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| Torre Cabrera
watchtower, Pozzallo |
We had just enjoyed a fabulous trip around Sicily, then gone to
Reggio de Calabria in Italy. We were back there to have an air-conditioner
installed in our campervan, Vanni.
While that was being done, we were going to be in Malta. So, we
returned to Messina, Sicily on the ferry, then went south to Pozzallo on the
train.
In Pozzallo, we walked down through the town, then to the Lido La Conchiglia and the
interesting Torre Cabrera watchtower. Then, after one night there, we caught a
very large catamaran, to sail the 90 km across the sea to Malta.
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| Golden Malta |
Entering Malta’s waterways, we had a great view of the ancient
fortresses, cathedrals, and houses sitting atop this island country. They
were a soft sand hue, against a bright blue sky, and azure Mediterranean Sea.
As we entered the sheltered Grand Harbour, we could see them close
up, and the crumbling facades reminded us that Malta is very, very old. It’s
been inhabited since 5900 BC.
We were really excited about coming to Malta because Leigh’s family
name is Maltese, and while we didn’t see everyone walking around with ‘Gatt’
tattooed on their forehead, we did see a sign for Joseph Gatt – Jeweller
(related? Who knows!).
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| Decent wifi and air-conditioning at the 2nd hotel |
We were eager to arrive at our accommodation, which was advertised
as a “cute apartment in Senglea”, which is one of the three old towns in
Malta, and “overlooking the Grand Harbour”.
Unfortunately, the apartment did not live up to its advertisement.
It was not cute, and was old, tired, and extremely dirty. We can do old, cute,
rustic etc but not dirt, so we decided that we could not stay there.
Luckily, we could pick up wifi and so started searching for new
accommodation. Eventually, we found a hotel in Sliema, a more touristy area,
but with very good access to buses, ferries, etc.
A short time later we had clean, air-conditioned, and connected accommodation to
rest our weary bodies. We’ve since contacted the landlord, who lives in Norway,
and he is going to refund our money – excellent!
Happy now, we headed out into the heat, to look around the Sliema
area. It was lovely, and we found a great art installation, showing two people
having a cup of tea, with one vacant chair, which of course, we had to fill.
It’s called ‘3 Maltese Actors’.
Malta has an amazing heritage. It has been colonised by the
Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, French and British.
Now days, it attracts lots and lots of British tourists, and
everything is British focussed (e.g. tourist menus, discos, etc – a veritable
“Brighton”).
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| Valletta water taxis |
It is very hot and humid at this time of the year, and we gathered
that most people were there for the heat - we saw lots of bodies toasted,
basted, grilled, baked, and over-baked from the sun.
We found it just too hot to do that, so our focus was on getting
around and seeing the place.
We caught the water taxi to Valletta, the capital of Malta, and saw
a great audio-visual show about the long and varied history of Malta, which we
really enjoyed.
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| Malta's tiny streets and interesting housing |
We wandered around the narrow streets, crowded with old, old
buildings (some are done up nicely and others are a bit old and rugged).
The
narrow streets are a boon to pedestrians, because they are usually not wide enough for cars.
We took a harbour cruise, which was a fantastic way to see the
wonderful buildings and the fortress around the waterfront, and we learned a
lot about their history.
One night we ventured onto the local bus to get to a wine festival
we’d heard about. It was held in a lovely garden with a wonderful view of
Valletta and the Grand Harbour.
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| Off to the wine festival in Valletta |
We received a wine glass for our entry fee of 10 Euros, and used it
to sample some really delicious local wines.
We made a couple of wine
purchases, listened to the latest in Maltese pop music, and watched the sunset
over the Grand Harbour as the city lit up for the evening.
There were lots and lots of people, some with their children, and
all having a great time.
The next day we jumped on the hop-on hop-off bus to do a tour of the
island, as we felt it would give us a good overview of the place.
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Entrance to Mdina,
the historic capital of Malta
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It was great. We stopped off at Mdina, the historic capital of Malta
which dates back to 1500 BC. It’s a very beautiful old walled city, and we
enjoyed walking around its fortifications and narrow streets.
We visited some of the many churches and admired the fantastic
medieval and baroque architecture. We had a wonderful time, despite the intense
heat. We also visited a lot of smaller towns en-route, all of which were unique to
Malta in some way.
We found Malta to be a very dry looking country. Although, certain
areas had a lot of intensive agriculture, including olives and grapes.
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| Marsaxlokk fishing village, Malta |
While it has a wonderful heritage that can be seen in the diverse
architecture, it is also the most British-tourist-oriented place that we have
been to outside England!
The coast seems to be entirely devoted to the tourist dollar and the
further we went around it, the more we saw lidos full of baking bodies, tourist
shops selling ghastly stuff, and lots of food places (often fast food, greasy
looking and not attractive). All rather disappointing as we had not expected this level of
“British-ness”.
We did have a lovely genuine Maltese meal at a little
hole-in-the-wall restaurant that we found up a side street. However, when trying
to recapture the experience a few nights later, had quite a different
experience, as the seafood had been frozen and was not cooked well.
An exception was Marsaxlokk which is a very small fishing port
rather than a beach, and tourist interests were minimal compared to the main
beaches in Malta.
Despite it all, we loved the architecture and the local people who
are very friendly, and speak both English and their own language of Maltese.
However, we were happy to catch our ferry back to Italy, and return to our motorhome.