The End of the Road

First, sorry to the legions handful of people out there who follow our exploits via this blog for the lack of posting. For a while I was just lazy, but for the past 3 plus weeks, I've been working almost literally nonstop. Either way, the result is that this is (probably) going to be the last Malta Media. Sad, I know. Also, no photos as my laptop is on its last legs.

Since we celebrated my big three-oh in London back in March, Al and I have taken a few good trips. For spring-break, we went to southern Spain, traveling between Seville, Granada and a few small towns. Spain is probably off the radar for most American's, but we were blown away. Those cities and towns, and the land between them, the food, history, culture, art and architecture are all stunning and I would absolutely tell anyone interested in visiting Italy to choose Spain instead.

The day we returned from Spain, Allison's sister, Amanda, and her boy friend Dan were there waiting for us. After a few days rest, the four of us headed to Italy's Amalfi coast. We spent a few days there along with some iffy weather before visiting Pompeii then parting ways in Naples. Allison and I headed to Rome to meet up with her class who then departed for a class trip in a national park in Tuscany, whilst I headed solo to Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance. Florence was pretty and I saw some terrific art (including Michelangelo's David), but the combo of being travel weary and lonely/bored had me ready to get back to my temporary home in Malta.

Next up, we had special visitors from D.C., our friends Jeanine and Rachel. Rachel's arrival on the island was especially apt, as she was the clever one to come up with the name "Malta Media" back when this blog was just an idea. They spent a bit of time exploring Germany and Austria, then flew down to Malta for a couple of fun days. We gave them a good quick tour of our 'hood in Sliema, visited Gozo, partied in Paceville, hit up the beach (sans a recovering Sean), visited the prehistoric temples (dating from 3600-3200 BC, some of the oldest standing structures in the world), and ate, ate, ate. I think they had a pretty good time, and it was probably nice to see two very different sides of Europe.

Our third and final trip was a quick jaunt to Valencia where we met up with Allison's cousin Nick who was spending a month in Spain cycling. The impetus for the trip, beyond the family visit, was to check out the Europe's largest aquarium, the Oceanografic. The aquarium was fantastic, with exhibits of fish, birds and mammals from the world over, and the city was a delight to explore on foot. But the real joy in going anywhere with Nick, aside from his ever present sunny disposition, is his vast knowledge of food and drink. Whenever you eat with him, you just let him take over and enjoy the results.

Back in Malta, Allison was finishing up her classes and I was doing some part-time work. Her classes ended about a 6 weeks ago so she became a professional beach bum. Also, in case you missed it on the Facebook, I've had my first article and photos published in an online travel magazine, which you can check out here. Also, I was on the cover of a Swiss magazine, seen here.

Things here have shifted pretty dramatically over the past few weeks. Allison returned home about 2 weeks ago and I've been working on a big movie here in Malta (which I'm not supposed to talk about online, but here's a link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/). It's hard work, constantly running around and days can last up to 18 hours, six days a week. Still, its fascinating to see how it all goes down and I'm having a blast working with tons of interesting people. My job has me dealing with the extras, of whom there's usually about 500 (one day we had about 900), getting them through costume and hair and makeup, fed breakfast and lunch, onto set, off of set, into positions, knowing their actions, etc, etc. Yesterday was my last day and I'm going to miss it, but it's opened up some doors, so we'll see what happens.

And that's about it. Now I'm going to enjoy a few days of relaxing (and sleeping) before I head home to see my lovely wife. It's honestly been an up and down time here in Malta, but we've been blessed to meet some wonderful people and see some truly amazing and unique things. The whole experience didn't work out the way we had planned, but that is life, no? I would really like to say thank you and we love you to our amazing parents, without whose support this endeavor would have been much more difficult. Finally, thanks to you, dear reader, for following our adventures.

Ciao!


Sean & Allison

London Calling

In celebration of my 30th birthday we decided that Malta was just too small a venue, so we called up our friend Adam in London, and said "Yo, dawg. Turning thirty. Let's do it big. Tell London."

Long story short, Allison's sister and her uber-boyfriend Dan decide they want in on the action, so they fly over to meet us (and begin their awesome two month tour of Europe). Bulms (that's what we call Adam) gets on the horn with peeps from Oxford and Cambridge and says, "Look, there's this American bloke coming over, turning 30, let's really, really try to look good for him." Oxford is like, "Okay, Bulms. Hey Cambridge, boat race. March 26. Bam!" Cambridge is all like, "Mmmm, I dunno. A boat race? Seems kinda lame." To which Oxford replies, "Look, this isn't about 182 years of racing tradition, this is about celebrating Sean, enjoying the nice spring weather and getting drunk." Cambridge is sold, as long as they get to wear blue uniforms. But Oxford was already planning on rocking the blue. So like idiots, they both wore blue. Anywho, that's how it came to be that 40ish 250 thousand well-buzzed Brits sang 'Happy Birthday' to me along the banks of the Thames.

The elusive Bulmer, captured on film after the boat race

Boat Race in action as the crowd steadily chanted, "Sean! Sean!"

Aside from that, we had an amazing time exploring the fantastic city of London, which now sits securely atop my list of favorite major cities, followed by Tokyo, Washington DC, Paradise, and Bangkok. Much like my native District of Columbia, London's biggest and best museums are free to the public so we made sure to hit up a few without over-museuming like we did in Paris. We also took in some other touristic activities like an open-top bus tour, river cruise, and plenty of pub hopping. If you ever find yourself near the Notting Hill area of London, you have to go to the Windsor Castle Pub, which must be one of the greatest pubs in the entire city. Get there early because it gets quite full.

