Gozo is a small island to the north west of Malta and is a part of the Malta Archipelago.. Its capital is Victoria (old name is Rabat) where there is a citadel - part of the Maltese fortifications built to protect Malta from the Turks.

The Citadel

My daughter and I decided to spend a day on Gozo, to catch the bus from Valletta to the ferry and to hire a car when we got there.

The bus ride took almost exactly one hour for the less than 20 kilometre journey and during the ride we saw a great deal of the countryside and had a tour of St Paul’s Bay into the bargain.

The ferry runs regularly all day and carries both cars and passengers. It takes about 30 minutes to get from Cirkewwa to Mgarr.

According to our guide book it was possible to hire a car in Mgarr “just a short walk up the road”. We duly disembarked and walked up the hill to where there was a hire-car sign outside a supermarket. On enquiring we were told that we were at the right place.

At that stage my daughter remembered that she had conveniently forgotten to put her money belt on and thus did not have her driver’s license with her which meant that I was going to have to do all the driving. I produced my license and paid my money and was told that the car would be brought around in about ten minutes.

When the car arrived the driver told us to hop in as he had to drive back to wherever he came from. When we arrived he gave us a map and I remembered to ask him where we were so that we could navigate.

It was an interesting car to drive - the gears had been stripped and it was almost out of petrol. Not knowing how far I could get on what was left in the tank was a bit of a worry as there are few service stations on Gozo. However, we drove to the Ggantija temple and then had lunch at the Oleander in Xhaghra before driving to Victoria where I had promised to pat the walls of the citadel.

I patted the walls of the Citadel.

The view from the Citadel was wonderful. Below is a picture of the dome of the Parish Church of St John the Baptist at the village of Xewkija which was started in 1951 and completed in 1971 around the old 17th century church which was too small for the community’s needs.

The dome of the Parish Church of St John the Baptist at the village of Xewkija

We looked at the cathedral ....

and being able to use my flash meant that the photos I took turned out better than most of my church pictures.

The interior of the Cathedral, Gozo.

The people of Gozo ran out of money when they were building the cathedral and could not afford to build the dome so a trompe l’oeil was painted on the ceiling instead.

The Trompe L'oeil

We walked around the walls of the citadel and admired the view. Sad to say, there was a lot of rubble and rubbish which was a shame.

We started the drive back to Mgarr but found a service station so we put a small amount of petrol into the car and headed back through Victoria and out to the Inland Sea and Fungus Rock. The road down to the Inland Sea was very steep and narrow and in a car with a sloppy gearbox and untested brakes it was a rather hair-raising drive but definitely worth it.

The Inland Sea

By that time it was getting on for late afternoon so we headed back to Mgarr where we found that a ferry had just arrived and it was impossible to turn through the traffic to deliver the car back to the supermarket. Finally we crawled down to a place where we could turn and then had to wait for a break in the traffic before we could do a U-turn and drive back to deliver the car.

We had to buy tickets to get back on the ferry. The trip over from Malta doesn’t need a ticket as there is nowhere to go from Gozo except back to Malta.