Footin’ it in Valletta

Valletta

Early morning breakfast in the apartment and then off to see the sights. We didn’t rent a car here so we’ll be relying on public transportation to get around the island. First stop, the ferry. There is a bus that will take you to Valletta from Sliema but that takes about 20 minutes, the ferry takes about 5 minutes to cross the harbor so for the 2.80EU, it’s a bargain. Another note, it took about a minute for us to get used to the non-stop hawking of peddlers trying to sell you everything from hop on-hop off tours, harbor tours, Segway tours, diving tours, fishing tours, detours, etc. Just like Mexico! There is a warning in one of the tour books about timeshare sellers but we didn’t experience that one.

Anyway, we arrive in Valletta and begin our walking journey of the city. There certainly is no lack of things to see, if you’re in to forts, archeology and churches. We decide to wander, in Malta you wander if you’re retired, strolling is strictly confined to the promenade, down to the National Museum of Archeology. Located in Auberge de Provençe, a beautiful Baroque building in the capital city, Valletta, dating back to 1571. This building used to house the Knights of St. John and has some beautiful frescos painted on the ceilings. Artifacts date back to prehistoric times and includes tools, ornaments and the prize possession, the sleeping lady figurine from the Hypogeum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many other artifacts are on display, such as beams with intricate carvings from the early temples, a grinding mill and a sarcophagus, but our favorite was the fat lady. There are several of these on display depicting a rather large woman sometimes with a hole at the neck so one could interchange the head. Women with interchangeable heads, not a bad idea!

 

 

Enough wading through antiquities, heading on to St. Johns Co-Cathedral. Not sure why it’s called co-cathedral but Collette speculated that it was an early timeshare of some type. Anyway, if you’re looking for unbelievably ornate structures, this is it. Built between 1573 and 1578 by the Knights Hospitallier, almost every square inch of the interior of this building has a relief or casting painted in gold, silver or red. The eight sided cross and the eight chapels surrounding the nave represent the 8 lingues (an ethno-linguistic division of geographic distribution) of the Knights Hospitallier. There are also over 400 crypts (not the LA gang kind) that make up the floor of the cathedral.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next stop, the Lascaris War Rooms! Entry cost is 10EU each and worth every penny.  Now this one doesn’t show up on every tour guide but it should. This exhibit is in the actual underground bunker used in WW2 by General Eisenhower and his Supreme Commanders to plan and monitor the invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky). You know, the invasion of Sicily where Patton and Montgomery became good friends. Located some 40 meters (130ft) under the saluting battery of Valletta, this exhibit contains real artifacts and maps used during this and many other Allied campaigns. The guided tour includes a video depicting the war in Malta. Just for reference, Malta was the most bombed island in WW2. I know, you’re saying no it wasn’t, England was. Well smarty pants, the total bomb tonnage dropped on England was ~18,000 tons during the entire war. The tonnage of bombs dropped on Malta in April 1942 was ~6,730; and an additional ~3,160 tons on the harbor, in one month! During four months at the beginning of the war, June 1940 – September 1940, there were over 1,000 bombing raids on Malta by the Axis powers. On average there were 170 enemy aircraft flying over Malta every day between December 1941 and April 1942. Must have been a very demoralizing time in Malta. Bomb shelters were built almost everywhere in the country with entrances mandated to be no more than 50 meters from a doorway. The saving grace is that Malta is predominately limestone which is fairly easy to excavate, still a huge effort. Later in the week we went to tour the bomb shelters so more on that later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a full day of adventure, we head back to Sliema for dinner. We decide on Fortizza located on the promenade with nice ocean views and a no smoking area inside. If you come to Malta be prepared to sit inside restaurants to eat unless you really enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke. Seems the best seats, those located outside in the open air, are reserved for smokers. Every country has something that is bass akwards, this is Malta’s.

Collette chose a rabbit dish while I stayed a little more reserved with chicken. Pretty good meal for about 35EU, with wine of course.

 

 

The next morning we planned for a down day. We needed to catch up on laundry and plan out what we wanted to see based on the traffic. No not cars, cruise ships! Malta is the first place we’ve visited where we need to review the cruise ship schedule to plan our activities. Appears that this is a very popular island for Costa cruise line a several others. There can be as many as 3 cruise ships in port any given day so the sites and buses can get quite crowded. Having almost a month here certainly helps ease that concern.

Now for the laundry. This apartment doesn’t have a dryer so we need to hang our clothes to dry them. We’re also located on the seventh floor which means, yep, you drop a shirt or something daintier and you have to go down seven flights of stairs, knock on someone’s door and invite yourself into their patio to remove your dainties from their umbrella. So before becoming comfortable with doing this, we decided to hang our things in the bathroom, worked just fine.