Italian chocolate and soft nougat with fruit flavours

 

Yummy Sicilyum nougat.

Translations

Italian - English

assortiti

di - of

dolciari - confectionary

maestri - masters (the singular, masculine singular, is maestro)

Sicilia - Sicily (the island to the south of Italy)

Useful Websites

https://sicilyum.it/en/

Buy an Italian house for one Euro? Any extra costs? Let's look at Sicily

I would love to retire to Italy. I love the language. The food. The wine.  A house for one Euro?

Bargains and Hidden Costs

Some of the houses will require up to 3,000 in fees for taxes and agents and  paperwork. That's not the problem?

You have to renovate within three years. Depending on the condition of the house, that could cost up to sixty thousand pounds. 

Still a bargain. 

However, can you be sure of finding a contractor in the area? 

Would you do it yourself? How? Take in the tools? 

If you are not a strong man, but a frail old woman, where do you find the renovators?

Frankly, I would not move into a building with no roof, or unsafe floors.

It would be a lot easier if the town had on hand a team of renovators. Ideally they would just want you to sign the paperwork and pay a sum in advance. For your financial security, you could pay more each year, but only when they provided evidence, checked by the town council, that the work was satisfactorily and safely completed.

Why doesn't the town bring in a construction company? Or provide a free home for builders who worked for a year renovating three to six or ten homes?

What about the location? 

Sicily. 

Advantages

What is for it? History. Roman ruins in Taormina. Wine. Seasides. Friendly people.

Sicily has been one successful option for some. According to a BBC video which I watched.

What's Against the location?

Are you afraid of Sicily's association with the Mafia? Then maybe the north, a little nearer the rest of Europe, would be your favourite. If mountains are your favourite.

The wine is Marsala from the town of the same name.

Famous Italian cultural icons who lived in Sicily include Nobel prize winner playwright Pirandello and Greek father of Surrealism de Chirico.

Useful Websites

BBC

Wiki Sicily

Sicily - Wikipedia

Wikitravel Sicily

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, is a semi-retired travel writer still researching bucket list countries and seeking out the special, unusual, people, places,  landmarks, hotels, museums and trails, fabulous foods, recipes, clothes and online souvenir shopping.

Angela Lansbury is a member of Toastmasters International.

About the Author Angela Lansbury

The Author - Quick Quotations

Angela Lansbury B A Hons  is the author of ten books by regular publishers plus another ten self-published books. 

About Angela The Speaker & Trainer

Angela Lansbury is a teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters clubs and businesses.

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Vice President  Public Relations, Immediate Past President. VPPR

Former Area Director S3. Club Coach for Nee Soon South Toastmasters Club.

Also Member of: TCA Toastmasters Club; Singapore Online Dynamic; Harrovians UK

Past meetings have included Garen Tee on using story telling in business, on bha.learncool.sg . 

Recent meetings of BHA included an educational session on using Powerpoint for posters.

Next BHA meetings, always first Wednesday evening, 7 pm Singapore time. Next meeting is  the third Saturday afternoon, June 19th 2pm Singapore time.  Inauguration of the new committee by the incoming Director of S, plus a lively speech on teamwork.

 

Angela The Blogger 

Angela has several blogs speeches, comedy and song writing and organizing, writing intermittently, but writes almost daily on these three:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

See next post on sculptor Tom Harvey.

Please share links to your favourite posts. 

ITALIAN - where is it spoken?

Problem
I started learning Italian using Duolingo when I planned taking a trip to Umbria, in the centre of Italy.  I am not the only one to study on Duolingo. It claims to have 14 million learners!

Italian seemed similar to Latin which I learned in school. One notable similarity was dropping the personal pronoun. In school I learned a m o, I love. The ending tells you it is first person, no need to add I in front. The same applies to modern Italian. The technical term is a null-subject (no subject) language.

Would all my effort be of use anywhere else? I wondered where else Italian is spoken. Where can you go to get started speaking or to keep up your Italian?

Answers
You and I can practise Italian in Italian restaurants. (Although sometimes in London your wait staff are Romanian. But Romanian is very similar to Italian, in fact the word Romanian comes from the word Rome. The Romanians say ciao for goodbye.)

