Island of Gozo Tour

We went on a day long tour of the Island of Gozo today.  We took the bus to catch the ferry.  When we got to Gozo (about 30 min later), we climbed the steep hill up to the Citadel and were able to poke around the fortifications there.  We had an amazing view, as it's situated at the top of the island.  The people on the island came here for protection if the island was ever in danger.  It was quite interesting.  Of course, there was a church-- and a prison!  There were also ruins of the rooms where the people and commoners stayed when under siege.  In the distance in one of the pictures you can see a replica of the Christ Redeemer statue that is found in Rio de Janiero Brazil.  It is much smaller than the one in Rio though.  It was much cooler today as the winds shifted from the south (from Africa) to the North (from Europe).  We enjoyed a lot of wind today too!  We walked down the hill and poked around the town square.  St. George church was there and we went inside--looked like every single other Catholic church I've ever been in!  We bought some spices-- bruschetta seasoning and sun dried tomatoes.  From there we drove to a really nice Italian restaurant for lunch and ate way too much!  The chocolate cake for dessert was the best part and it was the first cake here in Malta that was moist and not too rich!  (It was milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate.)  When we finished with lunch, we drove to some more of the ruins like those at Hagar Qim-- the same people built their temples on Gozo, as well. These ruins are called the Ggantija temples in Xaghra, because of their size (from the word gigantic) and date to around 2800 BC.  They found all the same type of stone architecture here as they have at Hagar Qim.  After, we drove to the beach at Ramla Bay and cooled off in the water!  It was really rocky, so it wasn't a very good beach for swimming, in my opinion!  It hurt our feet to even wade in the water!  Katelyn and I tried though.  It felt good to at least get wet, though.  We walked down to the showers and washed off our sandy feet and got smoothies at the restaurant there.  We boarded the buses and headed back to the terminal to catch the ferry back to Malta.  We got back to the hotel just before 6pm and were able to be back for Brooke's call!  We talked to her for about 1 1/2 hours!  But that's ok because we didn't' get to talk to her at all last week!  It was so fun to see her and hear her cute voice!  We relaxed, showered and went to bed!