Big Boys and Their Toys

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Last night we had just one plan for today and that was to go to Kalkara and visit Fort Rinella. By this morning we had added to that plan, and that was to go back to Valletta first and check out St John's Co-Cathredral. I had been talking to an ex-colleague who is on secondment to Malta and he had said if we did nothing else in Valletta we shouldn't miss out seeing this cathedral. That thought ate away at us overnight and we we did not want to leave Malta, then say once we were back home that we wished we had gone.

There were several main reasons and the first is that hanging in the cathedral is the biggest of Caravaggio's paintings the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist as well as the cathedral being an amazing example of barogue art at it's best. When you first enter it is over whelming with the richness, and you really cannot take it all in.

Most buses end up at Valletta and you have to change buses to in different directions which meant it really was not putting us out of our way. It's a slight challenge working out which bus to catch, but luckily for us a lovely elderly British ex-pat who has been living in Malta for twenty years or more took pity on us as she was catching the same bus.

Once at Fort Rinella and having paid our entrance fees, immediately we hear gun shots and the live history show was already underway. It is the only museum in Malta with live re-enactments everyday of different periods like the musketry display that starts in the 15th century up to the 19th century and includes firing of the actual guns for that period. Rinella is also the home of the 100-ton gun, which they only fire once a year, on a Sunday usually early May. The volunteers also give marching displays. Towards the end of the show they allow three members of the public, after paying a donation to the museum, they get to fire a canon. We were quite impressed with this museum, the total devotion of the volunteers and their enthusiasm was appealing as well as throwing in a little comedy now and then.

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