• Italy.
• Sardinia.
• Sicily.
• San Marino.
• The Vatican.
• Southern Switzerland (Grigioni and Ticino cantons)
• Immigrant groups in 27 other countries also use Italian. These countries include (not in size order but alphabetically): Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, the United States, Venezuela.

What does Wikipedia say?

Italian ( italiano (help·info) [itaˈljaːno] or lingua italiana [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language.  Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages.^[7]

 Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City and western Istria (in Slovenia and Croatia). 

(It used to have official status in Albania, Malta and Monaco, where it is still widely spoken, as well as in former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa regions.) 

Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.^[8] 

It has official minority status in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania.^[9] 

Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages.^[10] 

It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 65 million native speakers (13% of the EU population). It is spoken as a second language by 14 million EU citizens (3%).^[1] Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland and Albania) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million.^[3]

Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. 

Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera. Italian has been reported as the fourth or fifth most frequently taught foreign language in the world.^[11][12]

Number of speakers by country^[8][edit]

Country	Number of speakers
Italy	57,700,000
Romania	1,502,950
France	829,000
Switzerland	666,000
Croatia	618,600
Australia	300,000
Brazil	50,000
San Marino	25,000
Monaco	5,600
Somalia	4,000
Slovenia	3,760
Vatican City	330

That table tells a surprising story. More people speak Italian in Romania than in France or Switzerland. More people speak Italian in France than in Switzerland. I must admit that having heard the German and French in Switzerland, I suspect the accent might be not what you are expecting. I reckon I'm better off practising my Italian in an Italian restaurant with three native Italian speakers, or people who speak Italian with parents born in Italy.

However, if you are going to Switzerland on business, either a meeting or conference, or mid-point for colleagues in different countries who speak different languages, you now know where to go for the benefit of those who want to read and speak Italian. We went to Switzerland on business and stayed on and went to Milan to the opera at La Scala opera house.

Useful Websites
LANGUAGE
www.duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language (Long conversational vocabulary list.)
http://official-swiss-national-languages.all-about-switzerland.info (Table of which languages are spoken where.)

TRAVEL TO ITALY
Two Toastmasters clubs in Roma and Florence welcome speakers of Italian. Their bilingual websites will give you a bit of practice:
https://www.meetup.com/ToastmastersFirenze/

TRAVEL TO SWITZERLAND
http://switzerland.embassyhomepage.com/switzerland_tourist_information_bern_tourist_attractions_lucerne_flights_switzerland_holiday_resorts_lausanne_swiss_hotels.htm
Italian speaking cities are Lugano (40,000) Locarno (20,000) and Bellinzona (25,000).

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of languages.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

CHOCOLATE! What's New At Chocolate Shows and Exhibitions? First London, then Perugia.

Perugia Etruscan gateway. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
This year's Eurohcocolate show in Perugia was last weekend, October 21-22.  The chocolate show in London at Olympia was the weekend before. What did you miss?

The show at London Olympia charged for entry.

Perugia's Eurochocolate Show
The Perugia chocolate show did not charge for entry. You could invest in a chococard which gave ten percent off various stalls and permanent shops in Perugia and around the region, for example, ten percent off a visit to a winery.

Chocolate Contest
The events included a competition to select the best chocolate maker.

Chocolate And Wine Pairing
Another event was about wine and chocolate pairing.

I went to a paid event at a chocolate shop in London, where we were served lots of chocolates and small tastes of wine to go with them. It really was remarkable that some pairings were particularly good. A heavy red wine with a dark or spicy chocolate. A white wine with white chocolate. And all shade in between. We tried each wine with the different chocolate flavours to see which went best. 

Chocolate Sculpture
The centrepiece of the Perugia show was a giant slab of chocolate, chipped away with what looked like an axe. What was the chocolate sculptor making? To me, it looked like he was making a heart to symbolize I love chocolate.

So, was it just lots of chocolate stands trying to sell you chocolate? Did you really get to see anything new?

Yes. An amazing number of different products can be made from chocolate. Chocolate can be made in different colours to enrobe nuts and cocoa beans. Not just dark chocolate, regular chocolate and white chocolate, also red and blue and other colours.

You can make chocolate into swirls like Catherine wheels on lollipops. Or a truffle served on a stick with coconuts or sesame seed, like a selection of canapeés or truffles on sticks.

Speaking of truffles, another speciality of the Umbrian region is truffles in chocolate.

