I quite like it here. There’s a man who whistles the same indecipherable tune every evening whilst he puts his car in his garage and the other day we saw a man who, according to a couple of the other 85 passengers all crammed into the single-decker bus, takes his horses swimming deep into the sea every day.
We were on our way to Valletta that day. The capital lies on the coast of the southeast portion on the island where as our hotel in Qawra is decidedly more northern. That said, it only took an hour to get there because the island is less than twenty miles long. Valletta reminds me of both Cairo and Rome. The shapes of ancient buildings and sculptures are reminiscent of pyramids, but the more modern aspects are very Roman. There are bars, cafes, shops and tiny, winding streets leading nowhere in particular surrounded by the colossal remnants of now redundant fortress walls.
We were going to travel to St. Julian’s Bay today to indulge in some more touristy activities, alas the weather does not seem to be in an accommodating mood. We’ve been here five days now, since Sunday, and although the weather has mostly been sunny and all together the complete opposite of British weather, we have been stuck in the midst of a storm for about twenty hours now.
I’m currently sat with my Macbook leant precariously on the minibar (why don’t they just call it a tiny, worryingly warm fridge?) because I can’t fit my charger into any of the other plugs; a problem I’ve come across multiple times in various hotels. Someone needs to invent a plug socket that rotates to accommodate Apple’s ridiculously huge chargers. It would plug into a regular socket and simple swivel as necessary. I spent a lot of time thinking about inventions the other day. I also think someone needs to build an app for writers so they can log into all the sites they work for from the same base. It would be far less complicated then tagging and bookmarking constantly. Both of these ideas may already be a reality but I can’t be bothered to look; I’m on holiday.
Throughout the last five days I’ve managed to devour three books, a feat I regularly partook in when I was younger but have since abandoned because I discovered the Internet. I’ve read two Neil Gaiman books: The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Neverwhere, both of which were very enjoyable reads in their own way. Neverwhere has a lighter feel to it despite the fact it is mostly set underground, where as Ocean is appropriately deeper.
My favourite though has to have been The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It took me two and half days to read and it made me cry: I recommend it to anyone looking for a bit of a weird read. I was planning to read Hollow City, Some Kind Of Fairy Tale or Snow Child. But I thought I best read one of the hundreds of books already on my mum’s Kindle and am currently deciding between Wicked or Life of Pi.
We’ve also been watching a lot of music shows on The Vault, because music channels are the only genre we can get in English and there are only so many episodes of Everybody Hates Chris and South Park you can watch in German before you start to lose your mind. That said if I have to watch Top 20 JT N*Sync & Beyond one more time I’m going to put my head through a wall. According to The Vault, Sexy Back is Justin Timberlake’s no.1 song. Have you heard it recently? I have. 2402 times.
Anyway, I’ll stop rambling now. We’re going to eat somewhere in Buggiba Beach tonight [EDIT: we did not do this as the weather became unbearable, we even had to bring our patio furniture in off the balcony. Instead we ate at the hotel and I was given extra lamb by a creepy old water because I am a ‘special lady’]. Apparently I’ve been pronouncing ‘Buggiba’ wrong the entire time I’ve been here (I was saying something similar to what Aku Aku shouts through the Crash Bandicoot series).
Addiju!