If It's the Beaches

Azure Window, Island of Gozo, Malta

Malta. It's not a place many people on the west side of the Atlantic know about. Malta is a small island in between Sicily and Tunisia in the Mediterranean. It's been occupied by so many groups, I've lost count. However, the British occupied the island in WWII, as it was a sought after position, given the Nazi's hope to occupy northern Africa with the Axis power of Italy. Because of the British occupation, they speak English. The Maltese grow up bilingual, speaking both Maltese and English. In fact, during the second World War, the British almost made them give up Maltese, because it wasn't a written language. However, after some convincing that their language was secure, since the Nazis couldn't speak it and break what could be considered "code," they told them they could keep it if they turned it into a written language. So apparently on short notice they did so. The language has similarities to both Arabic and to Italian.

The capital, Valletta, was a port of call on the cruise I took last November and I loved it. The city was this mix of Europe and what I thought Africa might look like (I would find out days later in Egypt). But when I found out that other parts of the island were surrounded by this gorgeous blue and these amazing rocky coasts, I wanted to see them for myself.

I was in dire need of a vacation, particularly one that involved a beach or a pool and some sun. I flew down on a Thursday and I was at the pool, facing the Mediterranean by 2:30. I had a beer by 3.

Aside from the beer on this trip, the rest of my diet was not indulgent, as most would define the term. I ate a ton of local fish, which was sooooo good, like sea bass and the black meagre.

This is just for you, Gil. Sea Bass.

Malta is beautiful. You can't take a bad picture. The architecture is so different than what I'm used to. The sandy stone buildings look similar to Egypt, but a LOT cleaner. And then there's that magnificent blue water. It almost doesn't look real. The water really is that blue.

Looking at Valletta from across the harbor

I was supposed to have a tour of the island of Gozo on Friday; however, the private guide I hired had me reserved for 30 August and not 30 July. He made it up to me, though, and gave me a free 1/2 day tour of the island of Malta on Friday and my scheduled tour of Gozo on Saturday.
We toured the island of Malta, seeing some of the places that can be touristy, but then traveled off road, literally, onto rocky paths for some amazing views.

Marsaxlokk Harbor, is still a traditional fishing village. These colorful boats are the fishing boats.

The point of the tour was for us to see what the Maltese live like, so we even visited a "cafe," which was a hole in the wall that locals frequent. A bunch of older men, possibly there for several hours, and others who would stop in for a coffee and a pastizzi on a break. We did the same and tried a pastizzi, a traditional Maltese snack with a flaky crust sort of like a croissant, filled with peas and a potato type filling. It was great. I wanted to take pictures, but felt like it was intrusive, because this is what they do every day, which is nothing special to them. I thought a little like I was exploiting something so normal to them. It is normal, but it's Maltese to me, which isn't any different than an of us. It's just something that I never would have seen on any other tour or by myself and that's the only thing that made it unique.

Popeye's Village--the set where the 1980 movie was filmed and now serves as little tourist attraction.

The next day was my tour of the island of Gozo. The island is less commercialized than Malta, but still very similar. We took a car ferry over, which went past the island of Comino where the Blue Lagoon is located. I wanted to possibly take a boat tour for some snorkeling, but decided a pool and relaxing would do just fine. The tour of Gozo was beautiful and it was hard to take a bad picture. We saw what the Maltese compare to the White Cliffs of Dover, the Azure Window (at the top of this post).

We had lunch at this local restaurant. They grow all their own food and for lunch we had a plate of fresh tomato, olives, goat cheese, onion, and capers along with some fresh bread. It was delicious. He also took me to some sea salt farms. I had never even thought of how they collect sea salt, but this is one way it's done. The colors were very bright and the wind was also really strong.

You can see all of my pictures from my trip here.

My Old Kentucky Home

I had a wild hair. Which is funny, because it's usually a stiff chin hair, not a wild hair, but whatever kind of hair it was, I went home over the 4th of July for a wedding reception. I had already declined my invitation many weeks before, but bored one Saturday, I discovered "cheap" tickets, so I plucked the hair or smoothed the hair or...I bought the ticket, okay.

It was a quick trip home, I'll admit that, but well worth it. I flew into Washington and out of Louisville, where the reception was held. I spent 1.5 days in Baltimore, if you can count the rush hour traffic from Dulles Airport, which we avoided by stopping in Washington D.C. for Angus burgers and beer. On Friday Chris and I set out early on a road trip to Louisville, Kentucky.


