Ah the sacrifices one has to make to escape the rain

As promised by the weatherman, today was wet and windy, but not cold. In fact, it was warmer outside than inside our condo. There's no problem having the bedrooms cool enough for sleeping. Having the living room warm enough to enjoy relaxing, is not so easily accomplished. There is a heater in the living room, and it does a great job of heating anything within three feet. The first one to move the heater gets to stay toasty. Mostly we just wear sweaters. I'm thinking maybe of including gloves. We can usually step outside to warm up but it was pouring rain so not the greatest idea today.

The view from inside today

After breakfast I dashed out in the rain to the tour office, located mere feet from our front entrance and learned of possibilities for touring the island. We will get local bus passes later, but decided that some guided tours might be a good way to start. After I brought the information up to my roommates, the three of us went down and made our bookings.

We have to be really careful because there's one receipt per tour, that is the ticket for all three of us. It must not be lost. We took photos of them just in case. They are now nicely assembled on the bookcase to be used one at a time.

Tomorrow we're taking the Northern Route hop-on hop-off bus at 8:15 to maximize our touring time. It's quite a long walk to the bus stop, about 50 yards. We plan to hop-off in Valletta for a couple of hours, explore a bit, maybe together or maybe separately, and then hop back on. Why we go south to Valletta for the Northern tour beats me. It's an hour between buses so there's time to look around any stop that you choose to hop off. We have a couple of other stops in mind for exploring but you'll hear about them after the tour. 

On Sunday we'll visit the Blue Grotto and Marsaxlokk (Marsashlock) – details after the visit. We also purchased tickets for the South route, which also goes to Valletta but our tour date is to be determined, and for Gozo which includes transport to the ferry, as well as the hop-on hop-off tour of that island.

I bought a ticket to tour the Three Cities and Wine Tasting next Friday. You might notice that there's a bit of a theme to my solo tours. I will have to find a tour that includes beer so I'll complete the trifecta of tours – Gin, Wine and Beer. Stay tuned for updates. Please note, we have all added our stamp of approval to Cisk beer, the local brew so maybe that is good enough.

But that's what's coming up. I had a fabulous afternoon at the Chocolate Factory in Bugibba today.

The first workshop was Truffle Making and nobody knows the truffles I've seen – OK, apologies for that. We were a group of 10, including 5 Canadians, 2 Maltese, and 3 ladies of unknown nationalities. Well, they probably know but I don't. The truffle "shells" were provided to start with – four each of dark, milk and white chocolate.

We made a pomegranate-dark chocolate ganache to start with and oh my, I'm still smacking my lips for that one. We had to stir the liquid chocolate into the pomegranate-flavoured cream until it was the right consistency. Then it was piped into the above-mentioned shells. I forced myself to scrape and eat the chocolate clinging to the mug after the piping was done. Heaven!!!

Before things got messy

Two other pre-made ganache fillings were available – salted caramel and prickly pear. Once all the shells were filled with the ganaches we chose, we got to the really gooey part. White, Dark and Milk Chocolate were piped into our just-freshly-washed hands, one type at a time, and a few truffles were rolled around to get coated. Once all the shells were coated they could be covered with coconut or cocoa and then drizzled with vanilla or chocolate. At my end of the table, we never got the dark chocolate drizzle. 

All piped and ready to roll

That was lots of fun and we enjoyed licking our hands of the chocolate used to coat the truffles. There was a lot of hand-washing today. 

We had to lick our hands after this stage
 and washed them between each of the three types of coating

I won't be seeking employment as a chocolate dipper

The finishing touches improved the appearance of my truffles

The second workshop was the Gin and Chocolate pairing. There were seven of us from the first group who had signed up for both. The five Canadians and two Maltese. What a fun group! We started with a couple of ounces of Tanqueray Gin and later added tonic. Salted dark chocolate was the accompanying chocolate. Yum.

Next up was the local Island8 gin, made in Malta. It was quite lovely. Now maybe I got those two mixed up. But whichever gin it was, went very nicely with both the crispy strawberry truffles and the lemon ones. 

We moved on to martinis - stirred NOT shaken because they must be stirred so you don't bruise the gin. I don't understand so can't explain except to say James Bond was wrong. Each drink was tastier than the previous one, or was it the one after? By this time I was feeling quite merry and I can't remember what truffle was which, but they were all good. 

The cocktail was next - gin, plain syrup, prickly pear liqueur and something else I think, maybe ice, and it was a very pretty pink and more than delushous. There was another truffle nearby and I think it was pretty nice too.

We ended up with Monkey 47 Gin. Since I was born in '47 this must be mine. There's a long story about how it came to be and has something to do with WWII, maybe WWI, I'm sure it wasn't Korea. This gin has 47 botanicals in it and I could easily detect rosemary. I have no idea if that's one of them. We had dark chocolate with ginger with that. I am not usually fond of ginger but at that point, everything was tasty.

We'd already had the Dark Chocolate with Gozo Salt by this time
 but you can see a plate of truffles for the pairings

The group was tons of fun and our one-hour workshop lasted for an hour and half. I managed to get out the door still vertical, and walked a few blocks towards "home" and then decided to call an Uber.

Dinner was fish 'n chips at Knickerbockers, a little ways up the hill. It's very sobering to walk uphill. Luckily I'd sobered up for the walk back down. The pavement was still wet and slippery.

So, how was YOUR day?