Sicily to Malta (29/9)

Up at 5.30am to be ready for the taxi at 6.00am. We were down outside and in the taxi by 5.53 and at the airport exactly on 6.00. Oh if it was always that easy!  Our hosts had left breakfast for us in the fridge, so we ate that once we had checked in.

Etna stuck its head in the clouds
as we took off from Catania

Thoughts on Sicily: scruffy, dirty, litter-strewn, frantic, smokey, ancient, friendly, delicious, varied, Baroque, prickly pear, Greek, Roman, very Catholic, worth visiting.

The flight to Valetta is only about 35 minutes long. The plane barely reaches cruising height before its nose is pointed downwards. We were met at the airport by a driver for the agent which made getting to our apartment easy, especially as Valetta is not easy to navigate in. We are on the opposite side of the harbour to the city in Gzira. The apartment, which is very new, was still being cleaned when we arrived, but at least we were able to leave our bags before heading out. We bought a standard weekly ticket for €6.50 which would enable us to travel anywhere on the island.  

As we headed into Valetta using the information supplied by the cleaning lady at the apartment, we realised that we had left the address of the apartment in our bags, so getting back was going to be interesting.  We did know the route number and our memory of places is fairly good, but was going to be tested on the way back. All the buses come into a bus terminus near the centre of town, so at least that bit was easy. 

Arab influence in Valetta with the enclosed balconies?

Our job was to find Tourist Information to find out what was going on and to get a local map.  Why is it that when an organisation moves, it never takes down its old signs? We found a couple of signs, each pointed towards a corner of a square we found ourselves in, but there was no sign of it.  While we were standing around looking puzzled, a very kind Maltese gentleman came up to us and asked us if we were looking for Tourist Information. Yes was our reply and he directed us to their new address. He said it wasn't the first time he had helped people out. Unlike most other towns, they didn't have a map of the streets of Valetta except for the very heart of the town. After collecting a few brochures of some walks to be had around the island we left to try to get our head around the country.

The George Medal which Malta is
rightly very proud of

We stopped for a coffee to examine what we had picked up to decide what to do with the day. Strangely enough we are not yet museumed out  - or really we knew that Malta has a very long and ancient history and was going to be more than just Greeks and Romans.  So the first place we visited was the National Museum of Archeology which had a temporary exhibition on besides the usual galleries of artefacts from sites around Malta. This exhibition was entitled "Malta's history in 100 objects" and started with its geological history and its dwarf elephants (not kidding!) right through to the present day. We have now seen the George Medal which was awarded to Malta for its resistance to the German blitz during WWII. Malta was the most bombed of any site in WWII, and fought for three long years against Axis invasion. There was also several items related to the Arab history of the island, something we realised that no Sicilian museum had done. They were in Malta for 400 years so deserve to be included, particularly as much of its language owes a lot to Arabic. Malta's Neolithic past is very interesting, because it has the oldest free-standing stone temples in the world which are at least one thousand years older than Stonehenge. The temples were also heavily decorated with incised circles and spirals on much of its structure. Little is known about the people who built them, and even less about their sudden demise. There were many cultural groups who settled in Malta before the Phoenicians and then of course the Greeks, Romans, ....... etc.

Photographs really do not show just how extensive
and protected Malta's harbours are.

After the Archeology museum we headed off to the World War II Museum only to find it closed on 22 September 2014 for re-location to a new site (yes, one week ago!). We were quite disappointed, so walked up to Fort St Elmo for the view across Grand Harbour towards Senglea, Vittoriosa and Fort Ricasol. Malta's fortifications are massive. Senglea and Vittoriosa are promontories which project out into Grand Harbour, and both of these are fortified as well as Valetta and Fort Ricasol. Valetta is built on a promontory which has a deep water harbour on both sides of it. No wonder it was so bitterly fought over in WWII.

Some of the inlay work in the marble floor
of the Palace State Rooms

We walked back into Valetta via the Upper Barraca Gardens, which were created in 1661, but are now open to the public. After a snack for lunch we headed off to the Palace State Rooms and the Palace Armoury. Valetta was founded in the late 16th century as a new base for the Order of St John after it lost its base in Rhodes to the Ottomans. The State Rooms are in the Magisterial Palace which was one of the first buildings to be built in the newly founded city. It combined the Grand Master's residence with halls for public functions. The rooms certainly were of stately proportions. The roofing timbers must have been imported because even by the 1500's, timber for building was scare on the island. We only saw four rooms, but they were quite splendid in an understated way. The Grand Chamber, which was used for the gatherings of the General Chapter of the Order of St John, had a continuous fresco around the room depicting events of the Great Siege of Malta of 1565, the turning point in the war against the Ottoman Empire.The walls of the Council Chamber were hung with a magnificent set of Gobelins tapestries. The marble floors were intricately inlaid with the coats of arms of the Grand Masters of the time. From the state rooms we headed to the armoury. The arms collection was, up until recently, actually still housed in the original armoury of the Order. It is now housed in the former stables. Up until Napoleon's short sojourn, it was a working arsenal, holding enough arms to equip thousands of soldiers. He shipped most of it back to France so what is on display is only a small sample of what had been there. All the usual suspects were on display - armour, weapons, heavy artillery. (Over the four-month period of the Siege of Malta, 130,000 cannonballs rained down on the besieged garrison). There was also a case of Ottoman arms and armour, all spoils of war.  (And of course, we were not permitted to photograph anything)

By now it was late afternoon and we had to work out how to get back to our apartment. We caught the number 37 bus which was the one we had taken to get us into Valetta which was fine until we realised that it wasn't taking the same route out as it took coming in. Landmarks were unfamiliar and we hadn't worked out if the map we bought actually showed our street anyway. We then pulled up at one bus stop which looked vaguely familiar, so we decided to get off at the next stop. Looking down one of the streets we thought that we recognised the small treed roundabout that could be seen from our living room. We had made it!  After writing for a bit we walked down to the waterfront, about one minute away, to look for a restaurant for dinner. We have decided that they cater more for the Brits here than in Sicily (I guess it was a British colony for a long after all) so there are more cafe-type eateries ie fish and chips, hamburger bars, than we had seen in Sicily. We found a suitable restaurant after a reasonable walk and had pasta for dinner and a gelati on the way home. We also found that there are busses into Valetta from down on the waterfront, so decided to try that route tomorrow.