Top Ten Posts of 2022

As we leave 2022, please excuse my annual self-indulgent post to begin the new year as I peer through the keyhole to look back over the last one.

The top ten most visited posts on my Travel Blog always surprise me but then I don’t pretend to understand how search engines work.  I say visited pages rather than read because I am neither so conceited or sufficiently naive to claim that a visit equals a read.  I know that a lot of people will arrive here by mistake and swiftly reverse back out via the escape button!

No. 1

Mount Vesuvius

 

I first posted this in March 2010 so this one has been around a while and with 722 hits and a thirteenth year in the Top Ten is becoming a stubborn stayer.  It is also No. 3 in all time page views with 19,400 recordings.  It has been viewed every month since first posted.

No. 2

Royal Garden Party

First posted in June 2009 the post has 552 hits in 2022, almost double the previous year and staying in the Top Ten for the fourteenth successive year which by that measure makes it my most successful post.

In total it has 23,750 visits which makes all time second after my post about  Norway, Haugesund and the Vikings at 24,722.  This one has been around for a long time ( since June 2009) and has always been popular especially around the Spring and Summer when invitations to the Royal Garden Party are going out and when people are wondering how to get one or what to wear if they have one.

Another post that has been visited every month since first published.

No. 3

Bratislava to Vienna Without a Passport

This post was from March 2022 and comes in with 400 hits, I cannot imagine why.  It links back to a much earlier post of December 2009 which was spectacularly unsuccessful…

Travel Issues – Forgotten Documents

No. 4

Catalonia – In Search of Norman Lewis

I must confess that I am rather pleased about this one.

I posted this in July 2013 and it first made the top ten in 2015 before dropping out the following year so I am glad to see it back again.

There are some posts that I have written that I would like people to read and this is one of few that have achieved that. Before visiting Catalonia in 2013 I read the book ‘Voices of the Old Sea’ by Norman Lewis which is an account of the Costa Brava in the 1940s and the approach of mass tourism.  In this post I attempted some research and some interpretation of the book and the area.  It has recorded 288 visits and in this case I like to think that this is because of the subject rather than the pictures.

Another post that has been visited every month since published.

No. 5

Turkey – A problem with Stray Dogs

Another maverick post this one.  I first put it up in July 2013 and it received a few hits but suddenly this year it has had regular visits and finishes the year with 288.

No. 6

Malta, Happiness and a Walk to Mellieha

I have written several posts about my visits to the island of Malta, this one is from May 2015. I consider some of them much more interesting than this one but where they have sunk without trace, this one just keeps on attracting hits.  280 hits in 2022 and seventh successive year in the top ten.

No 7

Streets of Naples

I visited Naples in April 2018.  Recently In February 2022 I  editing my pictures and sharedethese images of an exciting and eclectic city that I hadn’t used before in my posts…

268 hits this year.

No. 8

Alternative Twelve Treasures of Spain – Antoni Gaudi

This is the ninth successive year in my top ten for my post about the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.  After I had taken a look at the official Twelve Treasures of Spain I thought it might be fun to draw up my own personal alternative list.  I included Antoni Gaudi in a general rather than a specific way.  I posted this in March 2013 and this year with 256 visits it has risen one place to number eight.

This is another post that has been visited every month since posting and with a total of 7.,456 recorded hits is number 7 in my all time list.

No 9

Poland (Wroclaw), The Anonymous Pedestrians

This is another post that I am happy to see in the top ten with 360 visits.  I wrote this in March 2014 after visiting the Polish city of Wroclaw and finding the street statues of the Anonymous Pedestrians.

The statues are a memorial to the introduction of martial law in Poland on December 13^th 1981 and the thousands of people who disappeared (‘went underground’) in the middle of the night courtesy of the militia. In a symbolic statement the fourteen statues were erected in the middle of the night in 2005 on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the introduction of martial law.

A total of 248 hits in 2022 and with visitors every month since originally posted.

No !0

The Island of Hvar

Published in January 2022 and has 242 hits.  I can offer no explanation why.

If you have read one of these posts or any of the 3,200 others on my site ‘Have Bag, Will Travel’, then thank you from the bottom of my heart!  I guess it proves that George Bailey (It’s A Wonderful Life) was right when he said: “The three most exciting sounds in the world are anchor chains, plane motors and train whistles.”  

Total visits in 2022 – 48,500

Total visits all time – 1,147,447

Countries where most visitors come from – UK, USA, India, Australia, and Spain.

Most viewed picture in 2022…

A little disappointing, I like to think I have posted one or two good pictures of my own during the year but most clicked is a picture of Casa Batlló  in Barcelona that I scanned in from my collection of postcards…

I would be interested to know about other people’s most popular posts in 2022 and the possible explanations why?  Comment and let me know.  I’m a sucker for statistics!

Sunday Sunsets – Mellieha Bay in Malta

Quite possibly one of the most spectacular sunsets that I have ever seen…

The sky literally in fluid layers with  colours that changed like a twist of a kaleidoscope,   The blue of the day giving way to the purple of the evening but stubbornly separated by a ribbon of cream.  This was the view from our hotel balcony, it was free but I would gladly have paid for it.

Monday Washing Lines – Valletta in Malta

 

Welcome to my new project – Washing  Lines

The five best places to find washing lines for photo opportunities are Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Malta.

