As much as I appreciate the existence of majestic churches, ornate temples, imposing parliament buildings, and other worthy bastions of modern civilization, my dream vacation is less Sistine Chapel and more tramping around in the weeds looking for lizards.
By those standards, our recent visit to the island of Gozo, the smaller of Malta's two main islands, was pretty much the perfect week.
Even the weather suited our plans: on our first day, it rained enough to coax at least half of the island's three million snails out of hiding.
Later on, the sun came out in full force, which was more suitable for lizards and their brethren — and as an added bonus, kept the brisk waters of the Mediterranean from turning John and me into popsicles.
I am fully aware, incidentally, that this whole vacation tableau makes us sound like 7-year-old boys.
Inasmuch as two 7-year-old boys would tolerate a lovely, romantic, snail-filled Mediterranean holiday together.
Despite the noise I've been making about my would-be guides to the Lesser Cities of Europe and Lesser Soft Drinks of the World, I don't often feel inspired to write actual travel advice.
(Travel is such a personal thing, and I'm not sure I'm the best person to advise people who prefer spotless rooms over quirky 1970s decor.)
But should you ever find yourself on Gozo — and can tear yourself away from its 22 churches, assorted neolithic temples, and single terrifying highway discotheque — I humbly submit the following list of tiny pleasures to be derived from this tiny pleasure of an island.
(Most of which are only for loving, not for eating.)
1. Carpenter Bees
These hairy black bees hover on the "alarmingly large" end of the tiny spectrum — and the only reliable way to find them is to sit in a sunny garden with a cup of tea and wait for the sound of one shoehorning her way into an unsuspecting iris.
I'm proud to say that we were prepared to go that extra mile.
2. Maltese Wall Snails
The only problem with being on an island covered in snails is that it's not possible to take photos of all of them.
Please believe me when I say that we tried.
3. Maltese Wall Lizards
One of the painful things about loving snails so much is that when it rains and the snails come out in force, one's hiking boots can becomes weapons of mass destruction.
Even if one has a very high level of snaildar.
With lizards, we had the opposite problem.
Even in the height of the afternoon, when all lizards should be fulfilling their destiny by being sluggish and photographically cooperative while lazing around in the sun.
We saw a lot of lizard-shaped blurs during our week on Gozo.
Before we found this relatively relaxed little cutie, the lizard hunt was a little frustrating for those of us who like to get nose-to-nose with the subject at hand.
For those of us who only like looking for critters and have no patience whatsoever for the precision of macro photography, it wasn't a big deal at all.
4. Maltese sausage
But it was unlike any other sausage we've ever eaten, and like
5. Black beetles
To my mind, black beetles are pretty much everything one could ask for in an insect.
They're shiny and beautiful, plus they're outrageously round and crawly.
We're not sure what kind of beetle-y mission this little guy was on, but it was pretty clear that he didn't have a lot of extra time for John's beetle photography.
6. Qaghaq ta’ l-Ghasel
Gesundheit!
Known in English as "honey rings", these might be the largest tiny pleasure on my list.
It was getting to be snack time in the capital city of Victoria (population: 6,000), and so we bought a pair at a little grocery store without knowing exactly what they were.
We, as innocent tourists, sat on a park bench and ate about half of each honey roll — minus any such beverage — before lapsing into sugar comas.
It's kind of miracle that I'm even alive to write this today.
7. Bats
Gozo may be a tiny island, but its 25 square miles are dense with caves and old stone buildings and crumbling forts and belfries.
In short: bat heaven!
One night, after we had tried all four restaurants in the village where we were staying, we walked down to Gozo's main harbor for dinner.
In the process, we discovered a shortcut — aka, a rotting staircase that took us into labyrinthine, overgrown, unfinished municipal garden between the main road and the marina.
At dusk, the whole thing was — what's the word I'm looking for here...? — oh right: terrifying.
Absolutely terrifying.
But, after confirming that there weren't any dead bodies in the undergrowth, we discovered that the park was nothing short of a bat spectacle, with tiny, bat-shaped cuties circling and swooping and swarming just over our heads.
As a side note, everyone's favorite Peanut Cheese photographer was mildly put out — perhaps rightly so — when I suggested that catching this bat in flight (and in focus) was luck and not necessarily photographic mastery.
8. Olive
We knew that chameleons held a prominent place on the Maltese reptile list, but the end of our vacation was nearing, and we were starting to feel less than optimistic about finding one in the wild.
Gozitan herpetologists were even more elusive, so we screwed up our courage to ask the charming, mildly eccentric Swedish woman who runs the bed and breakfast where we stayed if she had any tips for our chameleon quest.
Much to our surprise, her eyes lit up and she reported that they had seen one in the garden just the other day.
We confirmed that she didn't mind us skulking around all in of the nooks and crannies of their property, and she warned us that they were really hard to find.
Really hard to find.
Then we got to work.
While John alternated between snail photos and lizard blurs, I spent about an hour examining the garden walls, the palm tress, the cacti, the rubble, the lawn chairs.
I had nearly given up when I spotted a medium-sized olive tree next to the gazebo.
I had my head stuck in the tree, and had been trying to think like a chameleon for a good five minutes when, out of nowhere, all of a sudden, one of the branches moved!
And lo and behold: there was our chameleon, about 8 inches from my nose.
I'm sorry to report that said chameleon — whom we named Olive after finding her each day in a different part of a different olive tree — was far less interested in us than we were in her.
But in some cases, unrequited love is better than no love at all.
