Anchors away? aweigh? a-way?

What to do on a Sunday in a country with 365 churches? Why, take a boat tour of the two harbours, one on each side of Valletta, of course. One is the Great Harbour between Valletta and the Three Cities (Cospicua, Senglea and Vittoriosa) and the other, Marsamxetto. Try to say that after a couple of drinks, or anytime really. Lots of tongue-twisting names here. Just remember X is pronounced like SH. C is sometimes just a C, like Cospicua and sometimes, it's pronounced CH as in Cisk (the beer). But how do you know?

We are well located and to make my reservation for today, I just had to pop down to the tourist office right beside the entrance to our building. The pickup, as usual, was across the street. The bus was a few minutes late but it didn't matter. We made it to Sliema in about 45 minutes, with lots of time to board the Stella Maris for the tour.

It was bright and sunny and very, very breezy. I should have worn my warmer jacket, because it got rather chilly "at sea." However, survival was assured. The chill was a nice distraction from my sore feet. Those feet were the reason I found a tour that didn't tax my tootsies too much. By the end of the day, I'd walked 8,499 steps anyway. And I may not add many more before turning in.

There weren't many passengers aboard, and we did get a chance to move around a bit to take endless pictures of the cities and other boats, from rowboats to sailboats, to a Maltese version of a gondola, to large yachts, naval vessels and a huge cruise ship.

This moving around was not without its challenges. The bow of the boat is on an upward slant. Picture this, the floor is slanted, the boat is riding up and down on the waves as it moves forward, and you need to hold onto the rail with one hand. So, how exactly do you take a photo? With great care and good timing. Of all the shots I took, there are some probably worth showing. So, here are a few:

Fort St Elmo from the harbour. This will give you an idea of the slant of the boat that one had to navigate to get a picture. It was not raised because of being tossed by the waves, that's the actual slope of the floor.

 Getting a straight horizon proved to be the trickiest part. On a few of my efforts, the world appears to be   tilted. Some editing will be required, should I deem them otherwise worthy of the process.

I liked the symmetry of these houses along the Valletta waterfront

Someone had a sense of humour. This crane is on a ship. Everywhere you look in Malta
there is a crane on top of a building (or a ship). In some places it looks like they are adding new construction on top of existing structures. And just like home, pretty much all the streets are torn up.

In this view of Valletta you can see the elevator (grey tower) in the centre of the image. We took that elevator during our first stop in Valletta last week to get from harbour level to the level of the highest street. It was €1 well spent to avoid the climb.

I have a fascination with those window-balconies

One of the vintage buses, now replaced with new modern green and white buses on all routes.
This one has a new life as a souvenir stand in Sliema. I resisted temptation.

After disembarking from the Stella Maris, I enjoyed lunch at Opa! on the promenade at Sliema. I followed up with a walk to The Point shopping centre. I was disappointed, because the selection of stores didn't hold any appeal to me, so I stopped for a Capuccino and gave my feet a break.

The return bus ride to Qawra (awrah) where we're staying, had a few exciting moments. Entering a roundabout, a car pulled straight across in front, missing the bus by inches. There followed an exchange of honking horns between our driver and the idiot in the red car. No slowing down was involved.

The next bit of excitement happened when a couple of British tourists (we were all tourists on this bus) realized that the bus was not heading to drop them off at their pickup point as they had been promised. While parked at the stop where the driver wanted to leave them, a shouting match broke out between the driver and one of the tourists. Eventually, the tourist prevailed and we made a detour to Pembroke. Traffic was wicked everywhere.

Despite the road signs seeming to indicate that we were en route to the north for the ferry terminal, we did arrive back from where we had been picked up this morning. All in all, a very good day. We finished it off with dinner at The Wood Hut which was more than satisfactory. Once again we bypassed the opportunity to try the rabbit stew. We will try it before leaving. And on that note, I'll leave you with a photo of the bar in tonight's dining establishment. See you tomorrow.

This seems to be a favoured spot for some locals. Always a good sign. We had our choice of three soccer, er, football games, depending on which direction we faced. I think one or two might have been live or maybe they had been recorded but we had no interest. Remember, we went to eat.