Malta

Time for another retrospective travel blog. As it happens the journey I’m focusing on this time took place just a couple of weeks after the trip to Chernobyl that I talked about in my previous blog. Other than that there is little that connects the trips. One was to a desolate, abandoned and contaminated part of the former Soviet Union, the other to a sun-baked rock in the middle of the Mediterranean. My travel companion on the latter trip was Elaine. One of the reasons we decided to visit Malta was that you could fly there from Prestwick. The thought of a ten minute journey to the airport rather than the usual 45 minutes or more to Glasgow or Edinburgh didn’t exactly clinch the deal but it made it a whole lot more appealing. What else tempted us to the EU’s smallest nation? Thinking back I’m not overly sure. We had booked a week there so we must have hoped that something interesting awaited us. There was going to be sunshine of course which we like but it was never the sole factor in choosing where to go. It turned out that a week was just about right to discover a country with an interesting past.

First of all some basics. As mentioned, Malta is the smallest country of the European Union. It’s 122 Sq Miles of land is home to almost half a million people and welcomes 1.5 million visitors every year, or at least it did in less troubled times. As you might have gathered from those statistics, it is densely populated, especially in the southern half of the island. It’s situation in the middle of the Mediterranean, mid way between Italy and North Africa has made given it strategic value to its rulers over the centuries. It was a British colony from 1814 to 1964 and the effects of this can be seen to this day. They drive on the left and nearly everyone speaks fluent English, though that last point may be down to the fact that no one else in the world has the first clue as to what they are saying when they converse in Maltese, a curious mix of Italian and Arabic with a little English thrown in for good measure. Tourism accounts for 15% of the country’s GDP with the UK tourists topping the list of visitors to the island, well ahead of Italy and Germany. It’s mild in the winter, hot in the summer and if you don’t see any sunshine when you are there you will be particularly unlucky. The combination of sun, sea and sand would make it a perfect holiday destination were it not for the fact there isn’t much in the way of sand at all. Beaches tend to be rocky and not overly inviting but sun-worshipers can get their fix by the side of the pools of the numerous holiday hotels that sit around much of the island’s shoreline.

We, being rather contrary folk, plumped for a hotel slap bang in the middle of the island in a place called Attard. It was one of the few places on the island where you couldn’t actually see the sea. It made up for this breach of tourist hotel etiquette by being a rather nice hotel. The Corinthia Palace Hotel is part of the Corinthia group and we’d stayed at their property, the Budapest Grand, the previous year. They had another hotel in Malta (they are a Maltese company) by the sea but for whatever reason (probably the price) we plumped for this one which happened to be across the road from the Maltese Presidential Palace. The presidential motorcade went past our room on several occasions. The Presidential Palace has some nice, colourful gardens too which are free to walk around which made up for the lack of a nearby rocky beach. Whilst the hotel was a hit, its location did throw up some logistical problems but being the hard-nosed travellers (hard-nosed travellers that were staying at a five star hotel mind you) that we are, they were nothing we couldn’t overcome once we has access to the Maltese Bus timetable. A twenty minute ride on a slightly disappointingly modern bus got us to the main bus station in the nation’s capital Valletta where the rest of the island was your oyster with very reasonable fares. I say disappointingly – only a handful of years earlier the buses were all ancient British Bedfords that had been criss-crossing the island since the pre-independence days. It would have been nice to experience these but I suspect the novelty would have worn off by the end of the first day. Being a fairly swanky hotel it had its own taxi rank but we only took the rather nice black Mercedes twice, one of which was back to the airport at the end of the week, as not only are we hard-nosed travellers, we can be tight-arsed travellers too.

So, apart from sunshine and the presidential pansies, what else did Malta have to offer? Quite a bit to be fair. Valetta is a nice city to wander around. The main bit has the one shopping street and a number of narrow lanes and is a popular place for tourists to go. The harbour is scenic and there are old battlements and forts to discover. There was the Maltese equivalent of a National Trust property which attracted Elaine like a magnet. The Casa Rocco Piccola was indeed a grand place and well worth a visit if only to realise it’s not just the Brits who do grand houses. Malta played a heroic part in the second world war, resisting attacks from the Axis forces at a terrible human cost and there is much in Valletta, and indeed the rest of the island, to remember the conflict. Malta was awarded the George Cross for its resistance and contribution to the overall war effort. The War Rooms in Valletta tell the tale of the conflict and should be on every visitor’s to do list, if only to get an idea of the sacrifices made by the island’s population and a handful of British service personnel in the three years the island was basically under siege. Just across the harbour are the Three Cities. Vitoriossa, Senglea and Bromla are make up just some of the Valletta urban area and here operates Rolling Geeks, a rather unique self-driving tour of the area. You basically hire a golf buggy which is fitted with an ipad which acts as your guide and satnav system. It also keeps you in touch with the head office of the company who where you are tracked to make sure you are following the correct route. At the time we had an uneasy relationship with satellite navigation systems and by the end of it it was under further strain. On several occasions we got the call telling us we’d gone wrong, despite us following the ipad instructions to the letter, including one time when we were required to reverse out of someone’s garden. Eventually we managed to break it and had to wait for someone to come from head office and reboot it. Strange as it may seem it was a lot of fun and I can highly recommend it. The area is interesting, less touristy than other parts of Valletta and it is a way to sightsee that you are not likely to find elsewhere.

