March 2015 Blog
Monday 30th to Tuesday 31st March 2015
Monday we unpacked, sorted, arranged and generally settled in. Melita, the local phone company, called to install our internet, TV and phone. I did another supermarket run and we met our landlady to go through a few things and late afternoon we drove to Naxxar for Sam to have more physio. After getting back we made some phone calls and it got quite late so we had frozen pizzas for dinner. We always knew these few moving days would disrupt our routines and we are looking forward to getting back to some decent fresh home-cooked meals. The big thing we have noticed today is the noise – there is a force 8 gale blowing and the whistling wind sounds like a soundtrack to a horror movie!
Tuesday morning we drove to Homemate which is a big store selling household goods, electronics, tools, garden furniture and just about anything else you can imagine needing for your home. We bought a DVD player and a bunch of things for our kitchen. Our new flat is now pretty well equipped. In the afternoon we cleaned the old flat. We have enjoyed our time there but both felt ready to move on. For dinner we had fish fingers and chips – I told you we were looking forward to decent fresh home-cooked meals!
Monday 23rd to Sunday 29th March 2015
Monday we went to Naxxar so that Sam could see our physiotherapist. After that we had coffee on the terrace at Luna, a café/restaurant at the Palazzo Parizzio. It is a lovely spot with walled gardens and we can see why it is a popular wedding venue. The restaurant is quite upmarket and fairly pricy and we are told the food is excellent. They also do afternoon tea and it’s difficult to imagine a more peaceful setting. Naxxar (pronounced Nashah) is an inland town with a great ambiance and many nice shops, cafes and restaurants near the main church. It is very much a residents’ town without a tourist in sight and we look forward to going back and exploring it some more.
The weather was perfect so we both did walks in the afternoon. It was Sam’s turn to get a blister, the price she paid for trying out new shoes without socks. I did my usual round trip to Ximxija and back. For dinner we had blackened chicken which we bought from our local supermarket, Trollees. Normally we buy fresh boneless chicken thighs but they only had frozen ones of those so we got fresh legs and wings instead. They tasted great because of the blackening spice but the chicken quality was awful – grey meat, dry, grainy and chewy. It’s what I image prison food to be like. And to continue the bad food theme, I had some crackers and cheese to make up for not being able to eat the chicken. But the crackers were awful too! They were Crich salted crackers but they were dry, too dense and pretty much tasteless. They clog up your mouth and I only managed to swallow them with the help of a mug of coffee. Looking on the bright side, at least it’s easier to diet if the food is rubbish! All I had to eat today was a banana, a grapefruit, a mouthful of chicken, a small bowl of lettuce and some crackers and cheese. And I walked for nearly three hours today. On my after dinner walk I passed Luzzu, a large waterfront restaurant in Qawra that has seating for 320. It only had two customers! I’m guessing they didn’t go there for the atmosphere.
Tuesday I booked our car hire for this coming weekend’s flat move. In the afternoon I went to a dentist in Sliema who was recommended to us by our physiotherapist (I wasn’t happy with the dentist I saw last week in St Paul’s Bay who was pretty keen to take my broken tooth out and said it couldn’t be crowned). My new dentist took the opposite view and said the tooth was viable, shouldn’t be removed, could be crowned and in the meantime was well worth trying to fix with a filling! He had to cut away some of the gum and showed me the piece of it hanging off a pair of tweezers – cool! My outing ended in my second bus crash since coming to Malta. The driver misjudged a corner and slapped the back end against a wall and we skidded several feet across the road – also cool! My mouth was sore so I had tomato soup and rice pudding for dinner.
Wednesday was gorgeous! I went for a 2 hour hike before knuckling down to work. We are getting well into the local strawberry season and they are big, plump and juicy fruits, sweet rather than sharp. We are running the freezer down ahead of our move so for dinner we defrosted chilli con carne.
Thursday Sam went to a friend’s house in Naxxar for lunch after art class, so she was out most of the day. The weather was showery so I stayed in and worked. That evening we met Ian in Valetta at the Cettina Café on Merchant Street for a couple of beers then went to Trabuxu for dinner. It was fantastic, as always. Sam had crispy pork belly with brandy-steeped prunes and lambs lettuce, followed by spaghetti with squid ink. I started with a gorgonzola, pear and walnut salad, for my main I had roasted salmon with cauliflower cheese and I finished with fig ice cream and chocolate and orange ice cream.