This one is from Malta, Valletta I think although I cannot be absolutely certain…

Clearly it was trousers, jeans and tracky bottoms washing day.  I can’t help noticing that they have been hung to dry inside out, I imagine this is so they don’t bleach in the sun

My only other observation is that personally I would have hung them from the bottoms and then the waist band would dry quicker that way.

Like this…

It is a Challenge.  Do feel free to join in.

Entrance Tickets – The Island of Tabarca

I am cheating this one a little bit because this is a ferry ticket to the Spanish islet of Tabarca on the eastern coast of Spain near Alicante.

We just about made boat departure time, which was a good thing because the next one wasn’t for about two hours or so (in high season they run a lot more regularly) and after purchasing our tickets we made our way to the top deck and selected seats in the sun ready for the short thirty minute crossing and after being invited to view the marine life through the glass bottom in the boat (really not worth it) we arrived in the small port and disembarked.

 

Before 1700, the island was known as Illa de Sant Pau or ‘Saint Paul’s Island’ on the basis that this is where Saint Paul was washed up about two thousand years ago. He must have got around a bit because he seems to have been washed up in quite a lot of places in quite a short space of time which begins to make him look very unlucky and me sceptical about the whole thing.

Personally, if I was inclined to believe any of it then I would come down on the side of the story of St Paul’s Island in Malta. The Acts of the Apostles tell the story of how Paul was shipwrecked on an island (somewhere) while on his way to Rome to face charges. You can call me a coward if you like but I wouldn’t have been going back to Rome to face charges that might result in crucifixion or beheading and I would have been inclined to stay on the island wherever it was but to be fair you don’t get to become a Saint by hiding in a cave!

In the eighteenth century it was used as a convenient base for Berber pirates from North Africa who regularly raided the mainland coast so in 1760, to put a stop to it, Charles III of Spain ordered the fortification and repopulation of the Spanish island.

A group of Genoese sailors who had been shipwrecked near the coast of Tunisia, mostly coming from the islet of Tabark, were rescued and considered convenient settlers and the islet was renamed Nova Tabarca. The Genoese were moved to the island together with a Spanish garrison.

The King ordered a fortified town and as a consequence of Royal Decree walls, bulwarks, warehouses and barracks were built. The garrison was removed in 1850 and the buildings began to deteriorate and collapse through lack of maintenance but the Genoese stayed put and now a hundred and fifty years later it is a tourist destination and a thriving fishing community.

We maybe could have done with another hour on the island but if we missed the next ferry back we would be there for another four which was too long so we made our way back to the small fishing port of the island and boarded the boat back to Santa Pola where we had previously found a nice pavement restaurant with a very reasonably price Menu Del Dia and we simply sat and let the afternoon slip through our fingers.

Later we sat on the terrace and drank wine and ate pizza and just wasted the rest of the evening away as well!

Clickety-Click 2020 – The Top 5

Examining my statistics for 2020 I have looked at number of clicks and thought that I might share with you the pictures in my posts that have received the most views over the past twelve months. Yesterday I revealed 10 down to 6 and today I share the Top 5…

No. 5 – Map of World Showcase at Disneyworld, Florida – 50 clicks

It surprised me just how often map postcards have cropped up in my click statistics. This is from a post from December 2012 called Around the World in Eighty minutes about my visit to World Showcase in 1990.

No. 4 – Map of Malta – 69 clicks

Another map, this time from my post Malta – Sightseeing, a Church, a Cartoon and a Capital City which was posted in February 2013.

No. 3 – Spaghetti Harvest – 97 clicks

From a post of April 1st 2019 about the BBC Spaghetti Tree Hoax, a spoof television documentary about spaghetti crops in Switzerland.

No. 2 – Postcard Map of Northern Ireland – 119 clicks

And yet another map, this time from a post of June 2015 about preparation for a visit to Northern Ireland.

No 1 – Casa Batlló, Barcelona – 190 clicks

The second picture of Casa Batlló in Top Ten clicks but not one of my own pictures of course. I seem to remember that I scanned this picture from the travel section of The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. I used in a post about Antoni Gaudi in March 2013.

It baffles me why this picture tops the click parade, in 2020 it accounted for 12.25% of all picture clicks and in total since I posted it has 1,550 clicks which is 3.2% of the total of 48,500.

One final interesting statistic is that when I did a Google search on this image it has been lifted and used almost 150 times on other websights.

A Mystery Story for Halloween – The Single Footprint

I was rather perplexed by this bizarre mystery that I came across in Malta just recently. Here is a slab of concrete measuring roughly six foot by three and right in the middle of it is a single footprint. Nothing before and nothing after and nothing to either side and almost impossible to leap into the middle and back out again without losing balance unless you are a World Champion Hopper…

 

Intrigued?

Read The Full Post Here…

On This Day – Malta and the Mellieha WW2 Shelters

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 28th October 2016 I was on holiday on the Mediterranean island of Malta…

In two years from June 1940 the Luftwaffe flew three-thousand bombing raids over Malta, nine thousand buildings were destroyed and seventeen-thousand more severely damaged. In March and April 1942, more explosives were dropped on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta – smaller than the Isle of Wight – than on the whole of Britain during the first year of the Blitz.

People needed somewhere safe to shelter and two-thousand miners and stonemasons were recruited to build public shelters and began to tunnel into the limestone rock of the island.

Read The Full Story Here…

Doors of Malta

Malta, More Doors and Windows

Malta 2017, Preview Pictures

I went to Malta last month, here are some post preview pictures…