Stimulus in Overdrive
March 23rd, 2005 | Posted by Shannon
I am full of food and wine with another dinner coming in only two hours, listening to Oasis in the internet bar by our apartment. It smells like incense in here. Wonder what they are smoking in the back. Two more days of this, then I retreat to calm and peaceful Venice.
Yesterday we went to the “must-see” city of Mdina. It is an old Norman walled town. It took us a gazillion years to get there. They have these crazy yellow buses all over Malta, and they go everywhere but you always have to change in Valletta. Like, every single bus goes to or leaves from Valletta. So it totally sucks unless you are staying in Valletta or you really like buses, which I do not. My philosophy is, life is too short to take a bus, unless it is faster than the train, or you have no other choice. In Malta you have no other choice. Unless you drive, but that is opening a whole ‘nother can of worms.
The buses are old here and have no spring in the seats any more. Was it worth two hours of butt-bruise to go to Mdina? Not really. I’ve been to a lot of walled towns. I’ve already seen a few Maltese churches. So I already did Mdina even before I’d done it. I was really happy to get back to the grime and neon of St. Julian’s – way more my scene.
We did have a really nice lunch in a restaurant called Bacchus, in a wine cellar. In fact, if you were to ask us our favorite things of the day:
Lisa: the architecture in Mdina
Colleen: the view from the back wall of Mdina
Shannon: Lunch in Mdina, except for that corn nut in my salad. That was weird.
After Mdina we walked over to Rabat. Rabat used to be where they buried the dead people from Mdina. Now Rabat is the working town, and Mdina is the tourist attraction. In Rabat we went to the Grotto where Saint Paul lived for a while after he got shipwrecked here and went all Jesus. Then we went to the catacombs, one of the burial places dug down into stone, little beds and big beds for dead people. Then back on the bus for another two-hour, butt-injuring bus ride home.
We were so exhausted last night (we could barely speak until the first glass of wine went down) that we stayed home and ate. Colleen and I had found some homemade frozen meat pies in the supermarket and bought them in case of emergency. They were awesome! Colleen had a salmon pie (mmm… salmony) and Lisa and I had beef pies. Then we watched part of a movie, dubbed in Italian, where Linda Fiorentino was ankle cuffed to a hot dog stand while Wesley Snipes talked to her in a microphone and shot a bunch of people. We had no idea what was really going on, but we were too full of pie to change the channel.
Yesterday I also ate some lamb and mint flavored potato chips from the U.K. The chips make up for the Oasis song that is playing right now.
Today Colleen and Lisa went off on their own (I am totally anti-bus, you won’t get me on another fucking bus for a while) and I went to the home of Angella and John for lunch. They are from San Francisco and moved here last August. I hooked up with Angella via the Chowhound message board. They are really cool and made me a fabulous lunch served up with some great Sicilian wines. We hung out and talked, ate and drank for almost three hours – that is why I am so full – and they are coming around to pick us up at 8:00 to take us to eat fish in the fishing village of Marsaxlokk. Damn! I am such a piggy.
Seriously though they are hella cool and I think they are going to take us around the island tomorrow, making it totally unnecessary to ever board a bus again, at least for a while.
Only two more days! Everything is going by so fast.
XOXOXOXOXOXO
XXannon
