Sunday, July 1, 2007

Beaches

July 1, 2007
Today was full of excitement. We decided to head down to Marsaxlokk (pronounced Marsa-schlock), which is a little fishing village to the south and where the traditional fishing boats are still used by fishermen who still go out and get the day's catch. There are also several beaches nearby and we figured we'd finally get ourselves wet in the Med. Like most beaches in Malta, the ones we visited (went in at 2, only walked a bit around a third) were rocky, craggy, had some sharp dropoffs and were generally not like the nice soft sandy gently sloping beaches at home.

Within our first ten minutes in the water I got stung by a jellyfish on my arm, painful but not dangerous, and Terry's water shoes - never before worn - got a huge tear in them. Later, I cut my knee on a rock and Terry got a couple big scrapes on his arm. I should mention that we are not really beach people, in fact we have never been to a beach together in our 7 years together. Days like today remind us why, and make us really happy to have our pool.

The coolest thing, though, was witnessed at the beach. A power boat came towards the shore and it had advertising of a local ice cream company. We kept saying "Do you think...?" and "Is it..?". Then we saw the swimmers all coming to shore and grabbing their wallets. Yup, we got our first sighting of the Ice-Cream Boat. The folks lined up, got their treats, then the boat motored off to another shore. What a great idea!

After the excitement at the first two beaches, it was getting cooler when we hit the third and we just walked it a bit. The interesting part was that it had clearly been a salt pan at one point. Some parts still had crusted salt dried along the relatively smooth and even ground. We'll probably go back there with the camera. There were a bunch of people fishing in that area, we didn't see any swimmers.

We finished the night with dinner outside at a restaurant in the town of Marsaxlokk itself. We each got the fresh catch - sea bass and breem - the breem was better than the bass, and that seems to be a trend around here. They were both tasty, though, and quite fresh. It was cool enough that Terry was comfortable and I needed my sweater. All in all the evening was lovely, and I don't see us going back to a beach any time soon.

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