Vittoriosa Waterfront, Marsaxlokk

Second day of our hop on-hop off tour taking in the sights of the south tour. As we said in our Ireland post, one of the benefits of touring during the off season is that you get to read about those sites that are only open during the high season, Malta is no different. We wanted to visit the War Museum and St. Elmo but unfortunately both were closed, as are the Tarxien Temples. We found out later that Fort St. Elmo was hosting a summit on migration and was closed in preparation of foreign dignitaries arriving. Guess that puts us in our place.

Anyway, ventured off to the Vittorisa waterfront to see the Maritime Museum. This was a nice walk along a pier that has yachts docked there the size of small cities. Amazing what some people will spend their money on! We got the boat bug while touring the harbor so we put an offer in on one that needs a little work.

 

 

The Maritime Museum would have been a good tour except the cashier didn’t have change for 50EU so we didn’t get to go in. He did suggest we could walk around the harbor to various restaurants to try to get change but somehow that didn’t sit right with me, so we passed. By the way, if Joe Skalisky is reading, there are lots of 18^th century cannons on the dock that I bet you can buy for a small fee.

Back on the bus, we headed for the fishing village of Marsaxlokk, no idea how to pronounce this! This town prides itself on still being one of the small fishing villages in Malta. Although it is home to the third largest container port in the world, and can handle over 2 million containers per year, there is still a fleet of individual fishing boats that resides here. Each of these boats, called luzzus (pronounced lutsu), are painted in bright colors depicting their home port and with the Eye of Horus or of Osiris on the front. The “eye” is a holdover from Phoenician times and was believed to protect the boats while at sea.

 

 

 

 

 

After all this riding it was time to eat once again. Marsaxlokk has a pretty good selection of seafront restaurants so this was going to be lunch. Collette still can’t pass up a good deal on local fish so it was lampuki (no I didn’t make the name up) for her and I got adventurous as well with a hamburger. Lampuki is said to be the Maltese equivalent of mahi-mahi or dorado but it didn’t look quite like that when Collette got hers. My guess would have been a large sardine but not my call. So as usual the fish arrives whole and with a pleasant looking chopped tomato and onion sauce covering the fish, yum!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My burger however was a little bit of a surprise. The consistency of the meat was not like what you get in the states or elsewhere. I would describe the meat as pureed and then made into a patty. The taste was fine but the texture was a little hard to get over, more like eating a soyburger than one of beef. Oh well, that’s lunch, now back on the bus to go to the Ghar Dalam caves!

These caves are described as a prehistoric “cul-de-sac” that contained the remains of animals stranded on Malta after the land bridge disappeared at the end of the Ice Age. Today this cave is a little more than an opening in the ground that one can venture into for the nominal fee of ~3.5EU. Not much but then again, you’re not going to see much. There is a museum that contains the bones found in these caves so that was interesting but the caves themselves, pass.

 

 

 

 

 

Countryside on the way to Hagar Qim, Mnajdra Temples