Gozo; Friday, 16 January, 2015

The first decent night’s sleep in nearly a fortnight was brought to an abrupt end by the church on the hill opposite starting to sound the quarter hours from 7am onwards. After trying to sleep through a few I decided to give up and got up just after 8 to head down to breakfast.

Having had a large breakfast I headed out of the hotel and down to the harbour to pick up the bus. I was in two minds as to whether to head straight into Rabat, the island capital, or to head out up to the coast as buses were due to both locations within minutes of each other. The decision was made for me by the arrival of a full ferry load of tourists from Malta who were all queue barging to get on the Rabat bus so instead of having to stand for 20 minutes in a sardine tin I opted for a seat on the bus heading up to Marsalforn.

I was very glad I did as the journey up through the middle of Gozo was pretty impressive from the hill top towns to the views over the coast. Marsalforn itself was a bit of a pity as it’s been heavily built up for the tourism industry with a large number of big hotels surrounding the harbour, but with the harbour itself and the stunning cliffs rising immediately behind the town it was still quite a nice place to wander around for a little while.

From Marsalforn I caught the bus the 15 minutes or so into Rabat and changed there onto another bus out to the National Shrine Basilica at Ta’ Pinu to have a look round that.

After looking round the Basilica I headed back to the main road and picked up the bus down to the west coast of the island at Dwejra. The natural scenery here is stunning, with the limestone having been carved away by the sea into caves, some of which have collapsed to form an archway and an impressive tunnel through the cliffs that has created an inland sea. It was from here that I boarded a short boat trip that went through the tunnel, into some of the caves and past the Azure Window arch.

I stopped for some lunch in a restaurant with stunning views over the inland sea, and after refuelling I headed up to the small fort building on the headland to take in the stunning views.

I caught the bus back into Rabat and having disembarked promptly got back on again as the bus was changing to one going back to Mgarr.

Back at the hotel I watched the end of a stunning sunset from my rooms balcony before heading down for dinner in the hotel restaurant.