First, a refresher: We are in Marsaxlokk Malta. Regardless of what you might think from the spelling, Marsaxlokk is pronounced marsa-schlock.

We are here because we wanted to escape the New England cold, and since we are not Florida types, our idea of a good escape is to go someplace we’ve never been where we might have a good adventure or two. This year, we decided on southern Europe, where it is warm for us but off-season to the rest of the world.

We did not know the first thing about Malta … except its weird location in the middle of the Mediterranean between Tunisia and Sicily. I Googled “quaint fishing villages in Malta.” Marsaxlokk popped up, so I Googled how to pronounce it.

I learned that Marsaxlokk is famous for its Sunday open air fish market. We reserved a room in a guest house right at the site of the market and left home on a Wednesday (12/31) so we would have ample time to deal with travel delays and getting acclimated before Sunday. It was one of very few planned destinations.

So now: How to make Kenny happy in one step? Answer: Set him loose in an open-air fish market in a Mediterranean fishing village on a Sunday morning.

Today is Sunday. Last night, I told Rebecca that I wanted to be in bed before 9:00 and wanted to set an alarm for 6:00. She asked if I was crazy. I asked if she wanted to join me for a very early morning stroll as the fish mongers were setting up. She declined. I compromised and set the alarm for 6:30. She slept.

It was all I hoped! At 6:40 this morning, the fish mongers were in place, probably 20 different stalls. Some of the fish were frozen, like most of the octopus, and some was imported, like the swordfish and Norwegian salmon. But most of it – sea bass, eels, shrimp, mollusks, lampuki, (mahi mahi), sardines, mazzola (dog fish), crabs, etc., etc., etc. – were fresh out of the water. Fishing boats lined the wharf along the harbor.

Like everyone else in Malta, the fish mongers could not have been nicer. I watched a monger named Mike skin and prepare mazzola. Later I met his wife, Rumina, who is the primary fish cleaner, and his lovely daughter Mariah, who is a talented graphic designer (who happens to hate fish but helps out her parents at the market every Sunday … and I know she is talented because she showed me pictures of her work). If they hadn’t been so busy, I could have spent the morning with them, but their hands never stopped moving. I plan to stay in touch!

I am sorry we have no cooking facilities in our guest house. I wanted to cook and eat everything …. just like the young Nepalese man standing next to me at one of the stalls who was buying a kilo of this, and kilo of that, and a few kilos of other fishes. I asked if he owned a restaurant. He doesn’t. He just loves fish curry and stocks up every Sunday.

By 7:30 or so, the market was getting crowded. The beautiful displays of fresh fish had been picked over. Every surface had some sort of sign of fish entrails. The crowd of visitors was growing quickly. By 9:00, the crowd was thick. Other vendors hawked every sort of tchotchke you can imagine, from playing cards to underwear. The baked goods were unbelievable. It is now 12:40. I am headed back out to experience the end of the market. 1:20: One stall has a few fish left; the others have either vacated or are washing the last of their containers. The crowd remains thick. I think some of the tchotchke merchants are still arriving and setting up.

All-in-all, a splendid morning. Enjoy the photos….

Dawn breaks over the Marsaxlokk Sunday market….

My new friends … Mike, Rumani, and Mariah Grech…

By 12:30, the fish mongers are cleaning up and disappearing…

But even after the mongers are gone, you can still buy every imaginable kind of tchotchke, from underwear to clothing to accessories to toys to magnets to Maltese knights to fans to socks to more underwear to soap to bedding to Christmas tablecloths to shopping bags to aprons to cosmetics to Chinese vases to Maltese Cross silks to honey to baked goods to more underwear to lizards to post cards to jewelry and even a 4-in-one survival bracelet with a fire starter, a knife, a compass, and a whistle (which I damn-near bought).

That’s All Folks. See you again when the next story rears its head.

Part 1: Getting Here

Traveling for 18 hours is hard work. Airplane seat designers must delight in demonic sadism, creating seats that are as unsuited as possible for sleeping … and we upgraded to the just-short-of-first-class seats. Like the seats, the so-called “pillows” were designed for maximum discomfort, and the “blankets” not only provided no warmth, they were also too small and kept sliding off. Fortunately for us, the “economy plus” section was empty, so we had plenty of horrible pillows and inadequate blankets to plow through. I think we opened six of those silly bags they give you with pillows and blankets and a bunch of other supposedly helpful stuff like lotions, cloths for cleaning glasses, and lip balm … just the comforts you are longing for when trying to grab, at best, 5 or 6 hours of sleep. Plus, we shared a cabin with the obligatory guy with apnea who kept making desperate vomiting-like sounds before drifting off again. On the glass-is-half-full side, we had no crying babies or unexpected health emergencies, both of which are standard fare for those of us who have flown way-too-many red-eyes. And the sad thing is that it was probably as good as we could have hoped for. Unlike leisurely road tripping and long trips by rail, overnight airplane travel is never about the journey; it is only about the destination.

Now that we have been here for almost a day, 11 hours of which we spent sleeping, it seems that the destination is making the travel miseries worth it. From all initial impressions, Malta is a pretty cool place, and our choice of starting the adventure in Marsaxlokk was a good one. (Time will tell, of course.) And in case you are wondering, Marsaxlokk is pronounced Marsa-schlock.

Part 2: Being Here

I have planned this trip for months … which is amazing since we have nothing really planned except our first four nights in a guest house. (And they have welcomed us to stay longer, which we’ll probably do.) We don’t know how long we’ll stay or where we’ll go from here. We do know that we plan to limit our travels to Malta, Sicily, and southern Italy … unless we don’t, which we will know as soon as it happens.

My first thoughts for winter travel were to spend the winter in Crete. The idea never resonated with Rebecca. For some inexplicable reason, however, Malta did. Check out Malta on a map. It is in a holy-crap-that-is-really-the-middle-of-nowhere location, in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia. It is one of the smallest countries in the world by both population (575,000) and land area (319 square kilometers), but it is the ninth most densely populated country in the world. By contrast, Grand Isle County Vermont, where we spend most of our time, is larger by land area by almost 50% (515 square kilometers), but has just over 1% of the population, at 7,500 people. For 150 years, from 1814 to 1964, Malta was a British colony, so English is one of its two official languages (along with Maltese) and people drive on the wrong side of the road. Plus, it is a wealthy and safe place where people take great pride in being nice. As countries go, it is proving to be incredibly easy to be in.

Once we agreed on a place, I Googled “quaint fishing villages in Malta.” Marsaxlokk topped the list. (Then I Googled how to pronounce Marsaxlokk since the spelling provided no hint whatsoever.) I learned that Marsaxlokk is not only known for its traditional Maltese fishing boats, called “luzzus,” but also that it has a year-round open air fish market every Sunday throughout the year. Stay tuned. Today is Friday; we still have a bit of a wait to experience the fish market.

Yesterday, we marveled at the harbor and ate an amazing meal along the waterfront. Today, we wandered the waterfront and took pictures. The jury seems to be pretty clear: Marsaxlokk was a perfect choice! It is everything we had hoped it would be. Enjoy our first morning of photos!

Traditional Maltese luzzus and Noah, a 3rd-generation fisherman

Maltese fishermen repairing a luzzu.

Marsaxlokk street scenes