Malta

End of March we were in Malta for a week. Not by boat but by plane. We flew from Treviso airport, it is almost 3 hours by car from us but it was the closest airport with direct flights to Malta at that time - now there is a direct flight also from Triest which is much closer, but we wanted to travel well before Easter weekend in hope to avoid the flood of tourists.

We arrived in Sliema at our hotel on Monday afternoon and got one of the best rooms, with not just one but two balconies with the view of Valetta,...

...Manoel island and a pretty bay between Sliema, Manoel island and Valetta. And also of the pool with heated water. It was even better than in photos on Internet. 

In the evening we explored Sliema a bit, we walked all the way to the East shore and on our way back had some  great local food - rabbit and beef stew - and a bottle of lovely local wine. Pretty good end to a long day.

Next day we walked to the ferry port, only 10 minutes from our hotel, and sailed over the bay to Valetta. We even got seniors discount on ferry tickets and paid only 0,5 EUR per person! Valetta is a walled city with old and new stone buildings with Mediterranean charm with Arabic touch.

This is a fortress on Manoel island, we even went there one day but it was closed for renovations.

There are plenty of ports and marinas in bays around Valetta, no wonder this was such a desired strategic point for so many conquerors - from French to English to Italian to Turks to Arabs...

Hence all the walls and canons on them.

This is now a main gate to Valetta, it might have been a draw bridge in the past.

The inner city is pretty with nice buildings, but on the high street there were too many tourists already, although the season hasn't even started.

This gentleman is Jean Parisot de la Valette, the founder of the town. Further in the past the capital of Malta was inlands, as on many islands that were often attacked from the sea.

To the South there are some more bays and ports and across the bay are three cities of Vittoriosa, Senglea and Conspicua. It is a bit confusing that most places have at least two names, these three are also called Birgu, Isla and Bormla and one sees different names on maps, on signs and even on busses. 

The Maltese flag made of flowers.

This is the view towards East to entry to the Grand Harbour of Valetta.

We picked the perfect time to visit Malta, everything was green and in bloom, flowers were growing even from the city walls.

I was surprised by the number of churches there, Malta only has some half of a million inhabitants and I can't see why they would need this many of them.

Between Valetta and the Three cities the old fashioned boats operate beside the ferry and they mainly transport the tourists, so we chose one of them to get us across.

We landed in Birgu and walked around a bit.

The naval museum was closed, but there was this giant propeller in front of it.

The view from Birgu to Senglea.

In the centre of Birgu we stopped at a local food stall and bought (and ate) almost all their Pastizzi, a local dish made of flaky pastry filled with savoury fillings like beef, peas, ricotta, anchovies etc. They were really tasty and with couple of beers a perfect afternoon snack.

We returned to Sliema by bus, we bought a weekly tickets for ourselves as we didn't really want to participate in chaotic traffic, and none of us is very good at driving on the left. Buses are very irregular, neither Google nor their official app give the accurate information about the departures, so riding busses was a bit of an adventure. You stand at the edge of the road and hope for the best - that the bus will come before you get too frustrated and that it will not be full and it will stop. But with plenty of time and patience it is not too bad. 

Next day we visited the Ghar Dalam cave. It is maybe not on the top 10 of Maltese must see attractions, but as I read that there are buckets of bones of prehistoric animals there, we had to see it. 

There are thousands of bones presented in the main building, where the entrance is. You can see teeth of Hippos from 180.000 years ago...

...teeth of Deer from 120.000 years ago...

...and even Elephant bones. They all date from the time of last ice age in Europe, when all the animals, that  couldn't survive the cold, moved towards South. Mediterranean sea was 100m shallower and between Sicily and Malta there was lots of dry land and shallow sea, so animals eventually ended on Malta.

What is really fascinating is that all these bones were excavated in a rather small cave. It lays in the valley so I guess all the rain through the time deposited the bones there. This is a part of the layer with Hippo bones still in the cave.

On the way to the cave there were some pretty flowers.

Back in the main building we saw some more bones, it was interesting that when Elephants came form Europe to Malta they were of normal elephant size, but during tens of thousands of years in the cold and rainy Malta they became dwarfs.

 

It was really fascinating to see all this and learn so much. 

Next we decided to visit the town of Marsaxlokk that is in the vicinity of the cave and on the way there we saw this funny sign. And some horses also.

Marsaxlokk is a fishing town, there are plenty of colourful fishing boats moored in the bay in front of it.

In the market place there is a statue of the fisherman coming home with the basket of fish and the small boy with boat, puppy and a cat are waiting for him.

Captain got a Malta cap already the day before, after we were walking in Valetta in sun and he got burned. I used sun screen and got away with it. But this day the sun was again so hot, so I decided it was time to get one myself on one of the stalls of this market place.