Margaret and I clocked up our first year of marital bliss last week, and to mark the occasion we spent a long weekend on the Mediterranean isles of Malta. I use the word isles deliberately here, as Malta (unbeknown to me weeks ago) actually consists of a few islands, and one of them is Gozo, an island to the west of mainland Malta (if you can call it that – it’s barely 30km across), and this is where we spent most of our time.

We flew into Malta on Thursday night, flying the 3 hours with Ryanair from Luton to Malta airport. The flight was uneventful, and I slept for the most part, although this has it’s inherent dangers, given that Ryanair seats are to sleeping as breasts are to a bullock. Rather useless and extremely uncomfortable (particularly if you’re a rather proud bullock of the macho persuasion with a sensitive disposition). But, the airfare was economical so we can’t complain too much. After touching down at Malta airport, sucking in the warm Mediterranean air, we collected our baggage and hire-car.

We rented our car through a local company called Swan-Sea (care of easycar.com), and were immediately unimpressed by the fact that one of the head-lamps didn’t work, and the windscreen had a precarious looking crack in it. The Maltese lady who collected the car for us, appeased us by offering to install a new head-lamp the next day at our hotel. So we headed out of the airport, negotiating the short 7km to Malta’s capital Valletta.

One of the immediate things we noticed on arriving in Malta is how acquiescent they are to everything British. Although Malti is the national language, English is widely spoken and all street-signs, airport-signs etc are written in English. Indeed they even drive on the left hand side of the road (to the best of their ability anyway), which is fantastic given it takes an awful lot of pressure off you when driving in a foreign country. Apparently Malta’s affiliation for the English lies deep rooted in their history. They were once a British colony, and even when they became independent, they still elected to remain a part of the Commonwealth.  Their love for all that is Pommie, was evidenced recently in that Malta was the only European nation to give Britain’s appalling Eurovision Song Contest entry, the full complement of 10 points.

We found our hotel, eventually, after a couple of circumnavigations of their walled capital city, Valletta. As it turns out, the hotel we stayed in, the 5* Le Meridian Phoenicia, was pretty difficult to miss and I was kicking myself (as too was Margaret) for missing it. I eventually parked up in front of the hotel going against the traffic, I was that annoyed when I found it. But we made it. The Phoenicia was a great choice of hotel. 5* by Maltese standards was more like 3.5* by Western European standards I’d say. But the hotel was well appointed, breakfast nice (although expensive) but the location was the best feature. A stones throw to the city walls of Valletta. We availed of this, venturing out at 11pm, and grabbing a snack at a local road-side burger joint, washing it down with a couple of glasses of the local brew – "Cisk".

We awoke on Friday June 29th (our anniversary) to the Swan-Sea car hire lady phoning – informing my dopey countenance that she had no head-lamp bulb, and it was also a public holiday in Malta too – the Feast day of St Peter and Paul – so there wasn’t a hope of obtaining one. Somehow I think she knew this the previous night. Yes, a rather visible point about Malta is that it is nearly 100% Roman Catholic – a fact that was not lost on us by the number of impressive churches and dome structures that appear seemingly everywhere there is a village. After turning down the offer of a a replacement car (as we were keen to get away), we hit the road and headed west, driving through the ‘burbs of Valletta following the signs for the Gozo Ferry. We found this pretty easily, as the main road took us past Mosta, up towards the pretty harbour of St Paul’s Bay before landing us at the Car Ferry port in Cirkewwa. A total journey of just shy of 1 hour.

The ferry crossing was 30 minutes and before long we were on Gozo. Gozo certainly looked finer from the outset than what we had seen of the mainland. Beautifully kept sandstone buildings line the streets in Mgarr, the port side end of Gozo, and this was the order of the day as we drove from Mgarr on Gozo’s east, through the main-city of Victoria (yep they love the Brits don’t they) and then onto San Lawrenz in the west, where our 5* hotel awaited – the Kempinski. Now this was true 5*. Beautiful grounds, fantastic swimming pool, spa & gym facilities and very spacious/modern rooms.