Novelties include chocolate made in the shape of a CD.

For those with special diets, one stand offered gluten free and vegan chocolate.

To buy chocolate on line, there's an i-chocolate website. They were offering a smartphone cover which looks like a slab of chocolate, key rings with two chunks of mock chocolate, one with a bite taken out of it. You can also buy and wear ear-rings for pierced ears depicting chocolate ice cream in wafer cones. Other gifts for yourself or friends include tee-shirts with slogans about chocolate, and an umbrella with a white background and a pattern of chocolates scattered across it.

Their website was in Italian. I am learning Italian on duolingo.

What else is in Perugia?

Make sure to see the underground city, dating from way back. For years it was filled with rubble. Then one day they found the interest and the money in clearing it away. You will now find shops underground in the passageways. Impressive. Historic.

Perugia underground. 

It's free to enter. Just look for the escalator going down, leading to the passage way underground. One end is near the large hotel above. Another end is down by the gate. Anybody in Perugia will tell you where.

Useful Websites:
The Eurochocolate website is in Italian. It has accounts of all the past chocolate shows in Perugia, as well as directions for getting to Perugia by all kinds of transport.

This is an annual event in Perugia, one of the largest in Europe, attracting a million visitors every year. So plan on going next year. Try chocolates to eat, drinking chocolate and chocolate liqueurs. Mmm! More events are held in Rome, Turin, Naples and Sicily.

You can like eurochocolate on their Facebook page and see photos of visitors sitting in front of a giant chocolate piano.

Italian Chocolate
Perugia is the place where they started the best known Italian chocolate, from the Perugina company, now oned by Nestle. Their product which you will see in the Perugia shops is the Baci, Italian for kiss. It is a chocolate with a hazelnut in the centre. The chocolate is wrapped with a foil which has blue stars. The chocolates have a love message in one of several languages: English, French, German, Greek, Spanish, or Portuguese. They are sold loose or in small quantities, very expensive. Better value is a larger box.

My first thought was that I didn't know any Italian chocolate makers. But, of course, I do. Ferrero Rocher and Nutella are also Italian, and worldwide favourites. Time to try some more Italian chocolates, of which there are many.

Great Hotels
For major events, book early to get a good hotel at a good price.
For this chocolate event, my first choice would be Chocohotel. But they might be fully booked.
http://chocohotel.it/en/

I stayed at the Hotel Monterone See my other posts. A restored castle. Great for a romantic break.
https://www.castellomonterone.com The outdoor pool is open in summer.

Always check if the pool or spa at a hotel will be open if that is on your list of must haves.

I tried the spa at another hotel. Maybe lose some of those calories. It's called the Borgo Brufa Spa Resort. We sat in hot water outdoors in November under the fading sky with an underwater jet massage. Heavenly.
http://www.borgobrufa.it

They say, 'it's not what you know but who you know'. If you are in the restaurant business and buy truffles from this region, be sure to take up an offer of an introduction to meet those in the truffle business. Not the truffle chocolate but the savoury truffles, like mushrooms. I loved their chocolate covered truffles. I haven't seen them for sale anywhere. They are an acquired taste. I wasn't sure I liked the first one. So I kept trying them until I acquired the taste!
http://www.urbanitartufi.it

Truffle chocolates from http://www.urbanitartufi.it

CHOCOLATE INFO
https://www.baciperugina.it
https://www.perugina.com/it
www.Eurochocolate.com (Info on the 2017 exhibition in Perugia, the next one in 2018 and others before and elsewhere.)

TRAVEL & TOURISM INFO
Next year's Eurochocolate in Perugia, Umbria, Italy, runs from 12 to 21 October 2018.
www.umbria.it
www.duolingo.com
www.visititaly.it
http://www.eurochocolate.com/news
https://www.alitalia.com/en_gb
www.ryanair.com (flies to Italy from Stansted, England, UK)
http://www.comune.perugia.it/pagine/siti-tematici
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g187907-Activities-Perugia_Province_of_Perugia_Umbria.html

Author,
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Io Italian Osteria, Singapore's restaurant serving Sicilian cake

A friend recommended this Italian restaurant to my family. The name iO stands for Italian Osteria. Osteria (pronounced ost - er ee - er) is a word evoking hostelry and hospitality.

