Phobias and Philias

Sunday March 5th –

I crawled out of bed in hopes of being able to enjoy my coffee outside, but it was a chilly, albeit very pretty morning.

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Coffee was enjoyed from inside, looking outside😉👌🏻

The house was STILL cold.
Mike called the owners and as it turns out, the air conditioner was also the heating system, so we needed to have that turned on 🙄
Not long after learning that information and putting it to use, a few bursts of heated air began to be felt and it was lovely 😬

Eggs and bacon were considered for breakfast but Mom and Mike couldn’t get the stove started so instead we all began getting ourselves ready to go out.

The actual owner stopped by for a few moments and told us a few more tips and tricks about the place and suggested a place for us to try breakfast.
We hoped it was better than his daughters suggestion the night before 🙈

Off to ‘Mojo’s‘ we went.

It was a little, local restaurant/cafe with a bit of a tropical feel. Retro car wall murals, green table tops and seat cushions and cherry colored woods making up the decor.
I decided to be a little adventurous, ordering a sweet chili and quinoa wrap for breakfast, since when else but when traveling does one get to try new foods?

Mike, predictable as ever (😉) ordered a burger and Mom tried a ham and pesto pizza.

We were all really happy with our choices and the prices were decent as well, making it a better start to our day than the previous day’s, end meal 😜

A flea market was passed and we hurried to look as the sellers were packing up for the day.
An old, iron gate was spotted and its rustic charm was appealing but it was rather heavy. Mike couldn’t resist asking the price and one thing lead to another and suddenly we had an iron gate from Malta in the back seat of the car to try to eventually get to Canada, for the house we do not have 😜😬🙈

We left there and passed a sign for ‘Xerri’s Grotto‘ and a few pictures of stalagmites and stalactites were spotted and looked semi interesting, so we stopped and rang the door buzzer for someone to come show us around and no one appeared. We stepped outside and
a little old lady came walking down from across the street and told us that for 2.50 euros per person, she would take us down into the grotto that her husbands, great-grandfather discovered while digging a well.

I almost didn’t go down.
The tiny little twisting staircase, bringing up all my claustrophobic feelings.
Mom and Mike called me down and I really did not want to go but one can only resist a tour guide and two family members for so long, so the perilous 37 steps down were taken, along with my air supply 😵

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It takes 1000 years for a stalagmite/tite to grow, so obviously, you are not allowed to touch the droplets of water or you’ll cause them to cease growing annnd that’s not cool, no matter how tempting 😬😋

Mike and Mom journeyed further into the grotto with our guide but I stayed put, close to the escape and not going any deeper into more dark, enclosed spaces 😳

Leaving there we headed for more my terrain, my ‘philia’ you could say… the beach 💕

Marsalforn beach was walked along, a few little shells and pieces of sea glass being found but not many.
Mom said we should be adventurous and go up along the bank to check out two more little bays, since we could see there was more beach but we couldn’t be sure what we were missing without getting closer.

(Turns out, we wouldn’t have missed anything much 😜)

Through the rock and thorn ridden paths we trooped until making it to the second bay, where the temperatures dropped in the shade of the clay hillside, making it a welcome reprieve from the hot hillside.

The weather had warmed up since that morning and a lovely 18-20 degrees was our days high 👌🏻☀️

Once we made it back to the car, Mike took us touring a bit more.
Taking us throughout streets and many a little road, touring the towns and countryside.

 

Mike and Mom got ice cream and coffee in a little ocean side town.

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It made a lovely picture and the sound of the water washing the pebbles up and down was an enjoyable one 😊

Mike tried to find a short cut back to the apartment and it resulted in some above average, interesting driving conditions.
It’s scary that that’s even possible, considering the roads in Gozo are pretty much the width of one car, for two-way traffic 😬

Bouncing over potholes and through waterholes we went, hoping the car would hold up and the tires wouldn’t melt away any more than we had already caused them too on a previous incline 😝
We drove on, Mom saying she was glad it was Mike who was driving and me just saying to back up and go a different way 🙈
I hate driving on a road that’s hardly car width, with a drop off on one side (mine) and a rock wall on the other, while continually bouncing up a half paved, half potholed road with hair pin turns, in a non four-wheel drive vehicle 😬
After a turn around or two and some different routes tried, we got back to the main road and finally, the apartment 🙏🏻

It was around 5:30 then and supper preparations began.
Mom fried up chicken kababs along with pineapple, rice and garlic bread and we enjoyed our tasty reward from a busy day of taking in all we could.

Monday March 6th –

Our day began by having breakfast at the house, which included bacon with bones?! 😳

Not something any of us had anticipated 😜

Then we drove to the ‘Azure Window‘ which was situated along the ocean side, just a little ways below our house (top picture).

The sound and smell of the water invaded our senses as we carefully tread over the jagged rocks and pools of water left from when the tide rises to where we were then standing.

We explored around there for a bit, taking pictures, and examining the fossilized shells and fish bits embedded deeply into the rock.

We walked up from there just as a bus load of tourists came spilling down the steps so our timing had been perfect 👌🏻😏
Just down a small hill nearby was a docking area for fishing boats, with a cave like entrance out to the open waters.

We drove up into town after the water’s edge explorations were finished with.
After some searching, a parking spot was found a distance away from where we really wanted to be and we began walking back towards some of the shops.
It didn’t take us long to end up back inside Mojo’s for lunch.

Where, after much contemplation, Mike and I ordered the same things as the day before 😋
Mom was the wise one and tried something new and we once again had a tasty meal and coffees thanks to them.

Onward we walked.

(accumulating up to 30 flights worth of stairs by the end of our adventuring according to the phone trackers)

A castle/fort was checked out and the cathedral within its walls was entered since we didn’t know, but Mom had never gotten the chance to explore inside a more impressively built church.

I guess we did all those ourselves/with the other guests😏
It gets confusing whom we’ve taken to see what😉

Michiel and Mom ventured into some ‘silos’ that had no explanation of why they were there but whatever… they went in, I did not.
The tunnel ceiling shorter than me and almost brushing my shoulders on each side, went on for a few meters, and that was a few meters too far for me 🤢
Supposedly the tunnel opened up into an ‘airy’ (HA) room and echoed magnificently.
Which I could slightly hear from my post at the entry while Mike and Mom made noises 😏

We’d trekked pretty far from the car by that point so we headed back, admiring the ever present variety of doors and balconies along the way.

The weather had been a tad breezy at times but nothing like what the forecast had called for the days before, so we were thankful for the extra sunshine 👌🏻☀️

We were all tired, so once at the house it was a scattering of everyone finding a spot to get comfy and staying there until later that evening.
I slept… and because of that I’m not totally sure what the other two did but I think they sat/slept/didn’t do much either 😜

But after nap/relax time, we were all ready for supper.
Since it was our last night there, we had to try to make use of everything we could so we had beef kababs and chicken breasts were fried, garlic bread baked off, pesto bread bites made, ravioli cooked and all eaten and enjoyed 🍗🥖🍝

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We took a big enough chunk out of the rations that we didn’t feel sooo bad about the few things being left behind.

Phobia: an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.

Philia: Denoting fondness, especially an abnormal love for a specified thing.