We decided to discover the south of the island on the Sunday morning. We were told that there was an open-air market in Marsaxlokk, a twenty five ride in the aforementioned Mercedes tax away. It is the only one on the island apparently. Being Brits abroad, we felt it was our duty to visit it which is odd as open-air markets across the entire continent of Europe are full of crap goods and interesting looking food displayed in less than sanitary conditions. As we weren’t in the market for food anyway it was a rather pointless visit for us. The market being a rarity in Malta, it was absolutely rammed with British tourists getting their holiday market fix. It seemed particularly popular with Geordies for some reason. Maybe you can’t get this quality of tat in Newcastle? We quickly decided that we should leave and walked the mile or so around a headland to Brizebbuga. This was a small town situated on Pretty Bay, an area of coastline that was presumably named before they built Malta’s premier container port on the other side. It was, however, nice to find a genuine Maltese town with a beach that only the locals use. Nearby were the caves of Ghar Dalam. I like a good cave system. I’ve spent many a happy subterranean hour wandering round limestone caverns in a number of countries of the world. Naturally, we had to try the Ghar Dalam cave out. I have to say it will not be going in my list of top ten caves of the world as you can only enter the first fifty yards or so but the accompanying museum and it’s collection of dwarf elephant and hippopotamus bones is testament to the prehistoric occupancy of the caves by the hunter gatherers of over 7000 years ago. Ghar Dalam is worth a visit if you are passing but I wouldn’t plan a trip to the island based solely it.

One of the ways to get to Ghar Dalam from the tourist areas of the island is to take the open top bus tour. It does our hard-nosed traveller credentials no good whatsoever to say that we did just that one day. There are two to choose from, north and south. Having seen some of the south already we plumped for the north. It turned out to be a reasonable way to see a bit of the island we may have missed but one of the things that appeals about this type of tour is its hop on and hop off potential. With a circuit of the north of the island taking three hours we were limited in the amount of hopping on and off we could do before boarding the last bus of the day that could get us back to the hotel, which thanks to its location next to the Presidential Palace was on the route of the tour. We did manage a stop in the town of Mosta, a busy place which contained the Mosta Rotunda, an impressively domed church. That dome was once the third largest unsupported dome in the world, something the Maltese are quite proud of, but nearly came to grief in 1942 when a Luftwaffe bomb pierced it, landed on the floor of the church and failed to explode, much to the relief of the three hundred locals gathered there for evening mass. Being a Catholic Church this was naturally elevated to the status of a miracle and they have a replica of said ordnance on display in what must be a bit of a first for a place of worship. The rest of the bus trip offered little in the way of interesting stops but it did give us a brief look at the less well populated part of the island. There’s not much of Malta that isn’t urbanised to some degree but what little agriculture they have takes place in the north and west of the island.

Back on a conventional bus we made the short journey to Mdina, the Silent City. Situated in the centre of the island, Mdina is a fortified city that was the ancient capital of Malta. Motor vehicles are banned within its walls, hence the nickname the Silent City, and the place is much the better for it. It is popular with tourists who fancy a day away from the seaside so there are the usual tourist shops but overall it is quite a lovely place to wander around. Norman and Baroque architecture dominates the place (I didn’t know that, I had to look it up) and the grand houses and palaces now serve as private residences and the occasional convent or other religious building. I spent a most pleasant hour or so taking photographs of knockers. Door knockers before you ask. They really are quite proud of their knockers in Mdina. You could even see a splendid pair of knockers at the convent. On the way back from Mdina, we naturally had to pop in to the Malta Aviation Museum. Situated on the site of a former RAF airfield, Ta Qali, the one the Luftwaffe were trying to bomb when they punctured the dome of the Mosta Rotunda, this museum isn’t particularly big but packs in a fair bit of stuff in telling the 100 year history of Maltese aviation. Avgeeks and military history buffs should go there and give it some support.

