Valletta, Malta

Yesterday, Tuesday, April 24, we arrived in Valletta, Malta, for a 1 1/2-day visit.  The island of Malta, shaped by countless civilizations, has long been a crossroads of Mediterranean trade and culture.  Valletta itself, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was built by the Knights of St. John and is one of Europe's first cities planned and constructed from scratch, cut from the island's honey-colored limestone.

Malta's largest island is only 17 miles long and 9 miles wide.  It has a population of 500,000, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world:  1,000 people per square kilometer.  According to our guide, the economy is thriving and unemployment is under 3%.  Principal economic drivers are tourism, textile factories, gaming, micro-electronics and the production of chemical products.  There are two official languages:  Maltese and English.  Maltese is a mix of Arabic, Italian and French.

When we pulled back the curtains we realized we were docked in an incredibly beautiful place.  I took some photos from our veranda but also from other deck areas around the ship in order to take in as much of the port area as was visible from our ship.  We learned only later that there was much more to the harbor than what we could see from our docked position.

      

The gangway was ready, as were the tour buses.

  

Janis and I signed up for a local tour titled "Historic Valletta."  We started out by bus but were on it only for maybe 5 minutes while the bus made its way up a steep street to a much higher elevation.  At that point this became a much-preferred walking tour.  The first things we noticed were these monuments.  The first two are in the middle of a roundabout and the third, a WWII monument, is off to the side, overlooking the part of the harbor we couldn't see from the ship.

                                   

We began our walk into the old city, stopping to take in these amazing views of the harbor.  Our ship is shown in the first photo.  There were two other cruise ships in port, the German ship I've mentioned in previous blogs and a Norwegian-line ship (frames 4 & 5).  You can also see a pretty good size yacht in frame 3.

                                       

There's a double elevator that runs from the street running alongside the port to the much higher elevation at which sits much of the old city.

  

We soon arrived at a beautiful plaza the anchors of which are an imposing building that once served as a palace, another that houses Malta's stock exchange and some whimsical sculpture pieces.

      

These white sculpture pieces appear throughout the old city and are based on various proverbs.  Here are some others.  Can you match them to well-known proverbs?  The first is of a donkey with wings.  As our guide said to illustrate the proverb applicable to this piece, "I'll win the lottery when donkeys fly."  The last is "In one ear and out the other."

    

From the square we walked past horse and carriage, through a beautiful gated arch and into a gorgeous park filled with geraniums.  Inside this area are other arches looking out to sea.

                        

The views from the outside perimeter of this area are amazing.  They include a platform containing several cannon looking across to the other side of one part of the harbor.

        

Next, we walked away from this area and in the direction of Valletta's main street.  On our way there we passed several impressive buildings as well as other sculpture pieces and a collection of bicycles that were probably available for rent.  We were also struck by the beautiful materials that were used as road pavers.

                          
                                  

We then turned onto the main drag, Republic Street, which was teeming with people.

We passed the Archeological Museum and the Palace, which Janis visited later to see an exhibit of Picasso's drawings and paintings by Miro, then the courthouse and some other government buildings,

               
                                              

and eventually broke for lunch at this outdoor cafe.  By this time the tour had ended, we were on our own and I had gotten a haircut.

  

After lunch, we toured St. John's Co-Cathedral that for over 200 years was the conventual church of the order of the Knights of St. John.  The Grand Masters and Knights donated gifts of high artistic value and made enormous contributions to enrich it with the best works of art by the leading artists available to them.  As a result, it is a magnificent expression of the High Baroque era.  Absolutely breathtaking in its every detail.

          
      

Inside the cathedral are a number of original paintings by Caravaggio.  Here are just two of them, the latter being the famous depiction of the beheading of St. John the Baptist.

  

In the evening, we joined three other couples for dinner out.  We walked to the restaurant along the shoreline, passing centuries-old buildings, some with weathered doors like these.

                                                                    

After dinner, we called it a night knowing that we would be waking up to the same beautiful views this morning.  After breakfast, I went back into town to do some errands, while Janis stayed on the ship and went to the gym.  A huge Italian cruise ship had docked very early in the morning and the streets were mobbed with hundreds of Italian men, women and children everywhere.

We had an 11:30 a.m. all aboard, so not a whole lot of time left to enjoy Malta.  The sailaway was beautiful.

              

Once we passed through the narrow entrance to the harbor, we were able to see more modern areas of the island that included some hi-rises.

      

And, believe it or not, another cruise ship was just arriving.

We loved our visit to Malta.  This is definitely one of those places where we could see ourselves spending several days.  We're now at sea on our way to Cagliari, Sardinia, with a scheduled arrival tomorrow morning at 7:30.  Our next blog will be about our visit there.