Malta and Gozo - Day Six

Earlier this year I spent a week in Malta and Gozo with my wife and a couple of our best friends.

We'd made all sort of provisional plans for the Sunday, our sixth and last full day, but in the end the sunny weather dictated that we head for Golden Bay. This was much more developed than Ramla Bay on Gozo, and a lot less relaxed, with big parties of teenagers with blaring radios, and a hideous shrieking family group playing organised beach games. The car park above the beach was also the venue for a massive biker and souped-up car meet. The bay apparently has the remains of a fougasse in the rocks on one of the sides, but on a pretty thorough walk around the cliffs on my part I didn't see any evidence of it.

We headed back to Qawra, and got off the bus a bit before the bus station to walk along the sea-front. We stopped at a bar for a drink and a bite to eat. I am gutted that I have forgotten the name, as this was where I had the worst toasted ham and cheese sandwich I have ever had the misfortune to put in my mouth, and I would dearly love to name'n'shame them. Not only had the sandwich been toasted with buckets of butter on the inside, which had became a warm gooey mess, it was also served with a side salad. Nothing wrong with that, except that the salad hadn't been drained thoroughly enough, so the dampness then leaked across the plate and made the sandwich soggy. How can you get something so simple *so* wrong?

Our final meal in Malta was a return visit to Il Garra, the first bar we had drunk at, this time to eat. The food was OK, but we found the service disappointing. Despite having only three tables to serve, it seemed almost impossible to attract the eye of the waitress to order desert or another drink once our main meals had been served. In the end, keeping a careful eye on the time, we opted to head back to the hotel rather than be kept hanging around waiting any longer. There the girls retired, but V. and I stayed up to play some pool, and check out the last of the entertainment, which turned out to be as pitiful as Curious Mario Solo, but at least it was mostly instrumental.

The next morning was a blur as at 5am we got our minibus to the airport. The only things of note at Malta's airport being:

• A Hard Rock Café franchise displaying a "gold disc" for U2's The Joshua Tree album that proved beyond doubt to me that they spray-painted any-old-shit to frame for gold discs - because it might have had the correct labels, but my record shop training told me there was no way it was actually a copy of The Joshua Tree in the frame.

and

• In the early hours of the morning I am easily impressed by giant Playmobil figures