of the building where our new apartment will be – that’s why we tried it. Reserving a table by phone was a bit of a challenge as none of their staff speak proper English and “Rafferty” was way beyond explaining. Anyway, I established that the restaurant is actually divided into two, the restaurant itself and a pizzeria. I booked a table in the pizzeria. So far we haven’t found anywhere in the north of the Island that does decent pizzas. One thing we are not keen on is restaurants that try to do everything – Asian, pizzas, Mediterranean, American, you name it, all under one roof. Well, Portobello Pizzeria is the opposite of that. The menu is on one page – 10 pizzas and that’s it. No amuse bouche, no starters, no side orders, just 10 pizzas. They have a wood fired oven. You order your pizza, you watch as it gets made to order, it goes into the oven where you can watch it cook and 2 minutes later you are served.
We smile at my father’s tendency to claim that each new tasty meal he has is the best ever; that’s the best lamb I’ve ever had, that’s the best chicken I’ve ever had, that’s the best beef I’ve ever had – you get the picture. I don’t want to fall into that trap but I have to say I cannot remember when I last had a better pizza than we did tonight – it was FANTASTIC! The crust was slightly charred, the topping well balanced, the seasoning of fresh herbs spot on, the ingredients great quality and not too much cheese and it had a lovely hint of wood smoke. It wasn’t perfect – it was a tad soggy in the middle and it needed salt – but it was delicious and I can’t wait to have another! This is a great result. We had begun to despair of finding a great pizza in this area and now we have and, praise the Lord, it’s right under out feet!
Monday 19th to Sunday 25th January 2015
Monday we did our fortnightly big supermarket shop – how exciting! The weather was changeable and is forecast to stay that way all week but we are both snowed under with work and studying, so that’s okay. Chewy rib eye steak with delicious roasted potatoes, onions, peppers and carrots for dinner. After dinner I went for my usual walk. It was dead calm, the sea flat and unmoving, a flawless mirror to the stars above. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees or called upon a blade of grass. There were no cars or people or sounds of barking dogs, only the tap, tap, tap of my flip-flops to break the silence. Occasionally buses passed by guiltily, noisy intruders in my Omega world. (You’ve guessed it; I’m reading Jane Austen again.)
Tuesday was showery. I took a break from studies and left Sam in peace to make a long business call. I visited a shop that has thousands of second-hand DVDs priced at €1 each and I found four worth buying. By pure coincidence, two have Scarlett Johansson in them. I dropped into Charles Gretch, an up market shop selling a small selection of fine foods and a large selection of fine wines. I’m on the wagon at the moment as part of my get healthy drive, but I’ve earmarked a couple of wines I’ll be back for before too long. I went to Miracles, a bar/café/restaurant in Bugibba Square and sat under a gas heater, sipping a cappuccino (me, not the gas heater) reading my Kindle. Very civilised. Blackened chicken (we brought our own blend of blackening spice with us to Malta) and salad for dinner. I walked for over an hour after dinner. The temperature is perfect for that; you can really get a move on without overheating.
Wednesday I took a few hours off in the afternoon as the weather was perfect but is forecast to break soon with rain, winds and thunderstorms on their way! I put a plaster on my heel, donned my trainers and hit the road. I followed the coast to Ximxija then backtracked to St Paul’s Bay, headed inland and back home via the Qawra peninsula, about 10 kilometres in all. The bay looked beautiful today with lots of boats bobbing at anchor. Fishermen whiled away the afternoon, seemingly happy not to catch anything. Many ships were barely visible on the far horizon. At night their lights twinkle like distant cats-eyes. I bought a banana for my lunch (10p) and a sack of 11 blood oranges (£1.80) for later. For dinner we had lamb chops for the first time since coming to Malta. I found them chewy but Sam liked them. Mind you, I’m not really into meat unless it’s slow cooked or minced.
Thursday morning the thunderstorms arrived as forecast but that didn’t put Sam off going to Mosta for her art class. Other than that we spent the day working and studying. The only excitement was a minor car crash down the road but that’s nothing unusual. I made roasted vegetable risotto for dinner, still one of our favourites (and vegetarian too).
Friday it rained all day! I didn’t get out but Sam bundled up and went to her art class. I built a new website from scratch using 3 different programming languages so I am feeling pretty smug! The fridge was bare so it was pizza for dinner.
