Mark and I spent our first weekend away together alone this year. We had a great time in Malta. It's a small island under Italy near Tunisia. It's the island where Paul (in the bible) was shipwrecked on his way to Rome as a prisoner and the Lord saved the whole ship. Anyways, it was unlike anything we've seen so far but very interesting and we really enjoyed our time there.

On our drive to the hotel which was on the other side of the island. This was supposed to be a 45 minute drive which ended up more like 3 hours! Driving on the left hand side of the road was challenge enough let alone trying to navigate extremely bumpy roads with NO signs or road names. Many places had "detours" which took us off to never never land.


We spent our first day on the island of Gozo which is a 25 min ferry ride over to it. It's all part of Malta.
Love the sign...especially where it was located - up on the roof of a church looking at no creation whatsover other than concrete (or lime) built buildings looking more like a war torn country rather than creation.

The Citadel...

The walled citadel dates back to Roman times.

Ta'Pinu Basilica - This was a very interesting church. It has been the holy of holies since 1883 when the virgin was heard in the original church that stood on this spot. The "new" church was built over the old in 1920. Now it's known as a place to come for miracles. There were cards at the front of the church to write out your requests...kind of in a check off form type thing. It mentioned that Mary rose from the dead after 3 days. Hmmm...interesting...sounds a little like they got mixed up with the real story.

Then there was a room and a hall dedicated to the the healings and miracles that have taken place. There were stories and pictures mounted, articles such as baby clothes and booties in glass covered windowbox frames, limb braces, casts, walking sticks, helmets, old seatbelts taken out of cars, and on and on. ...all giving thanks to MARY for healing them.

The Azure Window made of limestone.
Temple ruins dating back to 5000 BC! Hard to imagine these are 7000 years old.
Ramla Bay..

The Red Tower which was right near our hotel.

St. Paul's Catacombs where it once housed 1400 graves. We couldn't believe how big it actually was. You can't picture this from our pictures but it was quite interesting. They have been destroyed to some extent by vandals and the beauty that they once were is no longer visible. This picture represents a "table" where the family would come to have a meal together after the burial.

Enjoying lunch on the walled city of medieval Mdina.

Paradise Bay...1 km from our hotel.

We happened to be in Malta during one of their celebrations of being added into the EU and so there were 3 nights of fireworks competition. We were there for the first night and took a dinner ferry out to the harbour where we watched the fireworks display. Each night there were 2 different groups competing. One at 10 pm and the other at midnight. These were extended much longer into the evening and by the time we got back to the hotel it was almost 2am! We met these 2 couples from the hotel and spent the evening together having a great time.

Valleta was a city built by the Knights of St John about 430 years ago. The whole city is built of honey-colored stone and took them only 5 years to build. Almost every buidling had a balcony of varying sizes and decor. This made the streets so interesting.

The inside of St John's co-Cathedral. Incredible. We couldn't get too much of a look around the place because a service was in progress.

The island is full of these old style buses. They looked like they were in great working order and were nice and colorful.

Mark helping out a guy in need.