When you pack light to travel from the other side of the world in the middle of winter – there is just no thought or room for the big straw hat….but today was a hat day…
We had a coffee date in Valletta with a friend at 10am so we were up early and out the door at 7.30am for our early excursion to the Birgu Street market, held once a week, closing off 2 kms of the roads and filled with stalls, shoes, underwear, clothes, cleaning stuff, electronics, make up, fruit and veges, bags etc…
and lots of Maltese ladies with shopping carts!
Spot the kiwi….Italian clothes, very cheap…and again one just tries on (be it bras or dresses) in the street…
We just roll with what we are told to do! And Maltese are not shy in giving orders!
2kms up and 2kms down….carefully planning to catch the 9.30am ferry to meet our friend! A mad dash, upon realising we had missed this one and better catch the 10 o’clock one, cranked up the first sweat of the day! Actually, with today’s temperatures, this was an ongoing event for the rest of the day….thank goodness we had purchased hats!!!
They, at least, blocked the direct sun rays while we chewed the fat for a couple of hours with our friend Charles!
We walked back to the ferry and had just missed the sailing (seemed to the order of the day with bad ferry timings) so we jumped on one of the little luzzus(so as not to stand in the sun for half an hour) to get back to the other side!
Trudi making more friends with the captain and….
Sue sunning it on the other side…certainly enjoying our new hats!
We retrieved a very hot Vivienne…
Who had been sitting in the sun for 5 hours and drove straight to the beach (St Thomas Bay, rocky swimming hole) to test out our new floaties…which had travelled all the way from NZ…
After a quick dip to lower the body temperature we undertook the lung test….inflating the two ends…
Et Voila….sparkles and all, we were the envy of the beach!
The next hour was spent suspended by our stunning equipment, while envious treading water swimmers cooled off unaided!
Our Kiwi tennis player was hitting the Wimbledon courts at 2 pm in the quarter finals, so we packed up and headed to the local sports pub for a late lunch and a cool drink…. As our luck would have it, their internet was down and nothing on the big screens, in the summer heat this can be a common occurrence…however we were hungry and thirsty and ordered a bruschetta to share, as the waitress had told us it was large!
This was like a pizza on the local large circular ftira bread….delicious and between us we ate half….so leftover box was provided, just as the internet was restored and we got the rest of the game, unfortunately our girl going down to the Croatian…
Homeward bound as five o’clock loomed….salty, sweaty, full and tired! And thirsty again!
Showers and washing done and a fruit platter is being made for dinner by my flattie!!!(Trudi)
All who wander are not Lost girls 