Friday I spent much of the day training on WordPress. Also, we packed loads of stuff ahead of our move tomorrow. We met our new landlady and collected our keys. The flat looks fantastic and we can’t wait to get in. To celebrate, we had a couple of drinks at Miracles and then went to eat at Sun City – Sam had fish and chips and I had chicken curry and chips. It is good honest pub grub and quite cheap and eating there could become a fairly regular routine, once or twice a month.
Saturday saw the start of moving weekend. I picked up our hire car – an estate that has seen better days but it does the job – and we started moving. Two trips with lots of full cases and bags and a trip to JB Stores to buy bedding and other household items. The flat looks classy; we feel like we have moved into a luxury hotel. A lot of the furnishings and the curtains and blinds and the TV, hob and drier are new, so we expect some teething problems, but haven’t found any yet. We had a snack at Pash in St Paul’s to keep us going – soup and sandwiches and large cappuccinos. Pash is a slightly quirky café that serves a lot of health foods, vegetarian and vegan foods and gluten-free foods. That night we rolled the boat out and went to Lovage, superb as always. I had wild mushroom soup then peppered lamb tenderloins on a pea puree with roasted vegetables. Sam had scallops with a prawn bisque risotto then tagliatelle with beef tenderloins and truffle cream sauce – pretty darn rich!
Sunday we made another couple of trips with stuff from the old flat. I also did a supermarket run. I’m really enjoying driving here. The driving culture is completely different from that which we are used to. Basically you turn straight in front of oncoming traffic, pull out from parking spaces without looking and drive onto roundabouts without stopping; but somehow it seems to work because that is what is expected. The road surfaces are horrendous. We knew they were bad from our walks and from our bus journeys but it is only when you drive yourself that you realise just how terrible the roads are. I have to say that they are as bad as, if not worse than, the Isle of Man’s roads! We are now having serious second thoughts about bringing Sam’s car here. I know we vacillate on this a lot but the truth is that the roads don’t favour nice cars, the road surfaces would punish the car and a soft top is not a good idea in this climate. It would suffer from the dust and the heat, keeping it clean would be a challenge (we don’t have a hose let alone a garage) and anyway, when it’s hot you want the air-con on and when it’s cold you want the heating on! Maybe we will just hire a car for a few days every couple of weeks. That would be cheaper than owning one anyway. For dinner we popped downstairs to the Portobello Pizzeria. We both had Diavola Pizzas and they tasted delicious. Are they the best pizzas we have ever tasted? Yep! The pizza chef doesn’t really speak any English. I asked him his name and he said, “Cicero, just call me Frank”. We’ll happily call him God if only he keeps making pizzas this good.
Monday 16th to Sunday 22nd March 2015
Monday delivered the worst day’s weather since we arrived in Malta – a force eight gale, driving rain and grey skies. It was still reasonably warm but what was unusual was that the bad weather lasted from Sunday evening until the wee hours of Tuesday morning without respite. Even so, we did the supermarket run without getting too wet. For the most part it was a hard day’s work. For dinner we had belly pork and pork ribs, all pre-marinated by the supermarket butcher. Verdict? The belly pork was tasty; the ribs were tasteless!
Tuesday the skies started to clear and the forecast is for sunny weather for the foreseeable future. Our project today was to investigate internet and phone options for our new flat and I think we now know what we want. Why do phone companies offer so many dizzying options? We all pretty much want the same thing so I guess the aim is to confuse us sufficiently that we end up subscribing for things we don’t really want or need. Sam was out most of the day with meetings in Sliema and I was full on busy with board meetings and time raced by. I went to check out BBQs and the guy in the main shop I went into tried to persuade me that if I want a real charcoal BBQ I should buy a gas one and lay charcoal bricks in it. Apparently that’s what everyone does. Yeah right. It is amazing the lengths some people will go to to try to get a sale. I was polite but I don’t think he expects my business any time soon. We had absolutely delicious piri piri chicken with baked beans for dinner.
Wednesday I went to the Adventure Camping shop in Birkikara who are the local North Face dealers to see about getting my boots fixed. The guy there took lots of photos of them for their warranty department. I went on to Valetta and visited the Women of Malta photography exhibition at the Malta Chamber of Commerce. The photos were of mixed quality, some quite good but some very poorly composed. I then went to Mriehel and visited The Atrium, a very up-market department store specialising in home furnishings. I also went to Homemate, a bit like B&Q on steroids. Finally, I went to Forestalls, a cross between B&Q and PC World. I was specifically looking for BBQs. The response I got in all the stores was the same; only a nutter would want to buy a BBQ this time of year and they won’t be in stock before May! I bussed on to Rabat and on the way we came across a bus shelter that was on fire or, more specifically, the seat in the bus shelter was on fire with smoke billowing across the road. The bus driver grabbed the bus’s fire extinguisher and put the fire out quite quickly. He was very nonchalant about it as if that sort of thing happens all the time.
