Qormi Wine Festival

What a fabulous evening we had last night. It was Qormi wine festival,
Qormi being a town I'd not even heard of until I heard of the wine
festival. It was rather convenient that this festival was on, as we
really enjoyed a similar event in Gozo a few years ago but would be
missing that this year by a day!
We got the bus to Qormi (driven by a driver who was frequently looking
behind rather than at the road and often with no hands on the wheel!)
not knowing what to expect of the town and were very pleasantly
surprised. The centre, where the festival was bring held in the
shadows of St George's church, was very pretty and "historic" looking,
with loads of attractive townhouses and civic buildings. It instantly
appealed to us, and had wife on the lookout for "for sale" signs!
As we were early we had a look around the church first. In fact we got
a guided tour. A kindly man named George rounded a few of us up and
showed us around, explaining about the festa, the processional statues
and the iconography. When he mentioned the "museum, full of old books
and documents - it's very interesting" the others all made excuses and
left us to our fate. Fate was on our side though, as the museum was
strangely locked up!
Outside things were livening up. We bought our glasses (€10 per
glass, which you keep, and then as much wine as you can drink!) They
had a similar system for food, but we didn't want any.
We strolled around the various areas of the festival, wines in hand,
looking at art and wine making exhibitions and noting the various
stages that had been set up for different performances. We sat on some
steps by one such stage where a group of kids (no more than 15 or 16
years old) were setting up. While they were doing that some really
great indie tunes were pumping over the sound system, so we decided to
just stay there. It was conveniently close to two wine stalls too.
When the band came on they were excellent. I think everything they did
was a cover, though there were some tunes I didn't know, but they did
them all in their own style.
In a slightly surreal moment two lovely young girls came up and asked
us to take their photo (with my own camera) and then gave us their
facebook page to post them on!
5 white and rose wines for wife and 8 of a whole mix of styles for me
and the evening was over. Where did the time go? 4 hours had simply
flown by.
Time for one final pleasant surprise. Our pre-booked taxi with eCabs
turned up without problem and the driver George was an absolute
delight. As nice and as interesting to talk to as you could hope for
and a careful and courteous driver. We were whisked to our door at
sensible speeds without once fearing for our lives, something not
always true of other taxis, nor indeed the buses.
Sent from my iPod