Instead of the typical mindset of having to get there as quickly as possible, we drove and when we wanted to stop, we did. Our first fun stop, was at a casino somewhere near Charleston, West Virginia (but not Charlestown races and slots like you hear on the commercials in Ohio). In 30 minutes, we lost $33 in a few slots, but mostly my fault at the craps table. I was able to annoy a bunch of old men when I showed up to the table and everyone passed the dice until they got to me, when I happily threw them for craps. Everyone loses! Woohoo!!

Back in the car and on the road a while longer, I saw a sign for Louisa (Kentucky), when I exclaimed, "that's where my great-grandparents were from! I was there once to see G.G.'s (great-grandmother) grave!" The genealogist in Chris couldn't resist, so we turned the car around and headed back for the exit and found our way to Louisa.
Once there, we trolled through town searching for a cemetery and finally stopped to ask someone. He gave me directions and we headed up a hill to find it. I had been to Louisa once before when I was probably around 10 years old. The area where my great-grandparents had their house was going to be flooded to turn into a park and we went down so we could see it one time, and for Grandpa and my Dad to see it one last time. We saw where the house used to stand and some bricks that once made up the one-room school house where my grandpa attended. On that trip we also visited G.G.'s grave and all that I could remember was that the grave was on a hill.


So Chris and I searched this small cemetery, looking at every headstone and plate in the grass, but found nothing. Back into town we stopped at a gas station for water, where Chris asked a customer about another cemetery. He gave us the locations of two others, which were more out of the way than the first. The largest of the three we visited, I was certain felt right, but after searching, we found nothing. Although we didn't find the graves, we did learn that one of our federal government officials came from Louisa. Pretty exciting.


On Saturday morning, for breakfast we met Chris' family, who had driven up from Tennessee, along with his daughter and son-in-law, the bride and groom. I just loved listening to them talk, because I love their accents. However, after not understanding something Chris said (his accent gets thicker the more he's around his family), I was corrected by his Mama that he didn't have an accent. Yes Ma'am!

The reception was Saturday. It was a burger bar and a local Louisville brew, with instructions to "wear whatever you're comfortable in." Perfect. I think weddings are overrated. The beer was wonderful and the burgers were delicious! Low key and no chicken dances. Nice job, Jen and Scott! Congratulations!

We visited the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory and that was awesome. They had an exihibt where you could choose from 4 game-used bats to stand at a plate to swing or have your picture taken. Every kid was opting for Lou Gehrig's bat (or was it Mickey Mantle's?), but being the oddball Reds fan, I chose Johnny Bench's bat.


On Sunday, we went to Churchill Downs. Because of the holiday, it was free to get in. Completely confused on where we could sit to see the track out of the sun and how to bet on the races, we sought help. A lovely usher gave us seats for a very small tip, a card on how to bet, and the program for race day. We sat in "box" seats, which had a tv with the race and were directly in front of the room where the rich people stayed, with air conditioning, servers, tables, food, and drinks. They only came out to watch the races.


We bet on every race we saw. We knew nothing about the horses, but chose based on their names and sometimes their odds. Our math wasn't that great, but I think we came out almost even.

Here's to America's birthday and to chin hairs!

On an Evening in Roma

Over Memorial Day weekend I went to Rome with my good friends Kim, Brian, and their 4-year old son Jack. Rome was another place on my list that I have always wanted to see, so in April when Lufthansa was having a sale on flights within Europe, we combined that with a holiday weekend and booked it. We stayed at a place we booked through Vacation Rentals by Owner, which is a site that regular people use to put their house/apartment/whatever up for vacationers in cities all over the world. Our place was great. It was just down the street from the Colosseum, away from the noise of the main street, and included a private patio.

The Italian gentleman, Andreas, we rented the apartment from recommended restaurants, certain self-paced tours of sites, and also where the grocery store and other necessities were. Since we were starving, we went to the closest recommended restaurant to our hotel and it was awesome. It was a small place with seats outside and it was packed with Italians and tourists alike. The place across the street was empty. The prices were super cheap and the house wine was amazing. We liked this place so much that we went back for our last night. The best part was that the local Italians seemed to love it as much and they were regulars, judging by their interaction with the staff and owner.

On Saturday, we headed for the Spanish Steps. We hadn't had coffee or anything to eat yet, so in tremendous faux pas, we found a McDonald's and got coffee and croissants. We wandered over to a piazza that Andreas recommended, where you could climb to a high point and get a view of the city. After that, we had lunch and then walked to the Vatican, for which we had reserved tickets online.

Spanish Steps

View of Rome

First of all, the Vatican is huge. You walk in and you see signs pointing toward the Sistine Chapel, which is all I wanted to see, you walk down some halls, past beautiful artwork, and some awesome ceiling art, but you still aren't there. So you follow more signs and you think that it's got to be close. But it's not. More hallways, more art, more signs. Finally, you arrive to a huge, dim room full of tourists who wanted to see the same thing. And you look up.

