Rabat, Malta--St. Paul's catacombs

Valletta (Malta's capital city)

Mehelia, Malta pics (the village where we stayed) and the church on the hill

London pics

craziness update

the good news is that only 1/2 an hour after landing in Malta, Mitch asked me if we could move here (!). the bad news is that after a fantastic week, a belching volcano in Iceland has apparently brought all of Europe to its knees as far as air travel is concerned. We are all one world, folks. So we are staying day to day until we figure out when we can leave. Craziness....

more updates when we can!

B

quickie update

We are off to London tomorrow and will be there through Saturday, although I have to duck out to Norwich to give a paper on Friday. Then we are leaving for Malta, which we are absolutely thrilled about. We already have a couple's massage booked, along with a day trip to Sicily. Should be an amazing journey. Hopefully our souvenir will be better than the lamb that Michelle wants (she saw them on our day trip and thinks they are the cutest....)

In the meantime, I'll leave you with these photos of downtown Newcastle, courtesy of Kelly and Joan's hotel room in Gateshead. Study your newest bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale and you should recognize the green bridge....

talk to you all soon!

B

Bambergh Castle

thanks to Kelly and Joan, we had a day where we could drive into the English countryside and sample some of the local scenery, which is unbelievably pretty. we decided to go to Bambergh Castle [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamburgh_Castle; http://www.bamburghcastle.com/], which is owned by the Armstrong family--Lord Armstrong was a northeastern industrialist in the region, and the building where my office is is named for him. The castle is just next to the Farne Islands on the North Sea coast, and a fort has been on the site since 420, and the core of the current castle was built I think in the 11th century. We then had fish and chips in a resort town called, appropriately enough, Seahouses. A splendid day.