Most of the summer consisted of trying to finish some articles and a book, which is not all that exciting and does not really make for any good pictures.  So I thought I'd begin the story of my summer with a trip to Malta, an island in the Mediterranean south of Sicily and north of Tunesia.

I went there for a meeting of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, where I was the keynote speaker.
 
 

Thea and I arrived a day before the conference began so we could have some time for sightseeing.  Naturally, we went to the capital city, Valetta.  It was almost eerily quiet there that day.  Turns out it was the Feast of St Peter and St Paul.  Everyone had left town, it seems, and just about every place to eat or visit was closed for the holiday.  Feast of St Peter and St Paul??? Who ever heard of such a thing?  But the Maltese take these things quite seriously.
    The building above is the Auberge de Provence, which is part of the Order of  the Knights of Malta (specifically, those coming from Provence in France).  The knights were dedicated to protecting Europe from the Muslims (in particular, the Ottoman Empire).  If there are any Maltese Knights still around, maybe they can find Osama bin Laden!

  Downtown Valetta

It may be a beautiful old city, but McDonalds is everywhere!
 
 

Most Maltese houses have protruding windows (or enclosed balconies with lots of windows) to let in the breezes when it gets hot.  They don't have many air conditioners.  They apparently also don't have clothes dryers.  Very environmentally sound.  And quite colorful, if you don't mind the whole neighborhood knowing what your underwear looks like!
 
 

Here you see some of the fortifications along the city walls (near the harbor).  There was a ferocious attack and seige by the Ottoman Turks in 1565, but the Knights of Malta managed to hold out.  Incidentally, the horse and buggy is strictly for tourists.
 
 

Between our hotel and Valetta was lovely Spinola Bay, full of charming fishing boats.  There are some nice restaurants along the water where you can sit and watch the activity.

In the center of Malta is the city of Mdina, which is an Arabic word meaning "town" (maybe also "market").  It is a very small place with a few hundred people.  Maltese, incidentally, is a Semitic language that is closely related to Arabic and may have derived in large part from Phoenician.
 

  Mdina Cathedral

There is a very nice cathedral in Mdina.  Quite baroque, as you can see.
 
 

Not too far from Mdina, on the south coast of the island, is an ancient temple called Hagar Qim.  The temple is around 5000 years old.  This and similar stone structures on Malta are among the oldest surviving buildings on earth.  They were apparently built to worship the "Magna Mater" (a type of earth mother or goddess), and many of the priests were women.  Or so they say.  How archaeologists figured this out is not entirely clear to me since these people left no written records.

During the summer most churches in Malta have a festa for the local patron saint.  Below is the church of the village of Qrendi, all decked out and ready to party.

A major part of the festivities (at night, at least) is fireworks.  The fireworks go on for hours at night.  Each village seems to try to outdo the other.  They do some of the type of fireworks common in the US (the kind you shoot into the air).  But the most popular ones are those on the ground, attached to wheels and wires and such.  It's a lot more exciting to get up close and personal!

Anyway, we had a lovely time.

        Right after the conference in Malta I flew to Budapest, where I attended the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association (I presented a paper and chaired a panel).

   This is an overview of Budapest .
Actually, Budapest is made up of Buda and Pest.  So to be exact, the image was taken from Buda and is looking towards Pest on the other side of the Danube River.  Below is a similar photo from another angle--this one taken from the Castle in Buda.

The meeting took place at the Central European University and the nearby Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

   Hungarian Academy of Science
 

Below are some other sights in Budapest:
 
 

     Basilica
 

  Synagogue
 

   Funicular railway going up to the Castle (in Buda)
 

   The Castle
 

      Having a beer near the Castle
 

After the conference was over I stayed an extra day and took a bus up to Esztergom, a city on the Danube between Budapest and Vienna.  Esztergom is the former capital of Hungary and is the place where King Stephen was crowned around 1000 years ago.  King Stephen might be considered the founder of the Hungarian nation.
 
 

  Esztergom, viewed from the Danube River
 

  Some friendly local farmers
 

I headed back down to Budapest on a ferry that went down the Danube River.  It took about three hours and was a wonderful ride on a beautiful day.

  Danube River (at Visegrad)
 

That night, the conference ended with a cruise on the Danube river through Budapest (that's right, my second boat trip in one day!).

        At the end of the summer Thea and I went to Santa Rosa Island (in the Santa Barbara Channel) with two friends, Alice and James.  Santa Rosa was formerly a cattle ranch owned by the Vail and Vickers company.  Vail and Vickers sold it to the National Park Service some years ago but retained the right to continue a deer and elk hunting operation until the year 2010.  A small part of the island is a no-hunt zone, but the rest is off limits during hunting season.  We were very lucky to have a volunteer ranger who took us on hikes around much of the island.

Some images of the island follow:

  The main ranch house.
 

   Fortunately, this one is in the no-hunt zone
 

   Kayaking in Becher's Bay, towards Skunk Point
 

Anyway, it turned out to be quite a nice summer.  I even managed to get a lot of writing done.  What more could you want?