The location is the new HillV2 complex. Up an escalator. Jumping fountains in the middle of the area and restaurants surround you.

io is a large restaurant with wooden tables and chairs but the ceilings are so high it's not noisy. They have been busy all week and the evening I was there the restaurant had two sittings. The owner and her daughter are busy bustling about and the other staff are equally brisk. You only need to half raise a hand and somebody comes rushing over to take your order or answer a question.

These ladies are sitting on high on bar stools watching food being cooked in the open plan kitchen.

A member of my family had lunch there midweek and liked it so much he made a follow-up visit and ordered food for a party.

I was initially rather sceptical. The bronze effect cutlery stacked in help yourself sections on the table was two shades of gold and black.

The menu was handily printed on a paper placemat. Each section suggested see daily specials chalked on black boards.

I found a slightly sparkling white house wine which was OK, for price and style.

Aubergine
My starter was Malanzane alla parmigiana, aubergine or egg plant, in a parmesan cheese and tomato sauce. It is a classic dish. We shared my aubergine starter. So far so good.

My main course was meat and mashed potato, braised beef, which was copious and delicious, home cooking style.

We diners sat debating the difference between the traditional meet and two veg expected by the British diners of retirement age  - dating back to postwar Britain, where rationing continued until 1950 and restaurants advertised 'meat and two veg' which was the wartime standard requirement.

Nowadays the Californians and many Europeans serve a vegetable as a starter. I as a Brit am horrified that no greens appear with the main course unless you pay for and know to order extras.

My dining companions suggested that having vegetables first and none with the main course is an Italian tradition. I don't think it's a merely Italian custom. In Hatch End, Italian restaurants such as Fellini, Casa Mia and Dona Teresa will serve you a main course of chicken, fish, whatever, with a copious selection of cooked vegetables, potato and two vegetables.

Those of us watching our health and diet as well as our budget like to have two vegetables with the main course.

I had to admit I was quite full at Io Osteria, and I had had a vegetable starter.

But the piece de resistance was the desserts.

Having a shared started and shared dessert, only one glass of wine and no coffee, our meal cost the equivalent of about £20 each which we considered very reasonable. Shopping around the bakery section which had four kinds of tarts for desserts or for sale, plus the other displays of food for sale, created an interesting evening out.

Plates were different colours, brown, white or green. Desserts were colourful. My favourite was the Sicilian dessert cake. It contained chocolate and marzipan. If you've had cassata Siciliana, you will be familiar with the ice cream with lots of colourful titbits of different flavours. The Sicilian cake is similar in concept, a mixture of colours and flavours. A delight for the eye and tastebuds.

Alternative desserts were cheesecake, a chocolate and hazelnut cake, an almond cake, lemon meringue, and more.

The owner Anna, daughter Dalila, and staff are all cheerful and chatty.

Chef owner Anna wearing white and the restaurant logo

Anna's Daughter Dalila

You'll find more news of them on trip advisor, Hungrygowhere, yelp, Instagram and Facebook.
The toilets are across the public courtyard. (Which is why my hair is not combed in the picture.) After your meal it's a chance to glance at the colourful jumping fountains outside.

iO Italian Osteria
No 4 Hillview Rise
#02-01, HillV2 Singapore 667979
Phone:(65) 6710 7150
Open daily 10-10.
info@sicilia-mia.com
www.io-osteria.com

Sicilian dessert cake

Angela Lansbury, BA, author, writer, speaker.

Translating Italian From A Chocolate Bar

It's easy to find word for word translations of another language on products such as food. For example, I just had a piece of chocolate from a bar bought earlier this year from Gelupo, an Italian ice cream shop in London, England.

Chocolate from Sicily
The chocolate was kept in a freezer so it came out hard and crunchy, which made the first bite like sandpaper. So I cannot tell or recall how it would taste or the texture when you eat it fresh or on a hot day when it is maybe starting to melt.

The texture and flavour seemed to me closer to American dark chocolate made by Hershey, less like the milk chocolate of England's Cadbury's. The range of flavours is more like Green and Black's chocolate bars (widely available in UK supermarkets such as Tesco).

