Enjoying the winter sun

Today the sun was shining and I had a lovely walk along the seafront, this always makes me so grateful for what I have. The sun shining on my face and the sound of the sea as I walk along. This is a photo of the bay just at the end of my road.

 

This weekend we will be celebrating Carnival before the beginning of Lent. This is very popular here, the children enjoy dressing up and there are many parades with decorated floats. These are some photos from last year.

 



A trip to Gozo

Although it is winter here we do have some very nice days, as we did on Wednesday and so we decided to have a trip to Gozo. We are very lucky to have a second propery in Gozo which we bought about 10 years ago before deciding to leave the UK completely. This propery has been our holiday home and it still is.
Gozo is much quieter than Malta and is a good place to go and relax especially in the heat of summer. To get to Gozo we have a 40 minutes drive to the north of the island and then a 20 minute ferry ride.

 

This is the Gozo ferry arriving in the harbour of Mgar on Gozo.

 



Malta

Firstly, thank you to all who have visited my blog in the last few days. Several said they would like to know more about Malta so I though I would post some facts and history and then some aspects of life in Malta, which I hope you will find interesting.



As you can see Malta is a tiny island in the Meditteranean Sea approx 50 miles south of Sicily and 207 miles north of Libya. It is infact a small archipelago with Malta, Gozo and Comino being the three largest islands.

Malta is approx 122square miles which makes it one of the world's smallest countries, however it is one of the most densely populated countries having a population of over 350,000.

Baking 2

Here is my photo

I made four but we ate one while it was still warm with homemade soup - it was delicious.

Baking

A cold morning so we decided to stay home. I wanted to try some of the bread recipes from my Paul Hutchinson baking book so I chose to make Ciabatta as it is one of my favourite breads. I made it on my mixer as he said it would be set and messy and boy he wasn't joking. When it came to turning it out and shaping it to put in the oven it was a wet, sticky elastic mess. However I was very pleased with the results.

I took a photo but can't get it from my iPad to here- see how useless I am. Anyway I will keep trying. 

Blog Event

Oh dear! I have probably missed this event when I was so full of good intentions. I was out yesterday morning and when I sat down yesterday afternoon to write my post we had a power cut - this is not unusual here in Malta. The afternoon passed my by, I did manage to read by sitting close to the window. When the electricity came back on I had dinner to prepare and the the evening passed me by I woke up this morning and remembered I had forgot to post.
Anyway if anyone comes along to read my blog you will see I am not a great blogger but this was meant to kick start me into action.
I used to have a very busy life in the UK but now it is much quieter in Malta, because my husband is also retired we do lots of things together but I do find he stops me from becoming too involved in my hobbies.  Just as I am about to get out my sewing or knitting he always seems to say "Let's .......... and I miss out again.
Well if anyone reads this perhaps it will inspire me to do more.

Sewing

I really must get down to some sewing. I have projects I want to work on but I seem to always have other things to do!
Maybe tomorrow!!