Day 20 - Sunday 1st October - Malta

Another hot day so a slow start and we decided we'd do the harbour cruise.  We headed off confidently to cross to the opposite side of this mountainous city and we're doing alright until we decided we'd go down a massive set of steps to get down to the water. What we didn't realise was that we'd actually changed direction enough to throw us off course and end up back at the Grand Harbour but further along than we'd been before. There were 2 monstrous cruise ships in port which explained the huge crowds we'd been passing. We couldn't get out to the dock where we could see the little harbour cruiser boat picking up passengers because we discovered this was especially for the cruise ship passengers. The hop-on hop-off bus stop was right where we were so we bought tickets for that and also for the harbour cruise for the next day. We were going to do the bus tomorrow because rain is predicted but we hopped on the bus to do the North Route. We didn't ask how long it would take which was a mistake because it turned out to be (or at least felt like) about 3.5 hours! Anyway it took us around almost the entire island and mostly there wasn't anything to see except very harsh looking landscapes. We did get off not too long into the trip because I was busting for the loo and went into the San Anton Gardens in search of toilets, which we eventually found. We had a little walk around and it reminded us a lot of gardens we'd seen in Sicily - broken up clay soil covered with networks of copper pipes to bring water to this very dry land to give the poor plants sustanence. Back to the bus stop and another one came quite soon thank goodness. We headed across the harsh landscape to Mdina which was the first capital of Malta. We could've got off but that would have meant trudging around in the heat in another town. It looked lovely but gave it a miss and travelled on because we were stuck now and had to keep going.  We passed the northern beaches which are very popular but even though we brought bathers because we thought we'd go swimming, they were in the suitcases because the last thing my foot could have dealt with was rocks to clamber over to get to the water or rocky beaches. So we stayed on the bus. We passed through the new resort areas of St Julians, Paceville and St Pauls. Full of highrise buildings full of tourists - not our cup of tea at all. Half way through it started bucketing down so we went downstairs early to get seats while some people stayed out in the rain because all the seats were taken. Then it was down to Sliema another place that is mostly new highrise holiday apartments which is across the bay from Valletta on the other side to the Grand Harbour. We were relieved when we got back to the start, got off and headed home because we were only a couple of minutes away. What a trip! We felt windswept and annoyed with ourselves for not having done one of the other shorter routes. We freshened up and headed out for reviving drinks before dinner and went to another terrace to see the sunset. For dinner we both felt like pizza so we went to Eddie's Cafe Regina where John had a Maltija with Maltese sausage on top of everything else and I had a Marinara. Sadly it was one of our less memorable meals but we fixed this by having another Amorino gelati on the way home - this time dark chocolate, coffee & sicilian orange. Yum. Still warm and humid so we walked down to the main square, then the Upper Gardens to take some lovely night photos with all the twinkling lights, then home to rest my poor foot.