It Started As A Dream

Way back – post Dark Ages I believe – I read a book that talked about this little island in the Mediterranean called Malta. I was somewhere between 10 and 12. Unfortunately the book title is lost to the mists of time. This same time period saw me reading another book, The Lost Queen of Egypt, by Lucile Morrison…and that triggered a lifelong passion for ancient Egypt and history in general. Take that passion, add in this memory of the little island and any time I was asked about places I wanted to go I would say Malta. I wanted to go to Malta. The idea of Malta has niggled in my brain for a really long time. Most people’s response is “where is that?”.

That’s Sicily above Malta, Tunisia and Libya below

When we realized that going to Berlin was not likely to happen (the whole Americans aren’t welcome anywhere because of COVID…even though we had been in Northern Ireland for over a month), we evaluated what the best options were. The house we had already arranged to rent in Malta for the month of October was also available for September! Done! It’s way more house than we needed now that everyone who was planning to visit could not visit (😭), but we were already in love with the place.

Last Friday, our excellent host in Bangor, Colum, drove us and our large number of bags to Belfast City Airport for an evening flight to London. After a comfortable night at a hotel near Heathrow (still not anywhere near where I want to be in London – this is getting painful!) we finally on our way!!!

Scenes from the flight. This is Lac du Bourget in the French Alps.

We think this is Savona, Italy – right near Genoa.

This one is super cool for me, as this is another island I really want to go to: Corsica. My great great grandfather, Serafin Mori was born here.

Coming in over the smaller island, Gozo. We will spend most of November there.

First view of the island of Malta. It was about this point that I burst into tears.

On the ground. I had to laugh at the Ryan Air plane sitting there.

Now, I would like to refer you back to the post where we arrived in the UK. Remember we scanned our passports, no one even talked to us and we did not get a passport stamp? And the fact that we spent that month in the UK, as they were considered a safe corridor country? Alrighty…so we walked up to passport control in Malta, handed over our passports, answered the question of where we had been in the last 14 days (UK) and watched the guards search for our stamp entering the UK…oh no no no. We explained that we didn’t have stamps and exactly how that happened. They kept responding “that’s not okay. That’s not what they are supposed to do.” We said we know!!! At this point they informed us we had to talk to the medical team. Ugh. Now we are being told we can come in but we have to quarantine for 14 days😖😭😨We politely took the information, tried not to cry and walked through the doors to baggage claim. About 5 steps in I realized that I had a photo of our boarding pass showing the date!!!!! We turned around, got the guard to let us back into passport control, showed the photo, they smiled and we were good to go!!!!! Lesson learned – I don’t care who I have to beat, we will always get a passport stamp. About this point when we thought we could breathe again, my phone rang. The Daughter was in the hospital. So here we are, in the middle of the Mediterranean, a dream come true, and all I could think of was how fast can I get home. After talking to the Daughter, taking a few deep breaths, we realized that there was nothing to be served by rushing home. She was getting the care she needed, her brother, grandparents and many friends were right there. She seems to be recovering well and I can feel like I acted like a mom of an adult, rather than a child. Even if she is my child!!! Welcome to freaking Malta.

I can definitely recommend the hotel we stayed in Valletta – Palazzo Rosario. Not only was it in a wonderful location, the room was huge and so very comfortable. Breakfast the next morning was outstanding too. Two thumbs up. We spent the afternoon wandering around Valletta and dissolving into pools of perspiration. It was so hot! We had come from Northern Ireland, which only hit mid 60s (15-16 degrees Celsius) a few days to 88 (31 Celcius) with high humidity. We were dying! But we soldiered on. We will get back to Valletta to do all the touristy things but for Saturday and Sunday we just enjoyed walking around and taking it in.

The Church of Barbara on the right and the Church of St Francis of Assisi on the right

A public water fountain from back in the days when you had to fetch your water

The Greek God Triton. Not sure if it’s because of the ocean or what, but Triton is a common theme

The Victory Bell for WW2. The Italians surrendered in the Grand Harbor of Malta.

Looking from the Upper Bakkara Gardens over towards the Three Cities (right: Isla or Senglea, upper part is Cospicua, left: Birgu or Citta Vittoriosa). We are staying in Kalkara, the arm you can just see to the left.

Jurassic World is mid-production. There’s also another scene that I will be curious if our taxi is in it 🤩

Monday morning (after getting moved into our house Sunday evening) we had rented a golf cart with a GPS tour of the three cities. It’s a really cool concept that was made a bit clunky by the proliferation of stone walls. So, now, not only have I driven on the left- again, I’ve driven a golf cart on the left! The rental location was in Birgu, so started our day with a walk to get there. Birgu was the original main city, prior to the construction of Valletta – I’ll delve into the history in another post. Needless to say, Birgu is an old town!

Super cute, well maintained medieval street.

The Grand Harbour has many impressive boats

Birgu, like other areas is hilly. Lots and lots of stairs!

During our drive we saw lots of interesting places that we might not have gotten to otherwise.

World War 2 remnant. This is supposedly the largest bore gun in the world. This photo is taken from quite a distance away!

Notre Dame gate, built 1675. It is adjacent to the military hospital where the majority of the wounded from the Battle of Gallipoli (WW1) were brought to,

Malta Film Commission. Troy, Gladiator and many, many other movies have been filmed here.

This is a fort (whose name I can’t recall) that was turned into apartments. Pretty cool use of an existing structure!

There are several forts of comparable size on the islands. They are all from about 1550, with additions done in the intervening years, up to and including WW2.

There is so much I can write about, but I think this post is long enough! We will definitely be getting out most weekends so I should have plenty to share!