Those of you who are fans of the blog may have noticed that last year was a bit sparse on the blogging front. We didn’t do as much sailing as planned because we were looking after our beloved Mojito who sadly is no longer with us. He left a huge hole in our life at home, and one very lonely Bandida (or Bandit as she is also known). I am extremely happy to say that after a lot of soul searching, Bandit has found a new home with one of our lovely friends and is living a great life with her new doggy pal Ziggy. This left us with an extremely quiet house and led to us thinking that we might just have another adventure in us.
As you may know, we don’t tend to do things by halves so we decided to take on a new challenge and are moving to the beautiful island of Gozo, just off Malta. We went for a visit and fell in love with the place. Our original week long trip got extended twice as we explored the idea of living a new lifestyle by the sea.
It didn’t start brilliantly mind you when we landed at 1am in the middle of a storm, rain lashing down sideways and no covered walkway to the car park where we picked up the hire car (drowned rats springs to mind). The discovery that we have to drive on the left hand side of the road, a car that was steaming up and a lot more traffic than expected led to a less than ideal arrival in Malta. We were almost shellshocked – but we made it and we got to our hotel exhausted. The next morning we went up to the top floor for breakfast and were amazed by how built up the area was. The views were stunning and we couldn’t wait to start exploring (and admittedly get out of the busy bit ;-))
As the days went on we started to explore Malta and found everyone to be so friendly, we headed to the south of the island and found a gorgeous bay where we enjoyed lunch. We explored the outskirts of Valetta and looked at some marinas with a view to bringing Gemini J. We started to think what a great adventure it might be to bring her here and sail different waters after such a long time in more or less the same place. We had really enjoyed our trip to Corsica and Sardinia and our route to Malta would bring us back via Sardinia which we loved and also Sicily – how exciting.
So – this is the brief start and very much shortened version of our new adventure ….. there will be more blogs to follow, including our visit to the north of the island and our first visit to Gozo.
For now, we have a few suitcases to unpack, an apartment to set up and a paddle board to inflate, but first we will head down to one of our local bars for breakfast, sending you all lots of love
…… watch this space …….
The Adventures of Gemini J 