Festa at Victoria, Gozo

No Festa is complete without His & Hers candy floss

There was also a fireworks display running pretty much the entire night.

As well as that, we finally got Hypogeum tickets!!  So today we got back on the bus to Valletta -stopping in at the National Museum of Fine Art (good, but not a patch on the one in Lille) & The Valletta Museum of Archaeology.  The latter had a lot of the original artefacts from the temples we were about to visit, including this one- the famous 5,000 year old “sleeping lady” – recovered from the Hypogeum.

"The Sleeping Lady"

Then from there got the number 11 bus over to the Tarxien temples.  This site has three old ruined temples the oldest of which is 6,000 years old!  Not much remains compared with some of the historical stuff we’ve seen here- needless to say we have lots of photos which appear to just be piles of rock!

The Tarxien Temples!

After this we walked to the hypogeum (about 10 mins away on foot).  This is the unlikely looking entrance to the site- just a door in what looks like another terrace of houses.

The Inconspicuous entrance to the hypogeum

The hypogeum was found by builders (in 1902) while building houses to accommodate naval personnel.  It went unreported for three years after it’s discovery because no one deemed it important enough to stop the construction work!  Now, the whole site is enclosed in an enormous building (deceptively large, as it doesn’t look like anything big form the street!) which is suspended above the site.  The hypogeum was an underground burial site where they found the remains of 7,000 people, who were buried over 1,000 years.  The race who lived on malta at this time, who built the temple’s we’ve been visiting disappeared without trace long before the modern settlers arrived and historians know next to nothing about them, nor why they vanished.  This is a model of the Hypogeum we photographed in the archaeological museum.

Hypogeum Layout

Unfortunately, this was another site which didn’t let you take any pictures, but it was by far the best presented historical site we visited.  Everything was well preserved and nicely lit and very atmospheric.  Though it was a bit pricy at €25 a ticket, and as mentioned the tickets are quite hard to get hold of as only 10 people are allowed in at a time!

So another action packed, hot, nackering day.

Another day of walking around in the sun!

Got a picture of another great example of the old skool buses in Malta;

Awesome Old School Malta Bus

Woo hoo - Rain!

Yesterday we went to San Blas bay, just around the corner from Ramla, at the bottom of a very steep, 10 minute shuffle down a “road”.

San Blas Bay-- Right down there!

The whole beach can be pretty much seen in the distance in this photo- it’s surrounded by jaggedy rocks and cliffs so is very small, but thanks to it’s limited accessibility it was quite empty!

Today we finally went to the Capital of Gozo, Victoria (Rabat) to look around the Walled Citadel and try to get tickets for the Hypogeum (which we will sort tomorrow morning as they were sold out again!)

Victoria historical Citadel

Looked round a few of the museums and then headed out to see the (5500 year old- built in 3500BC!) Ggantija temple- the oldest free standing monument in the world.

Ggantija Temple