Phone, Popeye and Paceville
It's been an amazing day!
It's sunday so i could take my time in the morning: i got out of bed at 09:00 and went downstairs for breakfast, Simon and Romain joined me as well. After about 5 minutes someone knocked on the door, and 2 minutes later again, we didn't respond to it because normally Tony opens the door, is his house anyways. When Tony did not appear to be in the house and the door got yet another slap 3 minutes later, i decided that enough was enough and opened the door. The person who's been abusing the door for the last couple of minutes turned out to be an italian boy named 'Jackmo' (we just call him jack) our new roommate who apparently arrived earlier than expected. We introduced ourselves to eachother and he then asked me forna favour; he wanted to borrow my phone for a while. It turns out that he left forgot to take his phone from the taxi in which he arrived at our host family, even worse: he has no clue what the taxi company was called, so we couldn't contact them to inform them about the lost phone, so that's a problem... Luckily he might remember the logo of the taxi company, so we've been searching for maltese taxi logos, companies and other information in order to be able to contact the taxi driver, for about 20 minutes, when he finally had the bright idea to look at his receipt from his taxi...
We finally called the taxi company and they helped us to contact the taxi driver, who has been cruising through the city with a phone on his backseats the entire time. I quickly went upstairs for a while to pack my things for my trip in the afternoon, when i got downstairs again, about 15 minutes later, the taxi driver was on his way to return the phone. 5 minutes later Jack was finally reunited with his beloved phone, a happy ending. It was also a fun way to get to know eachother a bit more.
It was 10:40, time to go out, because i planned to go on a trip to Popeye village, the original set of the movie from Popeye (yes, the buffed, spinach eating sailor). Apparently the set has become a popular tourist attraction and on saturdays i decided to just go and check it out, in order to not 'waste' another entire free day. I arrived at the meeting point (the Sliema ferries) at about 10:43, i was supposed to be there by 11:00, after waiting for about 20 minutes without seeing anyone i figured that it'd be another bummer and headed back home, whenni suddenly came across the dutch girl from the airport again (i knew that she was working for the same organisation that provided me the trip), and as luck would have it, she was even supposed to come.with us onnthe trip to Popeye village. She directed me to our bus, where several others were already waiting.
The trip to the village was fun, i got to see the Maltese countryside again, we drove past many ancient fortresses and tempels. The last couple of kilometres of our journey were spectacular; we drove on top of the cliffs with our bus, parallel to the ocean, on a one way road which has the same width of an average cycling path in the netherlands. But after a 45 minute tripnwe finally arrived at our destination.
Popeye village turned out to be awesome, it's located in a small bay, hidden from the outside world, the houses were painted in bright colours (though it has become a bit worn through the ages) which looked astonishing with the brown cliffs and blue waters of the bay. After recieving our ticket (the same kind of wristband we use at the waterpark as well) we went down into the village.
We were immediately greeted by several people who were portraying characters from the movie, an old pipe smoking man, a sailor and a woman, who must've been Popeye's wife, they were great, because they never dropped character. One of them, the Irish sailor with a pirate accent, even 'dared' me for an armwrestling match, how can i say no to that pirateaccent? The match took place on top of a wooden barrel and it was casted by the old, pipe smoking man, who really made a spectacle out of it. The sailor and i were equally matched, we kept the game going for quite a while, untill he finally surrendered (to save us both from having numb arms for the rest of the day)
In the village, every house was now dedicated to serve a specific purpose for the tourists, for example: the blacksmith now sells all kinds of chains amd bracelets, the winery now functions as the bar and in Popeye's house the visitor gets to see a whole documentary about how they made the movie set and the movie itself.
I hooked up with Nicole and Philip, two swiss students people who were in malte to study english (just like allnother students), they were really nice and we spent the rest of the afternoon together. After visiting each and every house, which took us about 1.5 hours, we went to the restaursnt and ordered some burgers, they were pretty expensive, but they sure were damn good! (Apparently, they do not sell any dishes with spinach, which is a missed opportunity for the restaurant)
Luckily i brought my swimwear with me, because Anchor bay, where the village is located, is full fullnof small boats and large objects in the water to habe fun with, such as trampolines, those large airbags that launches people into the air if you jump on it, and even an obstacle course. After about 1.5 hours Nicole decided that she's had enough and went back to chill in the. Meanwhile, Philip and i decided to swim to the breakwater, it was in a pretty bad state, and partly submerged in the water, which made the surface just as slippery as ice, and we used the end of it as a diving board to jump into the sea. There were huge cliffs on both sides of the bay, with many small caves in them as well. Philip and i are both adrenaline junkies and we decided to swim and climb towards several of those caves to explore them a bit. The caves were spectacular and the view from there was amazing, because you could see the village on the other side of the bay.