Once home I grabbed a bowl of pea and ham soup then Sam and I went to Melita to sort out our internet, phone and TV for the new apartment. We stopped for a coffee at Miracles in Bugibba Square. The sun was shining and there were many tourists about so the square was buzzing. That evening we tried a new Indian restaurant, Garam Masala. It was mixed. The poppadums were weird (small and dark), the raita was spicy instead of soothing, the onion bajis were nice, the chicken makhani was strange, the naan bread was excellent and the chicken biryani was overpriced (EUROs 15 for a plate of rice with a few bits of chicken in it). We won’t be rushing back. I also broke a tooth so need to see a dentist. Tomorrow is a public holiday – St Joseph’s Day – so that will have to wait until Friday.
Thursday I had to abandon my walk after about five kilometres as my toes are blistered. We worked and had pizza for dinner, which wasn’t a great idea as I can only eat on one side of my mouth until I see a dentist.
Friday I visited a dentist and the long and the short of it is that I will visit him again next Wednesday to have what’s left of my wisdom tooth filled. He’s not sure if a filling will work but it’s worth a try. If it fails, it will be bye, bye tooth. Sam went to art class in the morning but missed her evening class as she had a sharp intermittent pain in her back. Ibuprofen and a heat rub have helped, though. We had Harrira for dinner and it was superb. Harrira is a Moroccan soup loaded with beef (should be lamb), celery, chickpeas and tomatoes and flavoured with cinnamon, cumin, saffron, coriander, ginger and chillies.
Saturday we went to Valetta to meet Ian and Robin, his girlfriend visiting from Tennessee. We tried not to talk about banjos or Obama. We had lunch at a restaurant called, believe it or not, Badass Burgers. As you would guess, most of the menu there is for burgers of all shapes and sizes. They were better than average but I expected more from a restaurant that specialises in them. I would have expected a BBQ/grilled flavour and a less dense burger. To be honest, I would probably have enjoyed a Big Mac and fries just as much and for a tenth of the price! That evening we had left over Harrira for dinner and loved it.
Sunday I went for a walk in my flip-flops to give the blisters on my little toes a rest and, guess what, I got a blister on the inside of my big toe! Sam has started to organise and pack in preparation for our move next weekend. I worked and had a very productive day. That evening we met some friends for a quick drink in Fat Harry’s, a pub just off Bugibba Square. It’s not great, a bit like an old-fashioned, down-market, grubby 1970s British pub and it’s safe to say we won’t be rushing back. The shame of it is, though, it has good potential and if they gave it a darn good clean and installed new toilets (the Gents is revolting), it could be really nice. We had planned to meet at Miracles but it was packed with twenty-somethings listening to ear-crushingly loud party music that you could hear half a mile away. It was just as noisy when I walked past it at about 10.30 the other night. We pity anyone who lives anywhere near there. We finally finished off the Harrira for dinner!
Monday 9th to Sunday 15th March 2015
Monday we worked mostly. I went for a walk during a break in otherwise showery weather, working out the one way systems around our new flat. We had tuna steaks for dinner, quite chewy and disappointing on this occasion.
Tuesday Sam had an appointment in Sliema so while she was tied up I wandered around The Point. The Sliema to Valetta ferry was suspended due to bad weather so we bussed on to Valetta. Sam collected her Residents Card. Apparently mine isn’t ready yet as my photos weren’t good enough – in other words they have either spoiled or lost them! I kept Sam company while she ate lunch in Soul Food. I just had a cappuccino. I had to send the first one back as it was cold. I really don’t like it in there. The room is small with too many tables and it has a low ceiling, so it feels claustrophobic. They haven’t got a clue how to make coffee and their food is poor. Most of the menu is for patties made with beans or lentils served with dried up flat breads. I asked about the cheese plate and it is just that, a plate of cheese, no bread in sight. But Sam likes it there for some reason! I waited until I got home and ate a banana for my lunch. For dinner we had blackened chicken, fries and a crisp salad, delicious, and boy, could we teach Soul Food a thing or two.
