For our final day in Gozo, we thought an open top bus would provide a great overview of areas which we’d missed on our previous few days. Buses conveniently started at Mgarr Harbour, a short walk from our hotel, where we discovered two options: the green ‘Gozo Sightseeing’ bus and the red ‘City sightseeing Gozo’ which appeared to offer the same route for the same price (€20). We opted for green as having seen the buses around town, they appeared to be quieter.
We caught the first bus of the day at 9.45am and as the entire route of 13 stops was said to take 2.5 hours, we decided to simply sit and ride, rather than hop on and off. The headphones were reasonable and the commentary, which waffled at times, was clear and available in various languages. It wasn’t busy and all was going well, until stop 10, the Azure Window, also known as the Dwejra Window, a 28-metre-tall natural arch. Here the bus driver turfed us off telling us there was a road accident between us and the next stop of Xlendi and that we would need to wait for the next bus in 45-minutes. It was incredibly hot, and rather than walk to the coast to see the arch, we found a small bar and had calming drinks. Eventually the bus arrived nearly an hour after we had got off, and by which time a couple we’d been chatting to had caught the public bus back.
We continued and just outside the capital, and penultimate stop, we hit a very narrow street with a concrete mixer on one side and car on the other, and it took 15 minutes to negotiate the tight gap.
The third incident occurred on the road out of Victoria when I was looking in one direction and got smacked in the face by an overhanging branch, but fortunately sunglasses protected my eyes.
Whilst it was an interesting journey which allowed us to see the countryside and the towns with their narrow streets, we were glad to get back to the peace and tranquility of our hotel, 90-minutes later than anticipated.
