Our time on the ancient island of Malta was short but sweet.
How did we end up in Malta of all places? Our creative ticket broker Sarah found that it
was cheaper for us to get from Istanbul to Rome to London if we went via Malta; so we took
it and stayed a couple days.
Malta is actually an archipelago of three islands, located
about 100 km south of Sicily. It was first inhabited about 7000 years ago, so we are
talking really ancient. It had its first "resurgence" when St. Paul arrived in
Malta in November of 60 A.D. and stayed throughout the winter until the navigation season
began in the following year.
Did we mention we mistakenly sent several important chapters
of our guide book home? One was on Malta. Ooops. Luckily we were able to scrounge notes
from the travel bookstore at our hostel in Istanbul, and we found a Guest House in the
town of Valletta, on the main island of Malta.
Our primary mission was to figure out how to ship a couple
kilos of stuff home, so we wouldn't get gouged on the flight to Rome like we had on the
way here (we were a little overzealous with our purchases in Turkey). This cut into our
exploration time a bit, but we still saw several interesting things.
The capital city of Valletta was a rather small port town
with buttery-colored stone ramparts surrounding it; provided a great route for a
nice hike. No sandy beach, but we like the appearance of rocks better anyway, plus it
definitely looked more medieval.
We started at the Upper Barrakka Gardens to check out the
great view of the Grand Harbour. Next we strolled through the Hall of Knights at the
Palace of the Grand Masters, and saw many varieties of armor and weaponry used by the
Knights of St. John, (who ruled Malta from the 16-18th century) inside the Armoury of the
Knights.
We also visited the Co-Cathedral of St. John and were
fortunate enough to be able to see Caravaggio's painting entitled The Beheading of St.
John--it had just reopened after a long hiatus. The Co-Cathedral was rather austere on the
outside but very baroque on the inside. We're talking baroque taken to the extreme. It was
ostentatious and very glitzy with blindingly bright gold everywhere. It reminded us
of Las Vegas.
Figuring out the Maltese bus system was an experience all
its own. We walked outside the city gate wall of Valletta into a sea of orange buses,
numbered from 1 to 168 in no particular order. We had just found #38 and boarded when Dave
decided he wasn't in the mood for any more sightseeing, and wanted to rest up for Rome.
So Kelly forged ahead and took the bus to Qrendi and walked
to the megalithic temples of Mnajdra and Hagar Qim. They were built between 5500 and 4500
years ago by technologically advanced people, kind of like Stonehenge. The phenomenons are
similar: the stone blocks used were immense and they interlocked perfectly.
The artistic genius of the ancient people once again. The best thing was that unlike
Stonehenge, I could get up close to the temples and walk through the various rooms. No
barriers or crowds to be concerned with here.
I had about an hour until the last bus back to Valletta, and
quite typically, wanted to squeeze in one more thing. I hightailed it across the coast to
the Blue Grotto, a picturesque cluster of sea caves. The colors of the underwater flora in
the lagoon were brilliant, and I just barely got to see them before it was time to
run back up the hill to the bus.
There were many more parts of the island we weren't able to
explore, like the towns of Mdina or Sliema, not to mention Malta's two other islands: Gozo
and Comino. But we lightened our load and were glad to be able to swing a side trip to
such an interesting place.
