Malta - Friday 18th Nov

We knew November would mean that London would start getting cold and dark so we thought we would treat ourselves to a few days in the sunshine, and off peak prices meant we picked Malta.

We left Thursday evening after work from Heathrow for a nice change and flew Air Malta, which was also a nice change as we got a meal and everything! Malta is actually quite far away (over 3 hours) so we didn't land until bout half midnight. And it was raining. Never fear, we had rented a car. So we trotted off to the Avis desk and picked up the keys, Lou then sensibly asked if they had any GPS's and she got a funny look and the man said "no I don't have any GPS's!" like it was the most stupid question in the world. He then produced a map, which had all the main towns on it, with no street names or distances. Handy.

So we took off, Lou navigating, Ham trying to remember how to drive a manual and not confuse the windscreen wipers with the indicator. We eventually found our little town relatively easy to be honest. The hard part was trying to find our actual hotel. Google maps are good, but not when the roads don't have any names…anyway long story but we got there at about 3am. Checked in and slept.

Friday
We were allowed a sleep in so we hit the free breakfast about 9am and sampled the local delicacies. It wasn't too bad; they had a chef on hand making omelettes for people, a waffle iron that was super exciting and these amazing baked apples with cinnamon dish (which made you feel really sick when you ate too much of it). Hamish also started his habit of eating at least 4 of the pork sausages on offer every day.

Our plan for today was to check out the capital city of Malta – Valletta. But first a little about Malta itself. Malta covers just over 316 km2 (122 sq mi) in land area, making it one of the world's smallest microstates. In 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris, Malta officially became a part of the British Empire and was used as a shipping way station and fleet headquarters. Malta's position halfway between the Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal proved to be its main asset during these years and it was considered an important stop on the way to India.
 
Valetta was really pretty, very Mediterranean with lots of narrow, cobbled streets and old churches everywhere. Gorgeous with the Christmas decorations. We visited the St John's Co-Cathedral, which was stunning, gold everywhere! And they had all these crazy floor tiles with skulls and crossbones, which Hamish really liked. Next we headed down to the water to Fort Saint Elmo, which stands on the seaward shore of the Sciberras Peninsula, dividing Marsamxett Harbour from the Grand Harbour. It’s a pretty fantastic view looking over to the old fortified walls and the sailing boats. It was so windy! We wandered along the coastline to the World War 2 memorial and soaked in the sun. This was also a cruise ship port so we checked out the boats as well.

 

Local dish - rabbit!

We were at the critical hunger stage by this point but we found that many places weren’t open as it was no peak tourist season, eventually we found some pasty type things and some fruit which were ok but the real highlight was the pastitsi that we had on the way back to the car. Lou’s Maltese friend from work had told her about these, they are amazing filo pastry things with ricotta cheese, and at 30 cents, a bargain.

We thought we would drive round to another town called St. Julian's, this was meant to be the party side of town where the majority of the hotels and bars are. But because of this it made it look like any other seaside strip, meaning not very interesting. We tried in vain to get a park, and its fair to say this may have caused some tension for the Bandits (why is it always parking that causes issues?!) So we made the call to cut our losses and try and navigate our way home.

Our hotel room had its own little kitchen as well as a supermarket across the road so Lou cooked up an amazing home made meal with Maltese wine and olives to start which were delicious. Early to bed to recover.

Highlights: The view back onto Birgu with the fortresses and the sparkling blue sea and the pastitsi's!!!
Lowlight: The parking…and Maltese drivers in general, we didn't see one person use their indicator.
Interesting Fact #1: Three times more tourists visit than there are residents.
Interesting Fact #2: Malta has its own national soft drink called ‘Kinnie’. It tastes like Dr. Pepper with the aftertaste of Jiff. Not recommended.