The packaging had warned:
Conservare in luogo fresco e asciutto
They translate as Store in a cool and dry place

Conservare - conserve/store
in - in
fresco - fresh / cool (in this context)
e - and

Cioccolato alla vanighlia
translated by them as Dark chocolate with vanilla.

cioccolato - (dark) chocolate
vaniglia - vanilla

peso netto - net weight
netto - net

ingredienti - ingredients
zucchero - sugar
massa di cacao - cocoa mass
aromi naturali (they translate as vanilla flavour) - aroma natural
cacao - cocoa


tipica - typical
preperazione - preperation
tradizione - tradition
diretta - directly
discendente - descended
populazione - population
introdotta - introduced
Europa - Europe
spagnoli - Spanish
secolo - century
metodologia - methodology
antiche - ancient
culture - civilisation

They translate Best before end as
Da consumarsi preferibilmente entry la fine.
consumarsi - consume
preferibilmente - preferably
fine - finish/end

How delightful to learn Italian as well as eating chocolate, or to eat chocolate as well as learning Italian.

You can order chocolates and biscuits (biscotti) online and watch a video. And if you are interested in translating Italian, their website is in Italian with translations into England and several other languages.
www.bonajuto.it











If you want to try the Italian ice cream and other products in London, go to
Gelupo
7 Archer Street
London WID 7AU
tel: 020 7287 5555.
www.gelupo.com
They are open 11-11 Monday to Thursday
Friday and Saturday 11 to midnight
Sunday mid-day (noon) to 11 pm.
Go to their website to check the list of gelati and sorbets.

Photos by Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury B A Hons
Travel writer and photographer, author, English teacher, speech trainer, speaker.
See Angela Lansbury author and like my page on Facebook, connect with Angela Lansbury author on LinkedIn, watch videos of Angela Lansbury author reading comic poetry and teaching English grammar and spelling on YouTube, and look at and perhaps buy books from Angela Lansbury on Lulu.com and Amazon.com

Malta and Gozo - My Trip and Future Plans

Malta is the European capital of Culture in 2018 and many areas are being refurbished with signs saying that the projects are jointly funded by local sponsors and the European Union. How do you get there from the UK?

Flying to Malta
Stansted airport has a short term car park beside the terminal or you can take a shuttle bus to the long-term car park. My family found you did less walking and dragging luggage by taking the shuttle bus, rather than walking to the far end of the short-term car park. Also the short term car park is so expensive that a few hours delay bumps up your parking charge which is by the hour.

Flight on Ryanair.
The flight of just over three hours went quickly. Seats, three across, were very squashed. More room sitting in the toilet! But we slept on the journey out. Great price flights for a last minute bargain break long weekend.

We had our own healthy salad. Cheese and biscuits, two small crackers and only one small morsel of cheese in foil seemed poor value . It would be cheaper to buy one of those circular boxes of processed cream cheese which gives you about six small portions. Also invest in a pack of crackers. Olives were good value, several for each of two of us.

Let's Go magazine has travel articles and food and drink and gift illustrations and prices. The small bottle of Prosecco at 6.50 Euros seemed fun. The gifts included lip balms tasting of Coca Cola, six of them for 13 Euros. The biggest delay was queuing to collect our hire car.

Malta - Introduction
Once we arrived it was delightfully easy. The two main languages are English and Maltese, which is an Arabic base with words from Italy and other countries. The religion is Roman Catholic, with many statues of madonnas and saints on the outsides of buildings and numerous churches and cathedrals and chapels. The only word I learned or needed was Triq which means street. Once you've worked out that San is saint, Triq San Anna is Saint Anne's Street. Foreign words are most the same, just spelled funny. The Maltese ones are all translated by your maps and guide books. A tourist office in the airport has lots of brochures. Hotels also have leaflets.

Population 400,000 approx.
Size - small, 316 square kilometres.
Weather: www.maltaweather.com

Saturday Flight Stansted-Malta on Ryanair
Hertz hire car from airport, an automatic which are apparently less in demand than manual cars. Very good value, about £10 a day, but more if you buy insurance.
Excelsior Grand Hotel Room overlooking front garden, lovely. (Sea view cost extra but you can see that from the hotel's rooms downstairs.)
Snack supper of cheese plate in bar with live music.

Photo by Angela Sharot from Valletta's Great Siege road looking over to the three cities which have two harbours between them, one for the cruise ships.

