From icy roads to beautiful beaches

During Christmas Eve 2009, Russell and I were battling icy Texas highways on our way to the impromptu (because of road conditions) but decidedly more perfect place where we were engaged.

The initial stress of that evening led to great joy.

For this year's Christmas, after moving to a place with constant winter snow and ice, we decided to take a needed break from the    -20 C/-4 F weather in Sweden and travel to Malta, a little island just south of Italy where we savored the sun and warmth of the Mediterranean.

While the island was small, there were still plenty of things to do, such as some ancient history lessons at the Tarxien temples, which date from 3,600-2,500 BC, and the Hypogeum, or underground cavity, dating from around the same period.

To get to these locations, we rode the public buses, which were old but certainly had some character:

All I could think when we were in these buses was "Hop on the Magic School Bus!" After singing this to myself the entire trip, I noticed that the very last bus we rode was named "Maltese Magic." How perfect is that? The system was quite unorganized, which no doubt added to the adventure. One bus driver, while on the route, asked the passengers, "Does this bus normally go left or right here?" But we always arrived where we needed to go and paid the crazy cheap price of 47 euro cents per ride.

One of the best things about our short holiday was waking up each morning to see the sun rise over the ocean, just outside our hotel room's balcony:

Hooray for nice, winter rate hotel rooms. We also enjoyed one-hour massages that were 20 euros less than the summer months.

On our final day on the island, we visited Mdina, a wonderfully preserved old city on a hill overlooking the green landscape. While we were there, we had the decadent chocolate cake, known as the best cake in Malta, from Fontanella Tea Garden. Go to this link to see the amazing view from Fontanella.

After walking through the alleyways and streets of Mdina, we took what we were told was a 10-minute walk (which actually, at least by our pace, was an hour) to the Dingli Cliffs. The journey was worth it when we saw the scene:

We're now back in Sweden where it's -9 C, but the break did wonders to help us get through the winter months before the lovely summer returns again.

While we were so sad to not be able to come to the USA for Christmas (as we'd like to have at least two weeks of vacation available to fully enjoy our time in Texas), we are really looking forward to seeing everyone there in June or July.


Happy New Year to family and friends far and near!



Note: I'm working on posting more, but I know it's been an ebb and flow between the intensive work for my master's program. Right now, I'm off to continue writing an essay. To keep up with my posts, subscibe using one of the tools on the right side of the homepage.