Jessica ready to cross Grand Harbour to Valletta from Vittoriosa

Seally & Lois, No 1 Bubbly in hand

Keith & Sue from Kent sharing L's Birthday in Mdina


Graham from Essex with local Limosine

Malta – March 2008

Oh dear it has been a while since we have updated our blog – where has that time gone!

Well we continue to enjoy being in Malta learning more and more about the history when we are out and about! We have noticed lately the tourists numbers are increasing as the weather warms up – we don’t think we would want to be here in summer not only because of the swell in population but also because of the high temperatures. We have been fortunate to discover it without the crowds!!

We arrived in Malta in December not knowing anyone but in the last couple of months we have been fortunate to connect with some like minded souls who enjoy similar things as we do – guess – eating and drinking and generally having a fun time!

In January we met a couple Joseph and Michelle who have a motor yacht, just a along from us. Since then they have very kindly had us to their home for dinner, lunch at their holiday house (overlooks a lovely bay) and helped us with running us around to find items for the boat including our wine supplies! They have lived in Australia twice over the last decade or so where they have relatives and quite possibly could end up there again! There are over 400,000 Maltese who live in Australia - apparently more than the population here!

We also met Simon and Debbie (friends of Joseph & Michelle) and enjoyed a great evening at their home recently for dinner. It was nice to be able to see all the wonderful talent Simon has with woodwork, which apparently extends from his father, but neither practice it commercially!

Our neighbour next to us in the marina, Robert, is a wonderful guy, very funny, very generous and we have enjoyed many a drink or two on board his boat as well as ours during these last two months! Good Friday we enjoyed a long lunch aboard his boat with his many friends and consumed some wonderful food supplied by his restaurant in Valletta – a vast array of seafood including Lobster from Canada!!

Malta is a popular place to winter over for yachts, given it is strategically well located for access to many parts of the Mediterranean plus it is quite South so doesn’t get too cold. We are in fact lucky to have secured a place here and we are most grateful to Chris who runs the marina, and his cooperation to accommodate us. Even better, he is great company and delivers our mail when it arrives otherwise we would have a long walk to the Marina office!!!

Overall there is no end to the general friendliness and kindness of the Maltese people so no wonder they were the perfect allies to the British in the Second World War and were awarded the George Cross! We are fortunate to have made friends with many of the locals who have made our stay here in Malta so enjoyable and rewarding! Not to mention our contribution to increasing the tourist numbers of NZers when they come to visit!!!!!

We went to the Mdina in Malta for my birthday last month– the original capital of Malta – it is a medieval walled city and we are staying at its only hotel - the Xara Palace. It was built in the 17^th century by a noble family and used as a residence. During the Second World War the British turned it into a hotel and then another family bought it in 1995 upgraded it to what it is today! And fortunately for us we were upgraded to the Grand Master’s suite – Room No 1!!!

Saturday we spent wandering around the city and went to a couple of audio visual presentations on the history of the city. We hooked up with an English couple, Keith & Sue, who were on a weekend visit from England and coincidently just were having a quick look around the Mdina (but were staying elsewhere on the Island). We ended up inviting them back to our suite for a drink and one thing lead to another and they ended up coming back on Sunday evening to join us for my birthday dinner.

We had an enjoyable evening which commenced with a bottle of ‘Moet’, compliments of Keith and Sue, which we consumed and then we headed off to Bacchus restaurant close by the hotel and enjoyed a very pleasant evening with our new found friends!!

Staying in the Hotel was such a treat for us as we don’t do much of that these days, staying in this hotel was luxury!!

We have since learnt that a couple of weeks ago on a subsequent visit for lunch at the Xara, that Bruce Willis and his Maltese girlfriend also stayed at this hotel recently and stayed in room No 1 and slept in our bed!!!!!

In the last month or so we have had a few visitors. Firstly Seally, our friend from London arrived at the beginning of February! Seally never ever travels with a suitcase but arrived with one, to our surprise – but not full of clothes as you would expect - but full of goodies for us which included 4kgs of tripe – well I know most of you will be just so envious of that, ha ha!!! Seally enjoys food like us and he and I had many conversations in London about tripe! This has got to be a first, for gifts!!!! We were elated to receive it but didn’t get the opportunity to cook some for him – he only stayed 24 hours!!

Next visitor was our great niece, Jessica, from Christchurch who is doing her ‘gap’ year at a private boarding school in Dorset, England as an assistant matron! It was first term break so we had a lovely 6 days of her company showing her around Malta. Joseph & Michelle’s daughter, Raquel took her out with her friends to a popular night club area called Paceville so she certainly got an all round idea of what Malta has to offer!

She and I witnessed something quite unique on our visit to the Cathedral in the Mdina. We viewed the opening of a private crypt below the floor which hadn’t been opened for 40 years!! Apparently the family had been waiting for 3 years for approval to open up the crypt to add the remains of a family member! We watched with baited breath as they lifted the marble slabs and down beyond the steps below we could see all the coffins stacked on one another in the cellar – it was quite an ‘eye opener’!!- However what we found most amazing is that the workman seemed very happy for us to watch the proceedings and offered to take photos for us – even the priests wandering past didn’t have a problem with the gathering people!!

John Davey, a business colleague and friend of Lorraine (Hawkes Bay) arrived next and spent a few days with us en route to England. Originally from NZ he has a business in Egypt exporting household goods which is how Lorraine met him as her business imports goods from him to NZ (Bluemoon Collections). We hadn’t met John before but we enjoyed his company immensely and we had a very pleasant few days!

Our last visitor a week or so back was our friend Graham Waring from Essex. You will recall we met Graham when we had AC lifted out. Then he joined us on our journey to Eastborne in the south of England, Falmouth and then Gibraltar! As usual it was a full on, fun 3 days in his company, but we did manage to show him what’s on offer in Malta in between, visits to restaurants!! Several of his friends from Essex were here in Malta at the same time for a birthday and all of us had a great lunch one day at the little restaurant up on the dock – run by a lovely Sicilian couple whom we have had on the boat since for drinks!!!

Malta has had elections here recently and National was again returned to power. It only happens every 5 years so National will have been in power 20 years when the next elections come along! But what was interesting was witnessing the festive and passionate way everyone joins in for the build up – rallies, cars rushing around flying flags and sounding horns – oh the noise is unbelievable!! And then we had to endure the victory celebrations which were even noisier – if that is possible!! The procession of cars and trucks blowing their horns and playing really loud music – you have to see it to believe it!!!

We are gearing up to get ready to leave Malta around mid April. Our maintenance programme has been occupying a lot of our time over the last couple of months, in between visitors and social activity of course. We have workmen on the boat now, sanding and caulking the decks plus doing other jobs. Terry is full on with engineering stuff and I am endeavouring to get through all the varnishing/painting jobs.

We now have AC on offer for sale which is the start of the process of thinking about coming back to NZ!! Terry has completed a web site which is http://loisterry.googlepages.com/alphacrucis and we have placed some small ads to direct people to this site both in the UK and Australia. In addition we have listed it with a broker here as well as the UK. So ideally it would be nice to complete our summer cruising and then sell her, however we have to accept that a potential buyer may come along sooner. If we don’t sell her this season we will probably come back to Malta to winter over again.

So that’s it for now – hope you all are well!

Love Lois and Terry