Wednesday I was up with the larks and off to Valetta. A quick cappuccino in the Coffee Garden then I dropped off my new photos for my Residents Card application. I visited Valletta food market. There are about 10 butchers and two fishmongers on the ground floor. Most of the units on the upper floor seemed abandoned but there are a couple of fruit & veg merchants and a couple of delis. Sam would be in anti-pasta heaven! I went into the church adjacent to the new parliament building. It has an amazing domed ceiling with grey and off-white frescos studded with gold. It is the sort of thing you can look at for ages (well, until you get a stiff neck at least). Part of the Upper Barakka Gardens is roped off with work going on. The bus ride home was interesting. Eleven o’clock in the morning and some drunken 30ish Brit got on, swigging lager and talking annoyingly to those around him. I moved seats. He passed out, spilled a can of beer all over the floor and when he got off the bus he urinated all over the wall by the bus stop. We are so proud to be British.
We went to Peking for dinner – it was awful – stodgy, cold noodles and soggy pork balls. I complained and they halved the bill, effectively meaning that we paid for our drinks but not our food. That’s all very well, but we won’t be eating there again. I don’t get restaurants like that. They know when they are serving the food that it is complete crap but they serve it anyway and then when you complain they don’t charge you for it. Why don’t they just cook it properly in the first place – it’s not hard – then you will happily pay for it, and you will come back again. After all, if a restaurant is to survive and prosper here, it can’t just depend on serving garbage to tourists, it must look after the year round residents too. The people who run these restaurants take stupidity to a new level, relatives of Baldrick perhaps.
Thursday the weather was fab and I went for a 2 ¾ hours hike. I stopped to have a look around the Jardinland Garden Centre – everything looks good quality so we now know where to go for our herbs and plant pots etc. Sam went to her art class and loved it as always. Dinner was delicious – roasted sea bream with roasted tomatoes and potatoes.
Friday we met Ian for lunch at Miracles (a toasted BLT for me, bruschetta for Sam and a cheese omelette for Ian) and it was very good and cheap to boot. After lunch Ian and I went for a hike so that I could show him the area. That evening, Sam and I went to Sun City, our local pub that serves food on Friday evenings. Sam had fish and chips and I had chicken curry and chips, really tasty and only EUROs 6.50 each. Some friends of ours were doing their double act there – he plays acoustic guitar and sings and she adds harmonies – it was good fun and, apart from when Sam joined in, it was in tune too! I think Sam should stick to art.
Saturday we met our landlady-to-be at the new flat. It now looks very bright and clean with a fresh coat of paint on all the walls and ceilings. The refurbishment is progressing well so it looks hopeful that we will get the keys a few days earlier than expected. In the afternoon I hiked around experimenting with different exposure settings on my camera and got one photo out of 81 good enough to publish. For dinner we had baked sea bass with rice pilaf – yum yum! I walked for over an hour after dinner; that’s always entertaining on a Saturday night!
Sunday we went to Mdina for a look around. We realised that was our first visit there so far this year! It is an amazing place and we also enjoyed visiting Rabat which is adjacent to Mdina. Rabat is festooned with decorations and fancy lights in preparation for St Joseph’s Day which falls this Thursday and is a big public holiday here. For dinner we had Alberto’s Quattro Formaggi thin and crispy frozen pizzas with added pepperami and they were pretty good (but not as good as Goodfella’s pepperoni pizzas).
Tuesday 3rd to Sunday 8th March 2015
Tuesday we returned to Malta, both EasyJet flights on time and smooth and our six suitcases all arriving safely. At Malta airport we had to get on a bus to transfer to the arrivals terminal but, the terminal was no more than 100 metres from the plane! It would have been much quicker to walk. Dinner was roasted chicken with roasted veggies.
Wednesday I started the day with an apple. Sounds simple enough. But I have to tell you, there is nothing simple about it. It was a Pink lady. I had bought it the day before from the Qawra fruit and veg shop. It was large. To look at, it was a sort of variegated pink and green. So far so good. You may be thinking, “That’s no different than we get all the time”. How wrong you are! As I peeled it the juices ran down my fingers. I had to eat it holding a paper towel. With each bite I released a torrent of juice that burst in my mouth, ran down my chin. It was sweet and sharp and crisp and fresh and smelt like summer meadows. And the texture was crisp and soft; it dissolved in my mouth and I cannot tell you how fantastic it was to eat a perfect apple. For the last two weeks I have had Marks & Spencer’s apples (not bad but not great) and Shoprite’s (complete garbage, scabby, dried up old fruits that come from goodness-only-knows-where). The real difference is that apples here make me want to eat fruit; the apples in the Isle of Man make me want to eat biscuits. No wonder I lose weight in Malta and put it on in the Isle of Man!