Saturday we went to Valetta, a bit later than planned as it was pouring first thing. We visited the Phonecia Hotel (a grand hotel in the old, traditional style) to view their exhibition of Caruana Dingli paintings – he is Malta’s most renowned artist, long-dead now but still revered in these parts. I quite like some of them, mostly scenes of life as it was in Malta in the early 20th century. He taught art to my maternal grandmother in the 1930s. The hotel was deathly quiet. We asked to see a room. We were kept waiting for ages, then sent to the 4th floor to meet a concierge who didn’t turn up, so we gave up; pretty bad service from a hotel that charges rack rates from €350 a night. The hotel has a small lawn outside, the first lawn we have seen in Malta.
We had coffee at Charles Gretch, a very nice up-market café on Republic Street. They serve coffee with a little, good quality chocolate, my first chocolate for a few weeks and boy did it taste good!
For dinner we went to Lovage (what do you mean, again?!) and it was great as usual. Sam had ravioli stuffed with lamb and served in a red wine jus followed by a huge rib eye steak. I had fish cakes followed by pan fried John Dory with a beurre blanc, then sticky toffee pudding. They served an unusual mix of roasted vegetables – Jerusalem artichokes, pumpkin, green beans and courgettes. We washed everything down with a delicious bottle of Barberra. Eating out doesn’t get much better than this. The restaurant has a lovely atmosphere. It was full – 52 covers – and we were the only non-locals there. The menu is not too extensive but they always have loads of specials and everything is cooked fresh. We reckon you won’t go far wrong whatever you choose.
Sunday we cleaned then I went to the fish shop while Sam cleaned some more. I went out with my camera in the afternoon but it started to rain so we worked instead. For dinner I had a fabulous pan fried tuna steak with pilau rice; Sam had a baked sea bream with fennel and roasted veggies.
Monday 12th to Sunday 18th January 2015
Monday was all about hard work and no play. The flat smelled wonderful while we worked though, as I made a vegetable Mulligatawny soup for our dinner.
Tuesday we woke up to a perfect day, one of the best since we arrived in Malta. I put on my old Lowa walking boots for the first time in years. It was like meeting an old friend who I hadn’t seen for a long time and it brought back many happy memories of the miles we walked together through the Swiss alps over the years. Only trouble is, my feet have changed even if the boots haven’t! My feet started to blister after a couple of hours. I walked from Ximxija to St Paul’s Island and back. I had been smart enough to pack a pair of flip-flops, so I swapped the boots for them as soon as I reached pavement. I got 1 photo worth publishing out of 37, so that’s okay. For dinner Sam had left over mulligatawny soup and I had fish fingers and chips.
Wednesday my feet were blistered after the previous days walk so I am full time in flip flops again. We took the bus to Valetta in the evening but got off in Mosta and took a later bus because the first bus driver was so awful. We don’t know if he was drunk or falling asleep or both but he was constantly swerving to avoid parked cars and doing emergency stops because he hadn’t realised the cars in front had stopped. We met Ian in Valetta and had dinner at Trabuxu again and it was great as always. Sam had pan fried rabbits livers with lentils followed by spaghetti vongole, Ian had Carpaccio then lamb chops and ice cream and I had a spinach and asparagus vol-au-vent followed by a lamb shank and chocolate and orange torte. All washed down with a Laurenti red wine – yummy!
Thursday Sam went to her art class. I started some refresher/new training on HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and PHP which I think will be pretty much a full-time endeavour for the next couple of weeks. As I set off on my walk today, my left flip-flop split between my toes. I have a spare pair but finding a decent replacement pair this time of year could be a challenge as the shops are still carrying their winter stock. We didn’t have time to cook so it was pizza night again!
Friday was all work and no play again. Sam went to her art class and I cooked us a delicious lentil and vegetable biryani for dinner.
Saturday we got the bus to Valetta and then the ferry to Birgu to meet Ian. We sat on his boat for a while shooting the breeze then went for lunch at Don Berto’s. Sam and Ian shared mussels to start then Sam had a salad of mozzarella and Parma ham (as thick as a leather bookmark) and Ian had a gluten free penne dish. I had pasta parcels stuffed with telagio and pears and served with a walnut cream sauce. We washed it down with a bottle of local white wine and it was all pretty good.
Sunday morning I booked flights and a hotel for Lauren’s trip here in June, which was exciting, then did some online shopping. After that, I studied some more. Sam and I managed a short walk in the afternoon but the prom was crowded as is usual on Sunday afternoons and Sam’s feet were sore so we didn’t stay out long. We ordered a take away from Peking for dinner which was okay but nothing special.