Not the Sistine Chapel, but very beautiful.

Even though there are signs saying no photography and guards, too few for the large crowd, shouting 'no photographs', there are still people taking pictures. So, I turned off my flash, held the camera at my chest and pointed up for a few shots. It's hard to see (especially since I didn't bring my glasses) with the dim light, but it was absolutely amazing and beautiful. The crowds got to me, though, so I didn't stay long.

The Sistine Chapel

Me, in from the Vatican and not on fire!

Since we had been walking all day, literally from the Vatican to our apartment near the Colosseum, Brian and I went to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner. We bought super cheap wine, which turned out to be really good, and had pasta with sausage and zucchini on the patio that evening. It was wonderful.

The walk to Piazza Navona

Rome is filled with lots of statues with butts and phallic symbols. Funny.

On Sunday our only goal was to see the Colosseum and we figured 10 was pretty early, but were surprised to find the line already with a wait of 45 minutes. So instead of waiting, we joined one of the English tours they were trying to get people to join outside and I'm glad we did. Had we just paid for entry, we wouldn't have heard any of the stories of the entertainment that the Colosseum intended. Around 700,000 people died in matches and thousands of different kinds of animals from all over the world that the Romans could reach. The guide said that they had "comedy" shows in between the battles. The comedies were things like a dog versus a porcupine or a woman versus a midget.

Inside the Colosseum, this was the arena floor, which you can see they've reconstructed there on the right. The gladiators entered from beneath and the floor had trap doors to remove the dead animals or the gladiators. The gladiators were mostly criminals who were serving a sentence and they lived across the street, where they learned to fight. Being a gladiator, if you survived, was sort of like being a Hollywood star in today's world.

Since Jack wasn't having a lot of fun and Brian was bored too, they left Kim and I to walk around on our own after lunch. We strolled the city, saw Trevi fountain, and got a gelatto and coffee. That evening we went back to the same restaurant we tried the first night. Kim and I got an awesome spicy pasta and mussels dish and some delicious red house wine.

Trevi Fountain

It was a great trip, with great weather, and some great friends. I'm happy to have been able to see Rome with them.

Would You Go With Me

Two weekends in a row in May, I went on trips. On May 21st, my friend Kim and I headed to Bruges, Belgium, a small city in West Flanders sometimes called the Venice of the north. It's one of the cutest cities I've ever visited. It's very small, but has so many cute roads and what I think is beautiful architecture. After very annoying traffic all the way up, Kim and rushed to dinner to have what ever tourist visiting near the North Sea should have......mussels. And when in Belgium, beer. Kim was even a trooper and had beer, save for the last dinner.



The next day, we were grateful for the bright ball in the sky, which Germany seems to lack from October through May. We strolled through the city and took a canal boat ride to see some of what you can't by foot. We took a tour of De Halve Maan, the only working brewery left in the city, and had mussels for lunch. With beer. There were no museums or plans or large groups to satisfy. We just did what we wanted, which some might argue wasn't much, and had a lot of fun.


At the end of canal ride, our canal boat driver asked us if we could recall the story of Romeo and Juliet. As he did so, we approached a house with an open window, out of which a blond was looking. It turns out, she's the Juliet of Bruges and she's not a bad looking broad.

I'm Gonna Take You Home

I was able to go home....for the entire month of April. 1 week in Ohio and 3 in Maryland. Some might call it a boondoggle, but I call it comforting.

In Ohio, I got to spend some much needed time family time with Mom and Dad, and I even got to see Chad, the now MBA graduate, for a bit. I did a lot of relaxing, despite the fact that I was wide awake between 4 and 5 for the first week. Mom and I went to Wilmington to visit Great Aunt Rosey and Great Uncle Kenny. I showed up bearing gifts, which I later learned Kenny seemed to devour before Rosey had the chance to notice. (Don't worry, Rosey, you'll get your own soon.) We also got to visit Grandpa, who smiled at me, and that was enough. Dad and I drove some golfballs one afternoon. Okay, Dad drove golfballs, I just swung the club and was lucky if they went far enough that I didn't get to retrieve them to try again. We also got to see the Blue Jackets lose one last time for the season.

Kenny, me, and Rosey at the Veteran's Memorial in Wilmington

After a relaxing week in Ohio, I went to Maryland for work and, of course, fun. As usual, I ate my way through the city at places like Abbey Burger Bistro and Woodberry Kitchen. I got to see a group of good friends and pictures of a good friend's so-called "wife" and "child." I also took in the wonderful weather at some iconic Baltimore sights with my best friend. We also saw the O's lose one of the first games of the season.