It was 17:00 when we finally had to go back to Sliema, so far i've had a succesful afternoon.
I dined with Simon and Romain again and we discussed tonight's plans, Romain managed to get a cold, so sadly he couldn't go out that night, so Simon needed a new wingman. Naturally i was prepared to help him out, we were planning on going out together sometime anyways.
We met up with the gang near the red telephone booth on Balluta Bay at 20:00, ourndestination: Paceville, one of europe's biggest and best entertainment districts, full of nightclubs and bars. Our group consisted of several teenagers ranging from 14-18 years old, they were all french students at the AM language school. I was able to understand them, though my french isn't good enough to come up with an entire response in french on time (except for the simple questions like name, age and nationality), so i was talking in english. Eventually we got to know eachother and started speaking more and more english.
We started our night in Paceville with some 'sex on the beach', we then went on to another bar where some of the boys took a gew more shots (by that time i decided to take it easy, because i still had to show up alive at work the next day). We went outside for a while to be able to get some fresh air again and to be able to have a conbersation without extremely loud music. It was about that time when i got pretty lucky and unlucky at the same time: one of the guys, named Jordan, was smoking his cigarette, and i was standing next to him, i walked around him to prevent my lungs from enduring the gusts of smoke, apparently Jordan didn't realise this and he accidentally hit my face with his cigarette when he was about to put out his cigarette. It hit me just below my eye, luckily, nothing too serious, but it might as well could've ended differently. But i now have a seccond/third degree burn just beneath my left eye. I know, it sounds strange and unlikely, but oh well, accidents happen and there were no bad intentions, Jordan was very sorry but i assured him that it's all good, it doesn't hurt that much anyway. We continued our program and went to the Havana nightclub, an insane 2 floor club with good music and light shows, where we stayed for the rest of the night. At about 00:30 i decided to go home again, so i could sleep a few hours before i had to go to work again, together with 4 the 4 french girls, Emma, Alice, another Alice and Liloe. We were all able to walk straight, which was quite an achievement, but also nessecary for the 4 mile walk back home. Like a true gentleman, I made sure that the girls safely arrived at their host family, before heading to my own appartement, where i could finally enjoy a good night's sleep after a long, action packed day.
I'll upload some photo's about Popeyeville lateron.
Have a good one!
It's sunday so i could take my time in the morning: i got out of bed at 09:00 and went downstairs for breakfast, Simon and Romain joined me as well. After about 5 minutes someone knocked on the door, and 2 minutes later again, we didn't respond to it because normally Tony opens the door, is his house anyways. When Tony did not appear to be in the house and the door got yet another slap 3 minutes later, i decided that enough was enough and opened the door. The person who's been abusing the door for the last couple of minutes turned out to be an italian boy named 'Jackmo' (we just call him jack) our new roommate who apparently arrived earlier than expected. We introduced ourselves to eachother and he then asked me forna favour; he wanted to borrow my phone for a while. It turns out that he left forgot to take his phone from the taxi in which he arrived at our host family, even worse: he has no clue what the taxi company was called, so we couldn't contact them to inform them about the lost phone, so that's a problem... Luckily he might remember the logo of the taxi company, so we've been searching for maltese taxi logos, companies and other information in order to be able to contact the taxi driver, for about 20 minutes, when he finally had the bright idea to look at his receipt from his taxi...
We finally called the taxi company and they helped us to contact the taxi driver, who has been cruising through the city with a phone on his backseats the entire time. I quickly went upstairs for a while to pack my things for my trip in the afternoon, when i got downstairs again, about 15 minutes later, the taxi driver was on his way to return the phone. 5 minutes later Jack was finally reunited with his beloved phone, a happy ending. It was also a fun way to get to know eachother a bit more.
It was 10:40, time to go out, because i planned to go on a trip to Popeye village, the original set of the movie from Popeye (yes, the buffed, spinach eating sailor). Apparently the set has become a popular tourist attraction and on saturdays i decided to just go and check it out, in order to not 'waste' another entire free day. I arrived at the meeting point (the Sliema ferries) at about 10:43, i was supposed to be there by 11:00, after waiting for about 20 minutes without seeing anyone i figured that it'd be another bummer and headed back home, whenni suddenly came across the dutch girl from the airport again (i knew that she was working for the same organisation that provided me the trip), and as luck would have it, she was even supposed to come.with us onnthe trip to Popeye village. She directed me to our bus, where several others were already waiting.
