Blogs from Malta, Malta, Europe

Enfin, je suis à Malte! La superbe, l’historique, la chaude, la peuplée!· Mais avant de commencer la publication de mes quelques chroniques maltaises, vous savez comme moi que tout voyage qui en est vraiment un comporte toujours son lot d’anecdotes! Voici donc le récit de mon arrivée à l’aéroport de Malte il y a 3 jours. Ceux qui connaissent mes habitudes de voyages savent très bien que je n’enregistre jamais ma valise. Je pars toujours avec celle qui se range dans le compartiment à bagages au-dessus de nos têtes. Je fais ça depuis des années. Or, au comptoir d’enregistrement d’Air Malta à Paris, on exige que je mette mon bagage en soute car le vol est complet et il semblerait que mes bonnes habitudes de voyager léger font maintenant le tour de la planète! Il n’y ... read more

It's sadly our last full day in Malta today, as we're flying back at 12.30pm tomorrow, so that will not leave any time for us to do anything other than get to the airport. My wife wanted to relax by the pool today. I wanted to go to Marsaxlokk, which is a small fishing village that I had read about. I caught a bus and was there in about half an hour, most of which was spent with the bus fighting its way through narrow streets again. I feel sorry for the bus drivers here, as the cars, both those parked and the ones driving don’t make it any easier. And that reminds me, one thing I don't like about the Maltese is their manners. I'm going to stop standing to one side to wait for ... read more

We had heard that there's an excellent market in Floriana on a Sunday, but despite asking several people in the hotel, we were at a loss as to exactly where it is. Most people seemed to think that we were after some local fish market, which, quite rightly, they thought was a bizarre thing for us to be asking about. Eventually one of the receptionists told us that it was at the park-and-ride, about 20 minutes' walk away, so we looked that up on Google Maps and set off to find it. What we didn't know is that the market finished at 11.00am, and we arrived at 11.30am to find everyone in the process of clearing everything away. It was a lot of walking in horrendous heat for no reason (although we did get to see ... read more

Following my walk around the rim of the fort yesterday (see ), I thought I would get up early again and head back out there to see whether it would make any good photographs. It didn't. I was very disappointed as all the floodlights that illuminate all the walls had been turned off. It was dark and bland. Not only that, but I needed the light on my phone in order to see where I was going. When I could, I climbed some steps back up to the streets and tried out some other locations. I did manage to get a good photograph of the Victoria Gate (stealing the composition from a postcard I had seen) and I also eventually ended up at a location that I had been to a couple of evenings ago (see ... read more

I did my usual and got up early for the sunrise. I had checked in advance and there doesn’t seem to be an iconic sunrise view in Valleta, so I walked along the east side of the city looking over towards the three cities on the other side of the bay. I couldn't find a good view, which wasn't helped as some of the locations I thought might work were not accessible. I couldn't get one view I had seen of the Siege Bell War Memorial from the Lower Barrakka Gardens as the gardens themselves were closed. I relaxed by the bell to wait for the sunrise, but that was also a disappointment as it was almost totally obscured by the hazy sky. The east side of Valletta seems to be mainly made up of huge ... read more