Monday 5th to Sunday 11th January 2015
Monday brought summer weather back again and I was wishing I had put on sun cream for my walk. We got back into our proper working routine again after the disruptions of Christmas and New Year. I had an apple for breakfast and a grapefruit and an orange for lunch. They are so juicy that eating them is a messy job. You’re best to wear old clothes or wear a bib and be prepared to have a shower afterwards! Dinner was a plate full of roasted veg (aubergines, courgettes, onions and peppers) on butternut squash with mozzarella. Sam cooked it all. She also roasted fresh beetroot but I am not a fan – I prefer the vinegary stuff from a jar! I gave the after-dinner walk a miss as the soles of my feet are a bit bruised from my marathon walk on Saturday.
Tuesday we met Matthew Buttigieg from estate agent Frank Salt and viewed five apartments in St Pauls Bay, Bugibba and Qawra of various sizes and rentals. We didn’t see what we wanted, so we will keep on looking. We went to Benjawan for dinner – we haven’t been there before – a Thai restaurant just off Bugibba Square. The service was friendly and efficient and the food was nice – we shared vegetable spring rolls to start, then Sam had a chicken Thai green curry with boiled rice and I had a Mossiman chicken curry with egg fried rice. It was pretty good, really, but with a cheap wine came to EUROs 60 which is pretty pricy, especially since we shared a starter and didn’t have dessert. It was good to try somewhere new, though, but it wasn’t worth the price given the great food we can get at Lovage and elsewhere for a similar price.
I’m a bit worried about the first knuckle of the index finger of my left hand. It is visibly swollen and a bit sore and I don’t think it is appreciating my guitar playing (another one to two hours today). I hope it’s not arthritis – I’M STILL YOUNG, FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
Wednesday I went to Sliema to view a couple of apartments while Sam worked. It was a beautiful day, the sort that makes you feel glad to be alive – blue sky, warm sunshine, just a breath of wind and scents of the sea. The official air temperature was about 16° but in the sun it was well into the 20s. I made a point of putting sun cream on before my power walk this morning and it was a good job too. Anyway, back to the Sliema apartments; they weren’t suitable because although they were nice enough in themselves, they had no useable outside space. The challenge with apartment hunting here is that you never know what is going to be available from one day to the next. We have decided to stop looking for the moment as we now have a pretty good feel for what we can get for our budget. The risk in waiting longer is that we will have less time to look before we have to vacate where we are by the end of April and a suitable apartment may not be available then. But, if worse comes to worse, we can always do a short-term let while we continue to look after April. In the meantime, the agents know what we are after and will call us if they find something suitable. I had an apple for breakfast and spicy parsnip soup for lunch. For dinner we defrosted a vegan chilli that I had made when Sally was here and had that with tortilla chips and cheese. For dessert I had a grapefruit and Sam had an orange. A really healthy vegetarian day!
Thursday the sea was flat calm and crystal clear and the snorkelers and scuba divers were out in force. The sea temperature is down to 17° now so most of them were wearing wet suits. A banana for breakfast then Sam and I went to Mosta first thing, passing a broken down bus on the way. That’s something that hasn’t happened to us yet! Sam went to her art class and I went to a large car dealer that sells Mercs, Renaults and Dacias. We are trying to work out whether or not it will be worth our while bringing Sam’s car here. Large petrol engines with high emissions suffer punitive registration taxes here and we would have to pay EUROs 7,500 registration tax if we bring her car in. It would cost EUROs 1,000 to ship her car here from the UK plus extra to get it across the Irish Sea, or it would cost even more if I drove it here. Also, road tax starts at EUROs 130pa for diesel engines but for Sam’s car it would be EUROs 1,000pa. The dealer I spoke to said that he wouldn’t accept it as a trade in as it would be difficult to resell. Also, we can buy a good model new car for little more than the value of Sam’s car plus the cost of importing it. The other thing is that you can rent a car here for less than EUROs 10 per day – for a long lease it can be as little as EUROs 5 per day, including all insurances! The jury is out but if we bring Sam’s car here I think we will be letting our hearts rule our heads. After lunch (an apple) we worked then walked along the coast to Kennedy Grove, all very peaceful on a January work day. Pepperoni pizzas for dinner.