'Reunited, and it feels so good!'

Big Ben, actually the name of the bell

The London Eye

St. Paul's Cathedral, from Millennium Bridge

Rosetta Stone, disappointingly, did not offer over 30 languages

King Danankhamun

Enjoying Hyde Park

We're all ginners

Windsor Castle Pub

touristing

When art and traffic collide

Westminster Abbey

Sistas

London Bridge

Malta was awarded Britain's highest honor, King George's Cross for bravery during WWII

Pub Life

jumping for joy!

chillin'

Hotel Room With a View

Who wants some?

like the candy store from Willy Wonka

Outside the Natural History Museum

Randomly spotted out of a second story window

hall of tv's

Seriously it was a fantastic way to ring in 30 years of what's been an amazing life and thanks to Amanda and Dan for being there, Adam for being a wonderful host and my lovely wife for putting it all together.









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Bredbenners vs. the Volcano

*Note: I've spent a lot of time trying to get these pictures to format in a nice looking way, but this blogspot site is just not cooperative. Sorry for the sloppy appearance.*

Ok, so we didn't actually conquer a volcano, but we did get a wonderful visit to the slopes of Sicily's Mt. Etna, the highest and most active volcano in Europe. But before we went all wildery, Allison and I explored the charming city of Siracusa. Founded by the ancient Greeks in about 730 BC, Syracuse was at one point a leading city in the Mediterranean rivaling even Athens. At its height, its population was about a quarter of a million people or roughly double what it is today. Its most famous inhabitant was Archimedes, one of the most brilliant and productive mathematicians and engineers in all of antiquity.

The beach next to the port

We arrived in Sicily in just an hour and a half on the ferry that runs between it and Malta, to find a land quite different than we expected. I think between the undeserved poor reputation that Sicily gets and having been island locked on Malta for so long, we were expecting basically a larger Malta. But Sicily offers much, much more. It's like comparing a city to a large state. The countryside was so verdant, punctuated by paintball splashes of yellow, white, red, orange and purple from the multitudinous wildflowers and lemon and orange trees. Malta, especially where we live, is decidedly lacking in things that grow, especially trees. Once ashore and having turned down a pesky "cab driver" offering a bargain 80 Euro cab ride to Syracuse, we met some helpful teens who took us to the bus stop, which was excessively far from the ferry port. 

Taking in the Greek ampitheater

Ruins of the Roman site

Soon we were in the ancient city, dropped our bags off and hit the streets. When visiting Syracuse, there are essentially two parts of town to visit: Ortygia and the archeological park. The ruins were first up as they were closer to our hotel. Home to both a Greek theater where ancient tragedies and comedies were and still are held and the Roman amphitheater where more gruesome entertainments took place, the ancient sites offer plenty of walkable gardens and grottoes as well. The Roman site was spectacular with its combination of overgrown neglect and stony permanence. Having it almost all to ourselves helped as well.

Ortygia is the small island section of the city and was where the Greeks first established their foothold. It's fully walkable and is as charming as can be. After reaching the main entrance to the island and asking for good weather for our volcano hike at the temple of Apollo, we meandered through the back streets until we reached the Cathedral, a beautiful building that was built overtop of the existing 5th century BC Greek temple. You can still see the Doric columns running down the side of the building. After watching the sun set over the bay, we bought a piece of local art, a painting of a Greek urn on papyrus. A river marsh just outside of Syracuse is the only place in all of Europe where the original paper plant naturally grows. We ended the day gluttonously with a full course Sicilian meal of anti-pasta, bruschetta, a pasta course, swordfish steak (for me) and calamari steak (Al), and finally a canoli for dessert. We were stuffed to the brim and with only 3 hours of  sleep under our belts it was off to la la land.

kids playing kayak waterpolo

fisherman tending his nets

Sunset Cafe

Europe does desserts way, way better than the U.S.

harbor between Ortygia and the rest of Siracusa

Day...

and night

The next day it was time to tackle that volcano, so we hopped on the train and met our guide Vincenzo in the bustling city of Catania. We're not usually much for these organized kinds of trips, but a combination of winter conditions, not speaking the language, lack of transportation and the fact that it's an active volcano, we thought going with someone who knew the lay of the land was a good idea. And Vincenzo turned out to be wonderful. He trained locally as a naturalist learning about the weather, topography, volcanology, and just about everything else you could want to know about the area. As we drove up the mountain through quaint little towns, he explained how the volcano mostly erupted through 'lateral craters' which generally cause slow and mild lava flows more similar to Hawaii than the famous Mt. Vesuvius on the mainland of Italy.

Me and our guide, Vincenzo

running up the rim of a volcano crater

holding a 200 year old 'lava bomb'

looking down on a crater

                                             We were excited to see this fox until we found out he just sits next to                                           the road waiting for tourist handouts. Don't feed wild animals, people!

We spent the day driving to several different sites to visit, each offering a different landscape, some snowy with some green growth through the cooled black lava, others looking like an inhospitable alien landscape. One stop was inside of a lava cave about a kilometer long that was formed hundreds of years ago. Pretty cool.

dark cave

Cave entrance

 

We were really pleased and a bit surprised at how much we enjoyed Sicily. We hope to get back once more before we leave, this time to do some real hiking and take in a Greek play at the amphitheater in Syracuse.

Next up, we head to Swingin' London where we see some family and friends, and a riverbank full of drunk Brits sing me "Happy Birthday." As always, Allison and I love reading your comments. Thanks for reading!