Sunday
First view of the yellow historic UNESCO heritage city by daylight. Walked around Grand Excelsior hotel, whose outdoor pool was shut, as was the tiny beach, the only one in Valletta and looked at the harbours opposite.
Breakfast in the hotel with great view of the harbours and cruise ships.

Walked along Great Siege Road, where a plaque tells you about the Great Siege of 1565, past impressive bastions, overlooking the three cities.
Saw statue of Vallette who defended the fortress and said the Turks would come back. He built a wall big enough to protect thousands of people. The city was named in his honour.
around Valletta.
We swam in the Excelsior Grand hotel indoor pool.
Dinner in Valletta at the Legligin (meaning glug-glug) restaurant.

Monday
MALTA - main island - Drove through St Julian's.
Over-developed skyscraper seaside.

GOZO - island of Calypso, where Ulysses delayed, according to Greek legend.
Ferry
to Gozo. Very simple. Just drive on. No ticket needed. Like driving into Wales over the Severn bridge, going there is free - you pay on the way back. Passed the midway island of Comino which has a blue bay, and side trips.

Gozo Sights:
1 Capital city Victoria, small, originally called Rabat but renamed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Everything was closed on an off-season lunchtime Monday last February.
2 Lunch at the wonderful elegant hotel Kempinski.
3 Drove to Azure window, a see-through arch out over the sea (a picture you see at the airport , the tourist office, restaurants and many places), and another arched cave in a cliff face above a blue pool, overlooked by the clifftop opposite where a cafe/lunch place offers a great view.
4 Craft village. Watch the crafts people at work.
5 Winery shop.
6 Ferry back - you pay on the way back - confusing slip roads, this one for the ferry, no that's for lorries, take the other one for cars, but, oops, the third one to buy tickets. The ferry heaved and rocked sideways a lot so I sat in the middle. Before we had time for a drink it was time to land. First I looked out of the window to see Comino as we passed, uninhabited except for a hotel and tourists there for the day, so no major building, then I looked around the handy shop. I bought two Guidebooks, one on Malta, one on Gozo.

Valletta, capital of Malta.
Monday night we drove back into narrow Strait Street to see Chris at the glut-glug restaurant.
Evening meal in Excelsior Grand hotel, which has buffet starters and desserts. You order your main course from the a la carte menu.

Tuesday
Winery tour. Wines include Franc named after founder.
Back to our hotel for our luggage where I bought from the hotel shop the magnetic notepad holder we'd had in the bedroom.
Drove to the Three Cities.
Mdina, hilltop 'silent city, used to be the capital until Valletta was built. Outside the walls is a cafe with view over the plain.
Mosta Dome Rotunda interior with magnificent exterior, interior, and replica of the bomb which nearly destroyed it in WWII (see separate post). Cake shop.

Rabat - another tiny town where you drive into the tiny central square, look for a parking place take the road out and in twenty minutes, unless you've stopped at the main attraction, connected here with St Paul, you've driven around the place three times. 

For us the main attraction is the small Parruccan confectionary kiosk, Publius Cutajar Parruccan Confectionary where a jolly man beckons you to the kiosk and offers you a free taste of something, nuts and sugar, okay.  If you don't immediately buy he offers you another . Then another, answers all your questions, his late father started the business. He lets you try the home made traditional confectionary he makes, including macaroons with Gozitan bitter almonds, Maltese honey rings, nougat, dried figs and orange marmalade in fruit tarts. Some of them are quite dry but my family loved them. The owner is smiling and chatty. 

Bought red and white bottles of Maltese wine from duty free shop:
The Winery on the Waterfront
Paola
Malta
www.delicata.com

***********************
My next trip:
WHAT to see in Malta
Valletta
Malta 5D show with shaking seats, water spray and scents.
Mdina Dungeons Museum. Looks gruesome. www.dungeonsmalta.com 10 am-4pm
St Paul's Catacombs, Rabat.
Marine world Malta national Aquarium complex in Qawra, has La Nave Bistrot and cafe del Mar.
Siggiewi - limestone heritage, in a quarry, diorama museum and 30 ft waterfall.

WHAT to see on GOZO
Megalithic monument - two Gjantija Temples, buy ticket.
Windmill.

COMINO
Blue Bay.
Second optional excursion to a cave.