Friday morning Sam went to meet Katy, a friend she made a while ago in Sliema but who lives near here in Mellieha. I went for a hike from Golden Bay heading north along the rugged coastline to Anchor Bay. The walk takes a winding route atop high cliffs. The area is exposed and rock strewn and quite barren thanks to the prevailing North East winds. The views are stunning, out to sea, up and down the coast, inland and across the water to Gozo. There are grasses and heathers and many yellow wildflowers that look to my untrained eye very similar to buttercups. You can pretty much choose your own route, though there are fairly well trodden paths in places. Boulders the size of trucks lie haphazardly below the cliffs and out into the sea, as if flung by some careless hand. If Emily Bronte had set Wuthering Heights in Malta, this is where you would find Cathy and Heathcliff. There are no houses or cars or roads or, for that matter, people! I think I saw six people in an hour and a half. There are ruins and abandoned forts and the remains of WW2 shelters along the way and also a few dangerously unstable looking hides where people go to shoot birds from time to time. I passed some trees which are the spit of the Old Men of Injebreck (there is a photo of them in the gallery). Apparently the area is well known for wild bees that love the aromatic plants here – bumble bees, honey bees and carpenter bees and, also, many varieties of butterflies including the swallowtail, red admiral and white butterfly. I was very brave but Sam had assured me beforehand that I should be safe in January!
I wore trainers as it was dry again but that was a bit of a mistake as the walk is over very rocky ground, so thick-soled walking boots would have been kinder to the soles of my feet. Anchor Bay is where Popeye Village is located, a tourist attraction now, but originally built as the set for the Robin Williams movie in the 1980s. I didn’t look around it, though; I will do that with Sam another day. From Anchor Bay I walked along the road to Mellieha Bay on the other side of the island, a couple of Kilometres, if that, to get the bus home. Cultivated fields sweep out on either side of the road here and I saw many farmers tending their crops. They were all using hand tools; not much sign of machinery here and I guess faming is a tough life in this sometimes punishing climate. Strawberries peeked out from under long plastic covers and leafy vegetables waited in orderly rows. Malta manages to produce a lot of fruit and veg, despite its modest size.
Altogether the walk took about two hours, probably about 8 kilometres with all the zigzagging I did. I took 80 photographs and four are good enough to publish, so I’m delighted with that. Food wise, the day went well; an apple for breakfast, a banana after my walk and an orange late afternoon. We didn’t feel like cooking though, so went out to Tagine for dinner. On the way we stopped at Sun City for a quick scoop. Tagine was superb! The room is lovely and the service very attentive almost to the point of being OTT. But the food was the star, as it should be. We had poppadums and pickles as a pre-starter (complimentary), then Sam had onion bhajis and I had harrira, a soup of beef , chickpeas and celery flavoured with cumin and saffron. For mains Sam had chicken tikka masala with a naan and I had chicken karrai with pilau rice. Pudding was Moroccan sweets. We washed it down with a bottle of Valpolicella. All of it delicious and the same price as the Thai restaurant from the other night. No contest. We walked the long way home but the wind had strengthened so we didn’t linger.
Saturday after a banana for breakfast we went and bought sea Breams from the St Paul’s Bay fish shop. Sam bought some snack bars and a moisturiser at the Organic shop – a complete rip off as always! Everything there costs two to three times more than elsewhere for similar products but Sam insists and she is not a woman to be gainsaid! My knee is tender at the moment, so I will knock the hiking on the head for a couple of days. An apple for lunch and a few Saltines (small, square salty crackers) with some cheddar cheese mid-afternoon. A grapefruit too. Dinner was fab. Sam baked the Sea Bream with sliced potatoes, fennel and a little stock and served them with roasted peppers and courgettes. We have a cool bag – an insulated bag with frozen inserts – which means getting the fish from St Paul’s Bay back to home, about a 20 minute walk, isn’t a problem. The St Paul’s Bay fish shop is fantastic with all sorts of strange and not-so-strange looking fish and shellfish. There are several we don’t know. There are huge fish – tuna, swordfish, grouper, wild salmon and goodness knows what else – that they cut steaks off for you, and there is an array of smaller fish labelled with Maltese names that we don’t know. For shellfish they have live mussels, lobsters, various prawns, oysters and clams. In between are calamari and things that look worryingly like road kill! Anyway, we plan to eat a lot more fish from now on.
We, well mainly me, had gotten into the habit of eating chocolate in some form or other every night after dinner but we have knocked that on the head so we are feeling virtuous!
