..and Gozo is just as uninteresting as Malta..

Oh man, people from Malta are going to hate me reading this blog, but I just found Malta and Gozo to be soooo boring.

We went on a 9am ferry to Gozo and had this typical knuckle-headed tour guide that just kept saying how beautiful the things we were going to see were. And the we saw the stuff, and were seriously unimpressed. Gozo is like a sleepier, emptier, more run-down version of Malta if such a thing is humanly possible. It just reminds me that when you have Mediterranean powers coming and completely dominating and ransacking your country, this is the kind of.. difficult position you'll find yourself in.

Gozo is made up of 14 villages, with the "capital" city being called Victoria or Rabat, depending on which empire you're referring to. I'm liking the middle eastern culture a lot since I met the twins so I'll call it Rabat for now =) It only takes a second of seeing how dilapidated buildings are, how subpar the goods are that are being sold, how uninteresting the food is, to realize this is not a country that has any real comparative advantage.

There are a couple of interesting things about Malta though. One is the whole "Knights of St. John" thing. The Maltese cross apparently has tie to the Knights of the Round Table with Grandmasters and all that. But nobody explained anything to do with this very niche history/legend. Another interesting thing is that it's one of the islands that the Oddysey supposedly took place on. We even saw "Calypso's Cave" where Ulysses was apparently held prisoner for 7 years to the passions of Calypso. Not bad if it weren't a work of fiction! I can't imagine being a 7,000 year old island and in the shape that it's currently in. Oye.

Today was the first time I've felt cold in Malta. It's been gorgeous, sunny and very very bright the entire week - then all of a sudden today it was overcast, which is good considering how much we were walking around. But I'm afraid all the disappointment that I've been feeling about Malta leaked out a bit today and I got some Brits on the tour to join in on voicing our amazement at this place. For example, the main square of Gozo had some.. er.. musicians. What they really were were 3 older, toothless men who were most likely drunk off their asses - shouting, smacking a tambourine and randomly strumming their guitar. No, none of the musical wonderments you find on the streets of Italy, France or New York. No, not by a long shot. A similar experience was our lunch at the Cathedral Restaurant (about a block away from the Citadel). We basically received boiled vegetables from one of those frozen sacks, boiled potatoes with some rosemary sprinkled on it, and some slices of fish that was pathetic at best. I was really glad I opted to save money while I was here and cook myself this week if this is the sort of cuisine I should be expecting! Sigh.