Along with Mdina, there is one trip away from your tourist hotel that most visitors will endeavour to take. The Republic of Malta is actually made up of three inhabited islands. Malta itself is the biggest of course but to the north lies Gozo, a 25 minute ferry trip away. A fifth the size of the island of Malta, it is home to around 30,000 of the nearly half a million residents of the Republic. Between these two islands lies the tiny island of Comino which, according to Wiki, has a permanent population of three. Whilst Gozo came highly recommended, there was the challenge of getting there to overcome. To retain our hard-nosed travellers credentials what we should have done was get the bus into Valletta, another bus to Kirkewwa at the northern tip of Malta, take the ferry to Mgaar on Gozo and then hire bikes to discover just what this island had to offer. What actually happened was we booked ourselves on a tourist trip which meant we were picked up at the hotel, taken to the jetty in Valletta Harbour, plonked on a boat with a load of other tourists, given wine and beer served in thimbles, and subject to the sort of music that one normally hears in the local discotheque. After about twenty thimbles of beer I stopped regretting the decision to entrust our Gozo travel plans to Supreme Cruises and started to enjoy the trip up the East coast of Malta to Gozo. In Gozo a tour bus awaited us and whisked us off to the Azure Window, an impressive natural arch as you will see by the photograph. What you will not be able to do is go there and see it for yourself. Less than a year after we got the inevitable selfie, the arch collapsed in a winter storm and all traces of the pillar and top of the arch lie below the waves. According to Google Maps the area is now called the Blue Hole, a name that is less likely to attract the day tripper, but it remains a mecca for divers who are the only people who now get to see the rocks that used to be the Azure Window. The bus then took us to Victoria, Gozo’s largest town, for an hour’s wander and a spot of lunch. After that it was back to the harbour and on to the boat for a trip to Comino. There isn’t much on Comino. The island wraps around a bay called the Blue Lagoon which is very pretty when no one else is there. Unfortunately, many tourist cruises stop there for a couple of hours on the way back to Valletta from Gozo and ours was no exception. What nearly everyone does is head to the Blue Lagoon and pay quite a lot of Euros to hire a deck chair and parasol before finding a square foot of beach to sit on. A line of mobile vendors selling everything from burgers to bucket and spades tend to their needs before it is time to return to the boat. You can get away from this by going for a walk in the hot sunshine but there isn’t much to see other than a Blue Lagoon turned pink by hundreds of sweaty torsos crammed on to a rare stretch of sand. We found a rock to sit on in the shadow of a burger van. It was a long two hours. We are in no hurry to visit Comino again. One plus of this tour was I had a chance to go for a speedboat ride. It was an optional extra but was good fun even if the force in which the boat pancaked onto the sea from time to time quite possibly compressed my spine by a couple of inches. The overall verdict of the Gozo trip was that we should have probably stuck with the idea of getting the public bus, the ferry and hiring bikes but at least we can say we have seen the Azure Window which most of you reading this never will.

And that was pretty much our week in Malta. We did a bit of the sunseeker stuff too but there is only so much sitting round the pool we can take. I could also mention the food but that tended to be pizza/pasta from a place near the hotel though one day we did find what was supposed to be a traditional Maltese restaurant. I had a rabbit casserole. The Maltese like a bit of rabbit. I can’t say I did, especially when presented with the bunny’s ribcage. So, what was the verdict? We had a very pleasant week in Malta but it isn’t a place we are desperate to go back to. Whilst the weather was great it isn’t the prettiest of islands. For a start it is densely populated but even the more rural areas aren’t particularly scenic. The brief glimpse of Gozo we had suggested it was a nicer looking place than its big neighbour. Having said that there are interesting things to see, some nice towns to wander around and it’s all within easy reach no matter where you are staying. The costal fringes are, of course, very touristy but as a tourist yourself you can hardly complain about this. If sunbathing during the day and partying at night is your thing then it will serve you just as well as other Mediterranean islands, the lack of sandy beaches aside, and it’s colonial past means that it is particularly suited to a British clientele. If you like history it is worth a visit too. The island has passed through numerous rulers including the Knights Hospitaller, assorted Greeks and Turks before first the French and then the British took control. So yes, it is a place I’d recommend you go and visit, if just the once. Assuming of course we will be allowed to visit anywhere in the future.