Around Malta

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Geo: 35.9375, 14.3754

We spent a couple of days in Valetta, Malta's capital. Our hotel, although a bit in need of a refurb was ideally situated so we enjoyed great views from our room and from the restaurant where we had breakfast each morning. Looking out over the grand harbour, its was difficult to find a space that wasn't filled, the city somehow resembling a layered wedding cake, with tiers of buildings extending up every facet. We spent a day walking through the streets. There was no old town. The whole city was old - very old - extending back to the middle ages, although parts of the city had a very colonial feel, thanks to the Brits. Needless to say there was lots of reconstruction going on but we were pretty much used to that by now. Many of the streets were in fact staircases that weaved their way up the hills. So parts of the city were comparitively quiet with the lack of cars but not exaclty cleaner than other cities we had explored recently. Dodging the dog shit took a bit of effort! Apart from the sense of history the thing that intrigued me most about Malta was the mix of cultures. Interestingly enough combining most of the places we had visited recently such as Greek, French and Italian. The language sounded half Greek and half Italian and the food was definitely a mix of all three with a bit of English and Indian thrown in. And although our intial experience with the taxi drivers at the airport gave us the completly wrong impression, we found the people to be very helpful and friendly. A very social culture, most probably due to the country's size. It suprised me that the official language was English when clearly the dominant language was Malti. After Valetta we caught a bus to Qawra in the north east for a couple of days by the "beach". There was not too much beach as such but concrete lido decks constructed on the rocky shore line. Its quite the norm in Europe, I believe, but took a bit of getting used to for us, although we had seen some strange beach set ups elsewhere. We were happy just to stroll the Esplandes anyway, weren't really planning to do much swimming as the water temp was low 20s. We expected to find quite a few poms being a popular holiday destination but didn't allow for the fact that England would be playing against Costa Rica in a round of the World Cup. Needless to say patriotism was at its highest level and the streets were awash with white and red. We managed to escape the fever by jumping on a bus for the afternoon and taking a trip up to the northern tip for a view of Gozo. It was quite odd to see divers donning their gear from their cars parked at the pier and jumping into the sea straight from the rocks. Not sure what was good down there but it was very popular.

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