Hiking Day 2 - Gozo Island

We were pretty exhausted from our hike the day before along the coast of Malta but we were ready for another day. This time our plan was to go to a small island just north of Malta called Comino. In the normal summer time, many people take day cruises to Comino. The boats visit the Blue Lagoon along the coast of Comino. People swim and drink and hang out in this area.

Well, it's not summer. So our plan was to take a ferry from the top of Malta to this small island and then hike around. This would require a long bus ride so we wanted to get a decently early start again. We went and got breakfast from the restaurant attached to the hotel again. I got banana and honey pancakes this time. Lacey got the same omelet and toast.

The bus was pretty uneventful other than it just takes forever. The buses in Malta cover the whole island nicely but they are not super often and they legit stop at EVERY SINGLE stop. The bus from Valletta up to the ferry terminal listed 55 stops and I would guess we stopped at 51 or 52 of the stops. It took maybe 1 hour 25 minutes total? A good test of our patience I guess.

We arrived at the ferry area at the North end of Malta (finally). We went to where the Comino ferries leave from annnnnnddddd.... they weren't running. Well, poop. One of the people peddling tour buses said it was too windy to run small ferries (the fact that its offseason doesn't hurt I'm sure). So we were back to square one. There's another island north of Malta that's larger than Comino. It's called Gozo and we had not intended to go there but now we were!

Gozo is probably 1/3 the size of Malta. The main city is Victoria and it's at the center of the island. So you have to take a bus from the ferry spot to get anywhere else on the island. Generally difficult transportation (again). Gozo is a little more open and not nearly as crowded as Malta. There are a few different outdoor things to see.

After a small annoyance about our original plan falling through again, we regrouped while waiting for the Gozo ferry. These are big boats that fill with cars and people so the wind was no issue. We found some different walk ideas. The one we settled on was a walk that started right from the ferry. We were tired of riding buses and ferries literally all morning and wanted to do anything else.

After landing we saw some electric scooters for rent. We tried to get the app to work ut our cards wouldn't connect so we just started walking. I got my hopes up about the scooter rental so I was annoyed (again) that things just wouldn't work out for us. Yet again, fate had our back though. The walk we ended up doing was on was one of the most epic ones I've ever done.

We started by hiking out from the ferry city along a side road. We tried to follow the directions we found online but they weren't super clear at first. With some Google Maps assistance, we found our way to a fort. Then the view opened up and holy wow. Just incredible. Not necessarily better than the day before but also different and better? I dunno. The view of the Sea and the bright green farmland laid out in front of us from our high viewpoint was stunning. Like I said, fate had it worked out for us.

The next part of the walk was entirely down by the Sea. We could hear the water crashing on the rocky shore. We saw a couple walking quite a bit ahead of us (they beat us off the ferry and took the correct way) walking but other than that, there was not a soul around. Spectacular scenery. I love the open water. It was good.

This stretch of the walk worked it's way up to a small bay/fjord. The path was even more incredible along the steep side of this little valley. Again, so green and so pretty and words just don't even do it justice.

There was a steep path down from our side of the bay to the small "town" at the bottom. Then we had to hike all the way back up the other side on an insanely steep road. Once we got back up over the ridge, we had a long, peacefully stretch of walking through a rural farm area. There was a really nice view of a town and it's cathedral across the way. We ate our super romantic lunch of cliff bars again.

We worked our way through this area until we got to a small town. Right before the small town is where the description from online started to be very confusing. We switched to Google Maps exclusively and just hoped it knew what it was doing. We passed the couple we had been following for the whole walk while in the small town, now they were following us. Google Maps had us go literally through fields.

Somehow Google Maps knew what it was doing and we made it to Te Cenc cliffs. For the 1,000th time in the past 2 days, we were standing there slack-jawed. The path worked it's way along the cliffs sometimes getting quite close. By the end of the cliff section, Lacey and I were both kind of over being that close to a big ledge. While walking, we talked to the couple who was doing the same path. They were both probably 55-60 years old and from Cardiff. They were pretty cool. Near the end of the hike, we split paths to catch the bus.

It started to rain right near the end of the walk. Our end destination was a town in another small bay. We could imagine this place being super duper busy in the summer. There were a few restaurants (like the day before) and we opted for some chips and candy this time haha. We waited for about 30 minutes for the bus.

Low and behold, the couple we had been walking with was on the exact same bus! We chatted with them a bit more on the way back to the main city. Then we all rode the bus from the main city down to the ferry. They were thinking about living in Malta for 6-8 weeks this winter and wanted to do a 1-week test run so that's what they were doing.

It was an extremely boring ferry ride back across to Malta. Then we rode the extremely long bus ride (again) down to Valletta. We were exhausted from the travel and the walking and just the whole last couple of days. For dinner, we found a Lebanese restaurant that was super cheap. Lacey got chicken and I got steak shish kebab wrap. My wrap was one of the best ones I've ever had. The steak and sauces and oh baby. We ended the night with a well deserved big cup of caramel brownie ice cream from Haagen Dasz. Our last trip to Europe featured a lot of gelato from Amorino. This trip we had Haagen Dasz many, many times.

And that was about it for our last full day in Malta.