We have been away for only two weeks but our balcony has turned into a menagerie! Sam discovered a bat sleeping there this morning. It twitches a lot but doesn’t move much more than that. We also had a grasshopper/cricket/locust sort of a thing on the balcony railing – two inches long at least. And to cap it all, a spider. But I saved the day with that one; I flicked it across to the neighbours. The locust thing left of its own accord. The bat hangs around like an annoying relative at a Christmas open house. I wish the bloody thing would die or bugger off.
Anyway, to nicer things. The weather toady was FAN-TAS-TIC. This is the weather that makes Malta such a wonderful place to live. The sun was beating down from an impossibly blue sky. I lathered on the sun tan cream, hauled on my new walking boots (North Face boots that I bought from Millets in the Isle of Man) and hiked to Xemxija. I had a cappuccino and hiked back. It is a huge relief to have finally found comfortable hiking boots.
It is amazing how much everything has changed in just two weeks. Before I went away, in February, we had lots of nice days. When I went walking I would seek out the sun and be reminded that spring was just around the corner. But today it was hot with only the faintest breath of wind and as I walked, I sought out the shade; it now seems summer is just around the corner. And as if to prove it we have gazillions of English tourists wandering around in ill-fitting shorts and T-shirts. Lovely!
Is it possible that Mother Nature’s colours can move you to tears? I confess I felt close to that today. The blues were nothing short of astonishing, the sky above almost pressing its vibrancy upon me, insistent and determined. And the sea was shouting for attention – look at me, see how beautiful I can be, soak up my colours, let me caress you. How can water be so clear? It was as if I could reach down and touch the sea bed without dampening my arm, the water serving only to magnify the light. Such beauty is impossible to describe; I can only pay lip service to it.
There is a great amount of work going on in Qawra and Bugibba. Waterfronts are being cleared, restaurants are being refurbished and woodwork is being repainted. The sense of anticipation is palpable – the main tourist season is just around the corner, and all the money-makers are out preparing for it.
Finally, I should tell you that we had stuffed baked peppers for dinner, with sweet potatoes wedges. Delicious!
Thursday the kitchen light bulb packed in. Trouble is, it’s a circular fluorescent tube with myriad wires, so not something I can replace. Joseph, our landlord, came and replaced it in a jiffy. We had a busy day working and cleaning and Sam went to her art class in Mosta.
That evening we met Ian for dinner at Mareluna. Boy, was it good again. I had parmigiana di melanzane to start; exquisitely presented and delicious. I followed that with pasta rolled with ham and cheese and baked with béchamel. For dessert, home-made tiramisu. Sam started with bruschetta then she and Ian shared a John Dory sautéed in white wine and herbs. They said it was good and so it should be – the fish alone cost 70 EUROs! Like me, Sam finished with tiramisu.
Friday was a bit showery but I still managed to fit in my morning power walk. The flat smelled wonderful as I made a cauldron of chilli con carne that should keep us going for a couple of days.
Saturday started showery but soon brightened. The bat is no more. It died yesterday and today Sam scooped it up and put it in the bin. I did a 12 to 13 kilometre hike to Ximxija, around St Paul’s and through Qawra. I took 66 photos and one was good enough to publish, an average result. We worked, chatted a lot, watched a couple of episodes of Nashville and ate left over chilli con carne with potato wedges for dinner. I bought a huge sack of potatoes today, probably 100 odd medium sized potatoes, all for the grand price of EUROs 1.75! After dinner I went for a 40 minutes fast walk. The moon was full, bright and heavy, an authoritarian figure impassively watching the Saturday night shenanigans below. Garam Masala, a new Indian restaurant was humming, Duo was packed but the poor old Boathouse only had four diners. I wonder what they are doing wrong. The main impression you take away from a Saturday night walk around Bugibba is of karaoke at its worst – ridiculously loud discordant shouting forced out through a mist of lager and whiskey. The punters all seem to applaud enthusiastically though, so maybe it’s me who is missing the point.
Sunday started bright and warm. We wandered to Bugibba Square and sat outside in the sun, sipping cappuccinos and people watching. After that we strolled along the promenade to St Paul’s Bay. There was a hustle and bustle as is typical for most Sundays. Couples walked hand-in-hand, family groups hurried to claim restaurant reservations, babies were pushed and children were scolded and dogs were walked. Cats lay between parked cars and on pavements, soaking up the sun and largely ignoring everything and everyone. Groups of motorcyclists passed by noisily, shattering the peacefulness. You can spot the tourists a mile away with their pale faces, white legs, baggy shorts and too-tight t-shirts. We had spaghettini with pesto Genovese for dinner.