MALTESE EXPERIENCES

My first visit to Malta happenned in 1992. I strolled for long in Valletta, which has probably the biggest fortress in the world and is located in a really vintage point, at the tip of a peninsula in the middle of a bay with a very short way-out to the sea. I did the same in Mdina, the old capital in the middle of the island, inside another smaller fortress from where we can observe the sea in several directions. Malta is so much linked with wars, invasions and the likes that city-fortresses are indeed the main tourist attractions. Gozo, the second island in size, has also its walled city, Victoria, almost perfectly put in its middle.
Second visit was last Summer, a relaxed week with my dear wife, finnaly not so relaxed because we travelled a lot around, using the extensive buses services; they are the best way to mix with locals and are a real experience in themselves. I strolled again in Valletta, Mdina and Victoria, with a bonus comming from having taken a hotel in St. Paul's Bay - a mushrums-like location for foreign tourists.
The country has three World Heritage properties inscribed. No one misses of course one of the theree: the City of Valletta. The others, out of the rushing tourists paths, are the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, in Paola, outskirsts of Valletta and the Magalithic Temples, seven in total, spread over the two islands, of wich we visited Gozo's two Ggantija temples and the Tarxien ones in Paola. As for the Hypogeum it was a matter of persistence and faith on fate. On arrival we were surprised to be informed it was essencial to pre-book well in advance ( maximum 10 visitors per hour!): the first visits were available ... fifteen days ahead, after our return. Unless you take a seat and wait for some possible no-show. We came the next day, waited and waited and my wife managed to go. We came again the following day and I managed too. My recommendation for anyone going to Malta: this Hypogeum is a real must, you feel going back four and a half millenia in time to understand how our ancestors were able to rig limestone blocks and build underground structures in a succession of floors.

L'AQUILA

These days L'Aquila is being much talked about, because of the G8 meeting - a major annual political event which was moved there, from originally foreseen La Maddalena, Sardinia, in a show of remembrance for the terrible earthquake which devastated L'Aquila not long ago. The city has a long experience of earthquakes in view of its location on a seismic area.
I visited it and had one night there (also in La Maddalena, by the way!) around 15 years from now. It was night number 2 and last of a weekend around Rome, which had already taken me to Terni and Rieti. I remember it as a quiet medieval and barroque downtown standing over a valley to the west on a steepy hill, which I climbed upon arrival. I also remember the landscape from the train which took me from Rieti, passing through excelent and green rugged zones. And the view of the Gran Sasso, highest peak of the Apennines, in the north-east distance.

PONT-AVEN

I once crossed the South Finistère, via Quimper, on my way forth and back the Pointe du Raz. On the return I took a short detour from the main road to Lorient in order to visit the small town of Pont-Aven. Just to have a quick glimpse of the places which so much enchanted painters around the end of the XIX century, to the point that painting critics created the concept of a "Pont-Aven School". Gauguin painted at least one of the many local water-mills, called "Le moulin David". It may well be, although I am not sure, that the mill in my picture of 2007 is the very same, restaured of course, Gauguin painted possibly in 1888. Does anyone knowledgable of the Pont-Aven details can confirm or infirm this? Please e-mail me at jsm6@sapo.pt
If the water-mill is not the same, well, the river Aven is definitely the same.

TURNING THE BACK TO AUCKLAND

The young japanese couple asked me to take a picture of them, which I did. Then he asked me if I wanted him to reciprocate. I said "yes", turned my back to Auckland and he took the shot. This happened in Rangitoto Island, twenty minutes away from the city by ferry. I was on a viewing platform dominating the bay of Auckland and just meters from the rim of the local extinct volcano, after climbing the 260 meters high from the ferry, part on desolated black lava terrain, part on forest which has developed since the eruptions finished.
Turning the back to the city was merely for pictorial pourposes: I enjyed Auckland so much and walked a lot in its central area. It is not every day, even even year, that one has the chance to visit in-town craters of volcanos, like Mount Eden, where a rather unnusual view awaits the visitor. From there you can see two different seas: a bay belonging to the Pacific Ocean to the east and a bay which is part of the Tasmanian Sea to the west. Another more human feature: people on the streets seem enjoying life in a very much relaxed manner. New Zealand style, I suppose.
I would not matter to visit it again - but without the stresses of an european visitor short of time for so much to see.

MONTENEGRO

These days Montenegro is a small fully independent country; it was not (yet) when I went there. It was still part of Serbia & Montenegro, which was the name at the time of the new and slimmed Yugoslavia, legal successor of the old "standard" Yugoslavia of comrade Marshall Tito. Difficult to understand? Of course, it's the Balkans!
From Kotor, where I had my night, I took a bus to Cetinje, the original capital during the previous life of Montenegro as an independent country (1878-1918). Somewhere before the road leaves the coast and begins climbing the mountains I decided to make a stop-over, to have a glimpse of an unnusaul kind of village, or little town: Sveti Stefan. It'a a small fully-built walled island, except that it is not an island, because a causeway links it to the mainland. At the end of the causeway an entrance gate, like in a fort, waits the visitor and you need to check-in: Sveti Stefan has been transformed from a fishermans village into a town-hotel.
It remains nevertheless a charming spot.

THE WORLD HERITAGE: NEW SITES

The UNESCO's WH list got a kick-off in 1978, when the 12 initial sites were inscribed. Every year a specialised committee meets to decide on new inscriptions, the respective Member States where the sites are located being solely able to submit candidacies. After the 2009 meeting, just finished in Seville, the list is made of 890 sites. A dedicated admirer of this cultural concept since some years, I make efforts to visit as many sites as I can: although I have not updated the figures since some time, I assume having visited so far around 375/380 sites, which represent more than 40%. The sites added this year are 13 and of those I have been already in 6: the Wadden Sea (coastal areas of Netherlands and North-West Germany), the Dolomites (Italy), the Stoclet House (Brussels), the Cidade Velha ruins (ex-capital of Cape Vert ), the Hercules Tower (La Coruña) and twin-towns La Chaux-de-Fonds/Le Locle.
The annexed picture shows Kizhi Pogost, a wooden church in Russia's Lake Onega, which I visited in 2007.

PETRA

UNESCO describes it as "one of the most precious properties of man's cultural heritage". I would not desaggree after having visited it. The ancient capital of the Nabataeans has been inscribed in the World Heritage list since 1985; has also been declared one of the New Seven Wonders of the World by world-wide voting in 2007.
Petra is a grandiose festival of rock and architecture in an unique combination: the "buildings" are indeed not built, but escavated on the rock. I think I can call it "negative architecture".
In 1845 John William Burgon wrote a long poem about Petra, which apparently he never visited and had just heard described by others:

But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.

I took a lot of pictures during my visit. Instead of the classical ones, showing the frontage of buildings or the tombs, I add to this note two more unnusual ones, which portray the strange colours of the rock and the rare configuration of the east entrance, which acts as a waterway when there are (rarely) heavy rains. You will note that there is more than the red and rose Burgon referred to. He should have visited Petra for the sake of the colours' truth