Today we took a boat trip out to the Blue Lagoon on Comino island. We'd read about the amazing water and how blue/turquoise/clear it is so were keen to see it. It is astoundingly beautiful but it was so unbelievably crowded. I am not joking when I say there was not anywhere to even stand near the water, never mind take a swim in it. As the boat pulled up there was a huge queue of people waiting to get boats off the island. Alarm bells should have rung when they wouldn't even step aside to let us past so the kids didn't have to balance precariously on the edge of the jetty! It was like there was a scrum to get out of there! The hillside and cliffs leading up from the beach were littered with people, they looked like tiny ants crawling everywhere from a distance. I hate crowded places and stared to worry that there was no shade anywhere (it was scorching hot) and that we would have to wait hours for a boat off the island. I just wished we had stayed on the boat we came in on and given it up as a bad job! 

Luckily we brought a picnic so didn't have to queue for food or drinks and we walked up the hillside to try and find somewhere we could get near the water but there just didn't seem to be anywhere. Apart from the tiny beach the rest of the island just seemed to have steep rocky cliffs leading down to the sea. In the end we held my sarong over the kids heads to have a picnic and then headed back to the jetty to get a boat. Fortunately we didn't have to wait long for a boat - think most of the crowds were waiting for boats back to Malta. I was so relieved as had been feeling really panicky we were going to be stuck there. 

The guy on the boat was asking the kids if they had been swimming and when we said we'd not been able to get near the water he told us about a really nice swimming area back on Gozo that would be quiet as it was a bit off the beaten track. It was a narrow twisty steep road to get there (at one point it didn't even look like a road - just a farm track) but it was worth the drive as the water was just perfect for swimming. You could swim right out to some sea caves. We spent a fun couple of hours there. Eva added to her ever increasing stone collection. She sat on the beach with a towel over her knees and had all these rocks piled up round her. She was chatting away to them all - and giving them voices to talk to each other!!!! 

In the evening we went to Marsalforn harbour for dinner. The tables were all set up right next to the water and were lit by candlelight. Had an amazing king prawn dish. Was really beautiful. Toby chose homemade fish nuggets and made the waitress laugh as she asked him how many he wanted and he said 10! So she asked me how many, 4 or 6 and he was adamant he needed 10 so he said she would bring him 6 and if he needed more then she would bring more (he didn't need more- they were huge!). 

Extra pics of Blue Lagoon and the kids at Marselforn.