Oliver’s Travels #8

When we woke up the next morning, we were just cruising into Valletta, which is in Malta. Coming into the harbour we were going past lots of castles and forts and old stone buildings everywhere.
We tied up to the wharf, where there were some shops, and behind us was the dockyard, where ships get repaired.
We found out about a tour to some Neolithic temples, but it was a long trip, so we decided not to do it. It was really, really hot, and the bus wouldn’t have air conditioning.
So me and Mummy went ashore and walked along the wharf area. We went in a few shops and got some more miniatures for my collection.
Then we went back to the ship and had some lunch.
After that, we decided to go for a walk up the hill, and then we saw special gato (cat) houses that people had built, and we saw lot of stray gatos everywhere.
We walked a little way into town to a playground, but then we saw a scary lady so we went back to the ship.
After dinner the ship left again, and headed back out to sea. In the morning, we had breakfast, and then we went up to play in the arcade room on the ship.
We weren’t visiting anywhere that day, because it was an ‘at sea’ day.
Later we went for a swim in the ship’s pool. The pool was crowded, because there was only one pool that kids were allowed to go in, even though there were 3 pools on the ship.
We were still sailing when I went to bed that night.
The next morning, we woke up in Piraeus, which is a port in Athens, in Greece. We got on a tour bus, and went up a big hill, called The Acropolis, where we got out and walked even further up to the top of the hill. From the top of the hill we could see the city that looked like it had been snowed on, because everything was white!
On the top of the hill there were two temples, one big one and one small one. The big one was the Parthenon, and the small one was the temple of Athena Nike. The temple of Athena had 6 statues of ladies at one end. There was one statue missing because a couple of hundred years ago a British archaeologist took one of the statues back to England with him. It is now in the British museum, and they haven’t given it back.
After that we walked back down the hill to try to find where we had to meet the bus again. There were lots of stray peros (dogs) everywhere. They live in the park, where people look after them and give them food, so they are friendly. They were all sleeping because it was so hot!
Mum and I got a bit lost trying to find a meeting point, but we found a shop where we got some more miniatures. Then we saw where we needed to go.
We got back on the bus to go back to the ship, at the end of another great day.
While we were sleeping, the ship took us to Santorini.
We just had a swim that day and played in the arcade, because the sea was too rough, and the only way ashore was by small boat. Some people got sea sick because the boats were going sideways to the big waves.
From the ship we could see that the bay was a U shape. There were almost no trees in sight, but there were lots of cliffs and rocks. There was a gondola that went up the side of the cliff because it was so steep up to the town at the top. The buildings were all white with bright blue roofs. They looked really good.
Then we went to have dinner, and to sleep.
To be continued…………..