Today was Saturday and my Saturday night after-dinner walks are always a bit livelier than on weekdays. The wind had dropped dramatically. Earlier in the day we had had a push-me pull-me tussle with the wind around every corner but tonight the wind had dropped, although the waves still pounded out a rhythmical thumping against the rocky shore like a Sioux call to arms. As usual, the Aquarium café was busy, though God only knows why, as it has all the ambiance of a busy Monday morning operating theatre. Next door the Café del Mar sat serenely and darkly quiet, far too superior to open in January. And next door to that is Ta Fra Ben booming noisily from some Saturday night act, though I couldn’t see what due to the squash of smokers in the foyer. Around the corner is the reggae bar we like but this time of year transparent drapes hang heavily around its perimeter. For sure they protect its patrons from the elements but it must be like sitting in an isolation ward. Around the headland the Las Vegas-esq Christmas lights have disappeared. I saw a few couples strolling arm-in-arm and also a blonde twenty-something woman in a white hotel dressing gown crying into a mobile phone. But for all that, peace worked its magic and I felt fulfilled as I invariably do on these late night wanderings.
Sunday Sam went to meet a friend for coffee while I went for a walk. We spent much of the day working as it was windy and I wanted to give my knee a rest. I had an apple for breakfast, a grapefruit for lunch and a banana mid-afternoon. For dinner we had piri piri chicken with salad but something there sure upset our stomachs and I had to cut my after dinner walk short.
Today concluded our first week as “nearly vegetarians” so I should recap on how well we did. Let’s see, Tuesday we had Thai chicken curry, Thursday we had pepperoni pizza, Friday Indian chicken curry, Saturday Sea Bream and today piri piri chicken.
I don’t think we are cut out to be vegetarians.
Thursday 1st to Sunday 4th January 2015
Thursday gales blew straight in off the sea, driving fearsome waves crashing onto shore under leaden skies. We went to a café in Bugibba Square for brunch, then watched the waves in St Pauls’ Bay tossing around the boats at anchor like small toys. Sam took 54 photos of the waves pounding the breakwater and rocky shoreline. A couple of young guys swigging cans of lager, and presumably still out from the night before, were playing dare with the waves but, apart from a good soaking, appeared to come to no harm. We trudged home in the rain and Sam discovered that her M&S waterproof jacket isn’t! Roast chicken for dinner with gravy like wallpaper paste, a real Sam special!
Friday I walked to Ximxija. The shoreline in places was littered with debris and huge piles of seaweed from yesterday’s storm. In the harbour near Ximxija a small boat floated upside down, I’m sure not the only victim of the crashing waves. As you walk on the promenade into Ximxija from St Paul’s, the sea is on your right and across the road to the left is a wooded/wild area which gives way to a small car park where the fruit and veg man parks his truck every day selling to locals and visitors alike. Today the place was crawling with armed police, all dressed entirely in black, wearing bullet-proof vests, guns at the ready, peering cautiously into the woods. The police dog unit was there with a Rottweiler and an Alsatian. As I passed by more police cars came screeching to a halt, sirens blaring. I don’t yet know what it was all about but it will no doubt be in the news soon enough. After fresh bread and pate for lunch, Sam and I strolled around Qawra in the afternoon sun. Piping hot bowls of vegetable soup for dinner.
Saturday we bussed to Sliema. I had a delicious strawberry and custard tart for breakfast at French Affaire; Sam had a pea pastizzi. We wandered around and did a bit of shopping but Sam felt queasy and got the bus home before too long. I decided to walk back, probably about 16 kilometres in all. Except that I did jump on a bus at Sweiqi for a short way (about 2 kilometres or so) to get around road works and it turned out to be a dramatic bus ride. I was standing in the aisle about half way back as the bus was full, when I heard a gurgling noise next to me. I looked around and a woman in her 60s sitting nearby was vomiting between her knees, then she rolled onto the floor unconscious. That caused pandemonium. A woman fought her way through the crowd to help, declaring she was a nurse, while the bus driver looked for somewhere to stop. When he did all the passengers, including me, at the front half of the bus got off to give the woman space while we waited for an ambulance to arrive. I noticed that the woman was regaining consciousness as I got off. I also noticed that every passenger except for me was suddenly on their mobile phone! They can’t have all been calling ambulances. I guess they just like a good gossip. Anyway, I walked the rest of the way home and although it was on the roadside pavement, it was the coast road and the sea views were fantastic. We had left over veggie soup for dinner.
Sunday was our last day before we start our nearly vegetarian diet for January. Nearly vegetarian means we will eat vegetarian foods when we eat in but eat non-vegetarian when we eat out.
I think we will be eating out a lot in January.
So, we started the day with bacon sandwiches for brunch. But it got better – tomato soup for lunch and lentil stew for dinner, very tasty too.