We arrived at lunch time, took a nap, and then headed out to Dwejra Bay, a few km down the road from San Lawrenz. Dwejra has a striking coast line and it’s highlight is the Azure Window and adjoining inland sea. The Azure window is a natural rock arch of sand and lime stone, jutting out into the Mediterranean. Next to the arch is a small grotto with a 100 metre tunnel that leads boats from the ocean into an inland sea, or more accurately a small harbour or lagoon. It was very picturesque and we spent the afternoon there, taking the obligatory boat ride through the tunnel out into the ocean, exploring all the nooks and crannies of this fascinating coastline. After taking in the sunset, we headed for dinner in San Lawrenz at a great restaurant called Tatita’s. The food was magnificent and the staff very friendly. The restaurant is right in the square, and very authentic. The Gozo cheese ravioli was especially appetising.

The following day, another beautiful sunny day at that, circa 30 degrees C plus by estimates was enough of an invitation to enjoy the lavish pool. It was at this point I tucked into reading Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, a book that has been on my reading list for eons. That was the order of the day really, in between swimming, eating and watching the many lizards scoot in and out from under the deck chairs. Late afternoon we did venture out in the car, driving to the village of Gharb, famous for it’s English looking square complete with magnificent church and red telephone box.

We then followed a winding narrow road past Ta Pinu, yet another incredible looking church, almost in the middle of nowhere, and apparently a major site for Catholic pilgrims given it is also a shrine commemorating the fact that the Virgin Mary had spoken to one of Gharb’s residents.

We took the corrugated road northwards towards Marsalforn, a very touristy beach side resort. Noting a couple of Maltese wedding convoys along the way. Nothing else of note really, and we headed out of town for a magnificent dinner at the highly reputed Ta Frenc restaurant. A French restaurant, although with a Gozitan twist. I tucked into one of Malta’s delicacies that night – rabbit. Not bad, but the starter of lobster pasta fired with Pernod and lobster bisque, cooked at your table was magnificent. Curiously, the restaurant also hosted a wedding reception that evening…. 240 guests. Would like to say we saw some typical Maltese tradition – but it was no different in format to any other wedding I’d been too. After dinner we headed back to the hotel via Victoria, noting just how tiny Gozo is, because the journey was no more than 10 minutes.

The following morning we spent poolside again and shortly after lunch, and after a cold Kempinski shower (a point Mags wasn’t too happy about), we hit the road, leaving San Lawrenz for the short drive back to Mgarr Harbour and catching the ferry back to mainland Malta. We were up on deck during the ferry crossing, taking note of the island of Comino. This particular island is just a lump of lime-stone, but the western end has a magnificent beach, called the blue lagoon. Alas, we didn’t have time to pay this is a visit.

Back on Malta itself, and with plenty of time before we were due at the airport, we took the ride through St Paul’s Bay and then down to the ancient city of Mdina, noting the majestic countenance of Mosta’s domed basilica in the distance. We spent about 30 minutes walking around the Mdina citadel, a beautiful medieval relic perched a top a hill. This walled city was magnificent. Beautiful sandstone buildings and curious alleyways. Definitely worth a look, albeit a brief one for us.

After this, we took the winding back roads (aka Maltese farm-roads) south to the Blue Grotto, one of Malta’s more famous landmarks. The road we took was dodgy, poorly signed and I wondered whether we were actually going to get there. We asked some locals just outside Qrendi if we were on the right road, and they said to carry straight on. A few minutes later, we’re driving through the town of Qrendi, and we were greeted by a phalanx of policeman heading down the narrow street towards us. Taking in our surroundings further we noted the buildings were adorned in blue and gold regalia. Clearly some kind of festival, thankfully we hadn’t driven headlong into a parade – as no throng of mad Maltese appeared behind this row of cops. We stopped as the police passed, and Mags asked them for directions. Again they reaffirmed we were on the right track. Sure enough then, after a wild goose chase up a precarious pot-holed farm road and a string of bad language, we miraculously came upon the main arterial road of southern Malta, and low and behold straight in front of us was a sign for the Blue Grotto.

Disappointment though! We pulled into the car-park above the grotto, only to be informed by the attendant that boats had stopped going into the grotto for the day. So we sauntered down the hill to the boat entrance, noting the aqua-blue channel, teeming with Sunday swimmers – which was the entrance to the grotto. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the structure from land, so we had to be content with just finding the bloody place. A reason to come back perhaps.

Shortly after, we took the short drive to Malta airport, dropping off the car and discovering that the fine cuisine we had experienced in Gozo did not extend to it’s aeronautical cafes. The food was positively rubbish. Our flight was on time thankfully, and the 3 hour journey was sufficient for me to finish the Life of Pi, literally reading the very last word of the book, as the plane came to a halt in Luton airport.  A great read,  and all in all a nice 3-day break from the miserable climes of London.