TOUR OPTIONS
Hire a car from the airport.
Get collected by your hotel's car and then travel by chauffeur driven car tours; hotel Transport office direct line(00356) 2319 2229. or within the hotel extension 2229..
Take local buses.
Open top bus hop on hop off (see Tripadvisor).
Captain Morgan Cruises. www.captainmorgan.com.mt
Jeep Safari.
Underwater Safari.
Dragonara Casino. wptdeepstacks.com
dragonaracasino.com

EVENTS
Malta Wine Festivals are held every year
....................................
Aug 6-9 2015, 7 pm to midnight
Upper Barrakka Gardens, Valletta
Buy a souvenir glass and wristband and get tastings.
Maltese grapes are Girgentina and Gezlewza.
details from delicate.com/nadur-gozo-2015
Local specialities likely to be available include fried rabbit.
www.visitmalta.com
Marsovin summer wine festival.

Malta is only 93 km South of Sicily and tours go to Sicily.
Media photos from viewingmalta.com

Why Go To Malta? Everything (but sandy beaches are on the outskirts).

Looking for a break in spring or autumn, somewhere sunny and south - I wanted somewhere I had not visited before and picked Malta - what a marvellous choice.

Geography
Where? Mediterranean islands. The three main islands are Malta, Gozo, and a little stippling stone between them with one hotel, Comino. The largest island is Malta.
Gozo is 14 km long and 7 km wide. You can see two or three sites in a half day trip going across on the ferry with or without your car.
How long? The flight is only about three hours.

Weather
Warm? A quick check on the weather showed 13 degrees C, around the fifties, much warmer than the UK and most of Western Europe. Malta is south of Sicily, north of Libya and the North coast of Africa, which makes it the ideal warm place for an off-season break; its location as a stepping stone between Africa and Europe means that traders and raiders have filled the place with culture and history. Let's start with language and place names.

Language
Language-wise Malta is ideal. Everybody in shops, museums, transport, passers-by in the street, speaks English, mostly better and easier to understand than people in London. Plus the delights of finding that many of the words and people are from other countries and you are constantly learning about other cultures, since your new smiling friend is keen to chat and tell you how they are half Maltese, half something else - one was Welsh-Romany, some lived in the UK, studied in the USA or were brought up in Australia.
Maps and signs are in two languages at least, English and Maltese. It's quite easy to read and understand the Maltese which is written in our letters with a few little squiggles. For example, mappa is map.

The local language is written in our alphabet although words sound familiar, since the origins or base are Arabic/Aramaic/Semitic/Hebrew, but they have thrown in lots of Italian from nearby Sicily, English, having gained independence from England in the older generation's lifetime, September 1964, and since Maltese is not a worldwide language many schools use English as the language base, and speak a second or third language which is either English, Italian, French, Spanish or German.

Street names are simple. Walking around the pedestrianised narrow streets in the capital Valetta, and many of the other towns, streets are mostly Trik, meaning track or street. You can see that the local religion is Roman Catholic because of the madonnas and saints on every street, many niches, street corners where tiny statues with a book in their hand beckon you as if to guide you to a parking place, whilst signs all around warn of permitted hours or parking zones.

The cities are a visual delight, every hill has a domed church, a walled fortress, a city wall, undulating streets like San Francisco, a photographer's delight, and houses of yellow sandstone, with projecting glassed balconies, where Romeo and Juliet could tryst, reminding me of photos of Yemen, water everywhere, sailboats and cruise liners, marinas, harbours.










British and Multi-cultural
You'll also find Costa coffee bars with wifi, Marks and Spencers unaccountably near orange and lemon trees and a statue of queen Victoria outside the church. Palm trees and olive trees and fir trees, and folded umbrella shape trees. If you want local Malta, many restaurants offer rabbit stew, like a chicken casserole, and Maltese sweets featuring whole and ground almonds clusters, biscuits and cakes and all kinds of nuts, figs and fruitcakes.

Bargain Breaks
Off-season bargains include hotels such as the Excelsior and Phoenicia in the centre of Valetta.

More Info
More information from the Malta tourist board (office on the arrivals side of the only airport, open late at night - I found it hidden beside another tourist office which was shut. Pick up the brochures and look for discounts on restaurants and tours and other offers on the hop on hop off buses and museums and tours.