Here There and Everywhere

Morocco Malta and the Med: Malta!

First, real life. “Two days in Malta” is not two days. The first day, we arrive mid-morning, and have tours scheduled which allow us a large overview of the Isle of Malta:

You might wonder why there is a line from Valetta to Mdina that shows it takes two hours and 39 minutes (on today’s roads) to walk from Valetta to Mdina. This is because at lunch, AdventureMan, who is reading The Sword and the Scimitar, expresses skepticism that a young girl could walk from Valetta to Mdina, as she does in the book. On our tour, it seemed like a very long way. So I looked on Google Maps, and it gave me the walking time.

Then, as best I could remember, I figured our where our bus panoramic trip had taken us, which is this:

Last, the geography of Valetta is astonishing, and fascinating, so this is what the harbor of Valetta and Birgu (across the harbor from Valetta) looks like. I want you to try to imagine this geography from the point of view of Ottoman warriors who want to take Malta (back; they had once occupied Malta.)

These are things to be thinking about as we start our day.

Sunrise, still on the open seas. While we arrive in Malta around eight in the morning, our tour will not leave until 10:40.

My guilty pleasure, a thin slice of Norwegian breakfast bread with an almond cream filling.

We are coming in between Fort Saint Elmo and Fort Ricasoli and heading towards the Valetta Waterfront (you can see them on the map above, if you care.)

Doesn’t Valetta just knock your socks off already? It is SO beautiful. The is the only day of the entire trip where we have rain, and it’s like five minutes of rain. A mere blip.

We have breakfast while we wait for our tour.

This is a thrill. We are docked right in the middle of town. We can walk where we want! We see a lot of Hop On Hop Off kinds of buses go by – and here, in mid-November, these buses are packed. We begin to be happier we will have a tour of our own.

I think this is Fort Saint Elmo. Look at those sheer walls!

Malta has been discovered. We are not the only ship in town.

Finally, our tour begins. I am embarrassed to tell you, I don’t always know what my photos are. There was so much information. I remember this is a port, and it is very costly to moor a boat here.

We are headed up the coast, and this is one of several watch towers built which were within eyesight of one another so if invaders came, the entire island could be warned very quickly.

I’m pretty sure this is Saint Paul’s Bay, where Paul got all the crew of the ship he was sailing on safely to shore, and stayed here until he could continue his journey to Rome.

We spent quite a bit of time here.

We had a rest stop in this restaurant.

I think this is the anciety city of Mdina, where the nobles of Malta lived and live still.

Mdina was thronged with people. It’s one of the Hop On Hop Off stops.

The very Arabesque kinds of window balconies many of the buildings have.

There are walls like this everywhere, blocks of stone without mortar which divide properties.

Hagar Qim archaological dig. This is the trip I really wanted to go on, but it was already booked when we tried to sign up for it. We found items from Hagar Qim the next day at the National Museum of Archaeology, many of which came from this dig.

f I had known how small Malta is, and how easy it would be to get to this dig, I would have booked a private tour to get us here. I found many online, but was concerned about the time, and the boat departure.

Every town has it’s own patron saint, and there is a festival for a saint in some village almost every weekend.

This was a disappointment; this is a fishing village famous for it’s blue boats, and we were supposed to stop here but we zoomed through.

Coat of arms for one of the Knights of Malta

Panoramic trips can be hit or miss. This one was good in that it covered a lot of ground, and disappointing in that we didn’t really always know what we were seeing and (probably in the interest of time) we zoomed right by some of the most interesting things to see (the fishing village with the painted boats, the Blue Grotto, Hagar Qim,Mdina).

Fort Sant Angelo, in Birgu, just across the waterway from Valetta.

We are not concerned about the panoramic tour; we are going to a concert this evening at Saint John’s Co-Cathedral and the evening is great fun and a wonderful experience.

January 13, 2025 - Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Cultural, Geography / Maps | Birgu, Knights of Malta, Knights of Saint John, Malta, Mdina, The Sword and the Scimitar, Valetta