1) Again, when I don’t have a plan in advance, I sometimes/often/always don’t get the day started until nearly noon. Which is Not Good. But after breakfast I determined that today would be a Beach Day and that I would go to Ramla Bay, or Ir-Ramla l-Ħamra in local dialect. And I’m glad I did.
2) Another bus stop (also near the hotel), another bus route, this time including a few more traffic backups on narrow streets and hairpin turns on mountainous switchbacks. I think some churches were still tidying up after the Feast of the Assumption two weeks ago; in one village I saw an enormous crown and another gigantic religious accessory outside a church, and a street and a few balconies still hung with elaborate cloth hangings of red and blue trimmed with gold. Most beautiful.
3) Approximately 20 minutes later I was at the beach! Just in time for a late lunch of Perrier and a beef burger (they don’t call them hamburgers here; the nice young lady at the cash register corrected me) and chips (I knew not to call them fries already).
4) Ir-Ramla l-Ħamra translates to “red sands” or some version thereof, but for me the reddish tinge wasn’t visible until I was walking on it. The beach is beautiful! Cliffs to left and right, one I believe being associated with the nymph Calypso and Odysseus. I did not hike up them to see. Looking over my pictures today, I’m surprised I didn’t take any photos of them.
One of the swimsuits I got in Palm Springs last winter.
5) It’s been such a long time since I went to a proper beach, and this one was well populated, but not crowded. A bouillabaisse of languages — and beachwear. My absolute favorite was a woman wearing a lace tunic over her swimsuit that could have come off a 1915 evening gown. Otherwise I think I spotted only three speedos, all worn by barrel-chested Men Only Slightly Younger Than I who, if not actually Teutonic, were Teutonic Acting and Appearing.
6) I was traveling light: no umbrella, no hippie bedspread, no book (!), and also (uh-oh!) no sunscreen. Just a hotel towel, my journal and a pen, my phone, my hat, and a long-sleeved white shirt from Mykonos. As is often the case at the beach, that shirt served as my sunscreen.
6a) Unfortunately I ripped a hole about three inches wide in it over the pocket when my hand thought it was the sleeve. First the seersucker shorts, and now this! I’ll return to Boston in tatters at this rate.
7) This was a beach day of memories of other beaches and other times. Ramla Bay is a crescent like Singing Beach, and how many happy weekend days did I spend there with friends in the 1990s! Ramla Bay includes a band of rocks just under the surface, reminiscent of Herring Cove. The waves are warm and frequent, like Galveston, but not as large, and the water is definitely clearer. But the colors of Ramla Bay are of a bolder palette than any of these beaches, not just the redness of the sand, but the vigorous Mediterranean blues of sea and sky and the ruggedness of the cliffs.
8) In the ‘90s I’d take the 10:15 train up to Singing Beach and catch the 6:25 (?) back with an orange freeze from Cap’n Dusty’s, a good seven hours on the beach. Today, maybe because I had no umbrella, I decided to pack up after less than two hours — but completely satisfied.
9) I misjudged the arrival time of the bus, but was able to wait in a bit of shade, listening to a young woman ask a young man about bus times and car services.
10) In the evening after a bit of a nap, I patronized the next restaurant to the right on Marsalforn Bay, Unwined. A table right by the water, an Aperol spritz was followed by mussels, and then a Gozitan burger and an excellent glass of the local merlot. That Gozitan burger was a bit challenging, being served on a what appeared to be a large, coarse, flat bagel.
A horizontal Dagwood.
11) And OK, maybe I did have another glass of merlot with a Chocolate Vegan (“Made with real vegans!”) dessert that was absolute heaven. It was the perfect way to conclude a languid evening.