The trip to the village was fun, i got to see the Maltese countryside again, we drove past many ancient fortresses and tempels. The last couple of kilometres of our journey were spectacular; we drove on top of the cliffs with our bus, parallel to the ocean, on a one way road which has the same width of an average cycling path in the netherlands. But after a 45 minute tripnwe finally arrived at our destination.
Popeye village turned out to be awesome, it's located in a small bay, hidden from the outside world, the houses were painted in bright colours (though it has become a bit worn through the ages) which looked astonishing with the brown cliffs and blue waters of the bay. After recieving our ticket (the same kind of wristband we use at the waterpark as well) we went down into the village.
We were immediately greeted by several people who were portraying characters from the movie, an old pipe smoking man, a sailor and a woman, who must've been Popeye's wife, they were great, because they never dropped character. One of them, the Irish sailor with a pirate accent, even 'dared' me for an armwrestling match, how can i say no to that pirateaccent? The match took place on top of a wooden barrel and it was casted by the old, pipe smoking man, who really made a spectacle out of it. The sailor and i were equally matched, we kept the game going for quite a while, untill he finally surrendered (to save us both from having numb arms for the rest of the day)
In the village, every house was now dedicated to serve a specific purpose for the tourists, for example: the blacksmith now sells all kinds of chains amd bracelets, the winery now functions as the bar and in Popeye's house the visitor gets to see a whole documentary about how they made the movie set and the movie itself.
I hooked up with Nicole and Philip, two swiss students people who were in malte to study english (just like allnother students), they were really nice and we spent the rest of the afternoon together. After visiting each and every house, which took us about 1.5 hours, we went to the restaursnt and ordered some burgers, they were pretty expensive, but they sure were damn good! (Apparently, they do not sell any dishes with spinach, which is a missed opportunity for the restaurant)
Luckily i brought my swimwear with me, because Anchor bay, where the village is located, is full fullnof small boats and large objects in the water to habe fun with, such as trampolines, those large airbags that launches people into the air if you jump on it, and even an obstacle course. After about 1.5 hours Nicole decided that she's had enough and went back to chill in the. Meanwhile, Philip and i decided to swim to the breakwater, it was in a pretty bad state, and partly submerged in the water, which made the surface just as slippery as ice, and we used the end of it as a diving board to jump into the sea. There were huge cliffs on both sides of the bay, with many small caves in them as well. Philip and i are both adrenaline junkies and we decided to swim and climb towards several of those caves to explore them a bit. The caves were spectacular and the view from there was amazing, because you could see the village on the other side of the bay.
It was 17:00 when we finally had to go back to Sliema, so far i've had a succesful afternoon.
I dined with Simon and Romain again and we discussed tonight's plans, Romain managed to get a cold, so sadly he couldn't go out that night, so Simon needed a new wingman. Naturally i was prepared to help him out, we were planning on going out together sometime anyways.
We met up with the gang near the red telephone booth on Balluta Bay at 20:00, ourndestination: Paceville, one of europe's biggest and best entertainment districts, full of nightclubs and bars. Our group consisted of several teenagers ranging from 14-18 years old, they were all french students at the AM language school. I was able to understand them, though my french isn't good enough to come up with an entire response in french on time (except for the simple questions like name, age and nationality), so i was talking in english. Eventually we got to know eachother and started speaking more and more english.
We started our night in Paceville with some 'sex on the beach', we then went on to another bar where some of the boys took a gew more shots (by that time i decided to take it easy, because i still had to show up alive at work the next day). We went outside for a while to be able to get some fresh air again and to be able to have a conbersation without extremely loud music. It was about that time when i got pretty lucky and unlucky at the same time: one of the guys, named Jordan, was smoking his cigarette, and i was standing next to him, i walked around him to prevent my lungs from enduring the gusts of smoke, apparently Jordan didn't realise this and he accidentally hit my face with his cigarette when he was about to put out his cigarette. It hit me just below my eye, luckily, nothing too serious, but it might as well could've ended differently. But i now have a seccond/third degree burn just beneath my left eye. I know, it sounds strange and unlikely, but oh well, accidents happen and there were no bad intentions, Jordan was very sorry but i assured him that it's all good, it doesn't hurt that much anyway. We continued our program and went to the Havana nightclub, an insane 2 floor club with good music and light shows, where we stayed for the rest of the night. At about 00:30 i decided to go home again, so i could sleep a few hours before i had to go to work again, together with 4 the 4 french girls, Emma, Alice, another Alice and Liloe. We were all able to walk straight, which was quite an achievement, but also nessecary for the 4 mile walk back home. Like a true gentleman, I made sure that the girls safely arrived at their host family, before heading to my own appartement, where i could finally enjoy a good night's sleep after a long, action packed day.
I'll upload some photo's about Popeyeville lateron.
Have a good one!
