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.

The following set of pictures is during our Spring Break in Lugano, Switzerland; Cinque Terra, Italy; and the very small country of Liechtenstein.
Please note that the pics below are set in groups from Part 1 - Part 8. It was too hard to try and get them all under one block of pics...so enjoy. If all 8 parts don't show up, you can find them on the side where it says "previous posts".

Spring Break part 1

April 5th...heading down to Lugano where we stopped along the way for some lunch.


I'm going to do this next set of pictures of our Easter break in little mini series as there are a ton of pics and it's too hard to place them on here in order. So they'll end up being backwards in time starting with this one.



We began our break with a week working at a conference that BFA was hosting (International Christian Educators Conference). The dorms were in charge of all the driving, pickups, drop offs, etc which ended up being alot of work and organization. But it all turned out in the end. We were able to leave on the 5th of April and so we headed down to Lugano, Switzerland for the first 2 nights. We stopped for lunch along the way in a little town near Luzern. It was very chilly and we wondered if we had brought enough warm clothes for the trip. Turns out the rest of the trip was very warm and sunny!
Jake made these great tasting cookies filled with M&M's. What a cook!

Spring Break part 2

We discovered a hotel/hostel which ended up being very central to where we wanted to be. We had 2 little tiny backpacker rooms which consisted of a bunkbed and 2 single beds all pushed completly together with enough room to walk in and that's about it. Oh..there was a sink and mirror. It ended up being a nice place other than the size of the room but since we were only sleeping there it didn't matter. We shared a bathroom and shower with everyone else on the floor.

The grounds of the hostel. There were palm trees and flowers blooming everywhere.

Entertaining one another...
View from our hostel. Maybe you can see from the distance of the water how steep of a climb we had up and down from our place each day.

Grounds of the hostel.

We stopped for some icecream at McDonalds. This was one classy place right along the edge of the waterfront. Note the chandeliers, drapes, ceiling, etc. Felt like we were in a ball room back in the olden days.
Pretty flowers blooming everywhere.
Along the waterfront area where we enjoyed meandering our way through the streets.


Five heads are better than one.

Playing Chess on the pedestrian boulevard which by the end produced a small crowd of onlookers. Mark and Caleb also got a game going at the same time just down from Jake and Connor.

Spring Break part 3

April 6th...On our way to visit the chocolate factory we packed along our breakfast and found this great little spot along the lake for our picnic.

The Alprose Chocolate factory... we took a tour of the place learning how to make chocolate and then at the end was the best part where we got to sample all kinds of chocolate treats. Mmmm.

We then headed back to Lugano and took the funicular train to the top of Mt. Bre. Mark had a great idea that we should take the train up and walk down the 7 km to another town then take the boat back to Lugano....REAL great idea! :) The 7 km ended up being straight down the mountain and after making it to the bottom of the mountain our legs were pretty shaky. By the next morning we could hardly walk due to VERY painful calves (other than Jake)! It only got worse the next day! Getting in and out of the van proved to be the most difficult and I'm sure we were quite the site as we tried to exit the vehicle and then walk.

Another great spot for our picnic lunch. We are continually amazed at the beauty surrounding us and marvel at the amazing things God has created for us to enjoy. We never take it for granted.

Hiking down the mountain...
As we journeyed down the mountain and our legs began to get a little shaky, our hero came to the rescue making walking sticks out of branches for us. Here he is shaping them into the proper size and shape. They really did come in handy.

Once we made it down to the the town of Gandria we meandered the the little streets finding our way to the boat. What a beautiful little town.