Just too much to tell

Well, I'm a little sleepy right now, its been soooo busy and I think I'm coming down with a cold. I find it somewhat offensive that I'm on an island in the Mediterranean in the middle of August and I caught a cold. Sigh.

But I've been keeping ridiculously busy travelling around the island and seeing all kinds of things. Today we went to the Hypogeum, which is a giant underground temple/burial complex dating to around 5000 years ago. The islands of Malta are famous for the megalithic (mega=big, lithic=stone) temple complexes. There are a lot of theories about what the temple areas were used for, they're kind of like strange stonehenge constructions (but they're about 1000 years older than Stonehenge). The hypogeum seems to be the same kind of construction, but it was carved out underground instead of using huge stone blocks above the surface. We also met up with a professor from the University of Malta who showed us some of the different settlements in a valley on the north side of the island. In about two hours we saw a prehistoric temple, a Roman apidary (bee keeping place), a prehistoric tombs field, a Greek/Roman house carved out of the cliffside and a British road and farming system. Those are the bits that I can remember right now at least.

Yesterday after doing a walking survey along the cliffs by the ocean and visiting two more of the megalithic temples we went to Valetta, the capital city. The city is heavily fortified from the middle ages when the Knights of St John were occupying the island and defending it against Turkish invasions. The capital city of Valetta was one of the world's first planned cities and its surrounded by massive fortresses and walls. By climbing down behind one of the major fortresses and following a narrow tunnel from the water's surface we managed to get into the fortress of St Elmo which isn't usually open to the public. We couldn't stay long though because of the really loud guard dog. Never actually saw the dog itself, but the sound was definitely intimidating enough to make me leave in a hurry. Makes one think about getting one of those alarms that just sounds like a mean dog, thats probably all the security you need...

And after Valetta we drove across the island to the north side and took a boat over to Comino, one of the smaller islands. Malta is the main island of the group with Gozo and Comino being the next two largest islands. There are a number of smaller islands, but since they're just small rocks sticking out of the ocean, no one lives on them. Comino is really small too (1.5x2 km) and only has one fortress and a single hotel on it. I don't think anyone actually lives there year round. But the island is famous for its Blue Lagoon - its supposed to be some of the bluest water in the Mediterranean. It was absolutely gorgeous, totally blue with white sand and surrounded by dark limestone cliffs. Since it was pretty late in the day there weren't too many tourists either. Usually the place is so packed that you have to jump over people just to get off the boat at the dock.

After coming back from Comino we went to Bugibba to a Chinese restaurant. There was a beer festival at the University over the weekend really close to the house that we're staying at. I got a free voucher for the Chinese food restaurant from one of the drinking contests. I feel that I should point out that I did not win the contest, so my family can put their mind to rest about what I've been up to. I got a secondary prize instead. But the restaurant was absolutely fantastic, though it was really empty. The owner is an incredibly sweet woman from Beijing who was so terribly nice that I almost felt bad using my voucher instead of paying full price for one of the best meals I've had in awhile. The compromise was to leave her a ridiculously large tip instead. So, I suppose it all worked out.

I've been doing all kinds of other things since my last post, but it would take waaaayy too long to write about all of it, so you'll all have to wait to hear the stories in person or in a later post. I'm going to Msida tomorrow to visit the catacombs of St Agatha and St Paul and the torture museum. I've been told that the museum has authentic sounds and smells to go along with the atmosphere, so I'll have to let everyone know how that works out... I'll be here in Malta until Monday or Tuesday and then crossing over to Italy. I went to Sicily on Tuesday for the day already - I managed to climb more than halfway up Mt Etna! The cable car was 40 euro to ride to the top so we attempted to climb. It didn't totally work out, but I'll wait until I can add the pictures from that little adventure.