Malta

Malta is a country I’ve been wanting to go to for a long time. I’m not sure when and why Malta became a cool destination spot in my mind but thanks (or no thanks) to the new facebook timeline feature I stumbled across a post from 2007 mentioning how I wanted to go to Malta. It just seemed so cool, an island country in between Europe and Africa. And it was cool. Malta is the main island, but there are actually two others, Gozo (smaller, inhabitants) and Comino (uninhabited). Although Malta is a popular summer destination because of the beaches and surfing and scuba-diving schools, it was also pretty nice in the winter. I was originally going to go alone, but my friend Armando decided to join me, and that was actually a lot more fun because I had already gotten tired of solo traveling in Budapest. We got cheap Ryanair tickets and landed in Malta on the afternoon of January 3rd. The airport is in Luqa and we were staying in a hostel in St Julian’s which is supposed to be the cool party and restaurant town. By the time we took the bus from the airport, got dropped off in the center, found a snack (pastizzis- more on those later), and walked up a massive hill to our hostel, I had a little note waiting for me which made us wonder if we were the only ones staying in the hostel. That actually wasn’t the case, there were a few other people. My ETA had been way off so he had left, so we called him and while we waited for him to come back and let us in the hostel, we bought fruit from a random fruit vendor in this residential-looking neighborhood.

I had written down all the things I wanted to do while in Malta. My biggest interests were the ruins they have all over the island, some of them dating back 7,000 years. What I didn’t think to look up was whether we would have to book ahead to see them. Sadly for the main attraction, the Hypogeum in Paola, that was the case. They only allow 80 visitors per day and needless to say we didn’t make it. The Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni is the only known prehistoric underground temple in the world, so I’m sure it would’ve been pretty awesome to see. We did make it to a couple of other cool ruins though. Prior to arriving I wasn’t really sure how we’d get around the island. I looked into public transportation and buses seemed to be the way to go. What I didn’t know was that they take for-absolute-ever to get from one end of the island to the other. No matter what the distance each bus took around 45 min to an hour to get between towns. My original idea of visiting two towns a day, one in the morning and one in the evening was a total fail. Despite missing out on a few things I wanted to see we ended up making it work and took some amazing pictures in different towns around the island. That first day we didn’t do much, just explored St. Julian’s a little, ate, and slept.

The following morning we took a bus to Valletta, the capital, and from there took another bus to Rabat. We explored Mdina, the walled city next to Rabat, and went to the disturbing Dungeon Museum and took pictures by the wall at the edge of the city where you could see all the way across the island to the water. We were being silly and I attempted to climb a tree, which didn’t work out so well, and Armando was walking along high walls where the other side looked like a former mote, so we got some interesting comments from Italian tourists. Armando got called crazy multiple times, “Ma, sei matto! Scendi!”.  Malta was filled with Italian tourists. Many Maltese spoke Italian as well. Most spoke at least basic English, which is one of the languages of Malta, and they spoke Maltese, their native language, which is Semitic but to me looked about half in Italian. Every sign was filled with what looked to me like gibberish and then every other word looked like Italian, it was kind of mind-boggling. In Rabat we explored Rabat and St. Paul’s Catacombs. We decided not to go in St. Agatha’s Catacombs because we figured it was more of the same and we wanted to save money. The catacombs were very cool. It was a huge labyrinth cave of holes that used to have bodies, like coffins. There were many tiny ones that the audio-guide said were for children. It was creepy but very interesting. I also liked that the audio-guides were free. Many things were like that in Malta, either way cheaper than in Europe or free of charge. For example the all-day bus pass was 2.60 euros. The public bathrooms were free and the cleanest I’ve ever seen and always had a supply of toilet paper, which is more than I can say of any bathroom in Spain (my school doesn’t even have toilet paper in the bathrooms for the kids).  After seeing Mdina and Rabat we had wanted to continue on to another city but the sun set so early, around 5pm, that we didn’t think we’d have time. Also, everything closed around 5pm so you couldn’t see any sites or museums after then anyway. We decided to check out the Dingli cliffs which I had read about. It ended up being probably the most amazing thing we saw the whole trip. We arrived at the Dingli cliffs an hour or so before sunset and the light was really beautiful. There was a view out over the water and we took tons of pictures. Then we ambled into the small village nearby and bought a bottle of wine at a butcher shop which was the only store we found open. The really nice man there sent one of his workers around the corner to get a bottle opener for us and then he leant us two real glass glasses to use even though we said we were walking back to the cliffs to watch the sunset. He didn’t mind, so we took our open bottle and the glasses and went back to the cliffs and sat freezing on a rock watching the beautiful sunset. After returning the glasses we took the bus back to Valletta and then on to St. Julian’s.

The next day, I really wanted to check out the Mnajdra and Hagar Qim Temples but because of the ridiculously slow buses we didn’t end up making it until the last day. The second day we went to a fishing village called Marsaxlokk which was a complete waste of time in my opinion. It was super touristy, the fish wasn’t even that great, and it didn’t have much else besides over-priced restaurants and a market with over-priced souvenirs. However we took some pretty pictures of the colorful boats, and ate some fresh fish, but ended up spending so much time there that we decided to head back and do Valletta tourism in the afternoon. The capital was set up in a very odd way. I knew it was a walled city but I didn’t realize that it was full of hills. Walking around the small city was all up and down enormous hills, sometimes with stairs built into the streets and sometimes without. We skipped out on the majority of the expensive museums but we did check out John’s Co-Cathedral, which had amazing marble-work in the floors. The audio-guides there were also free but so confusing that I really didn’t know which paintings they were talking about most of the time. That cathedral has some famous works of Italian painters though so I pretended like I knew what was going on. Afterwards we went to a park with a view of the “Three Cities” which are across the bay from Valletta. They are Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua. Once it got dark we caught the bus from Valletta back to St. Julian’s.

Another side note about Malta. They have these amazing pastries filled with ricotta cheese and sometimes other things as well (ham and cheese, curry chicken, or peas) that are called Pastizzi. They cost less than a euro and ended up being our breakfast and lunch almost every day. We met up with an Australian Maltese guy one night through couchsurfing, even though we weren’t staying with him. Turns out he’s the rugby coach of the Maltese team. He and his Australian buddy took us out for drinks one night and we learned a valuable bit of inside knowledge which is that Pastizzi is also a slang term for a woman’s genitalia. Apparently it’s based on the shape of the pastry. Sadly I didn’t think to take any pictures of the delicious pastries as I ate them but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what they looked like. Obviously we found that beyond entertaining.

Our last day in Malta we crossed the island and went to the Mnajdra and Hagar Qim Temples in Qrendi. The weather was very fickle while we were there- it apparently rains only 5-10 days a year in Malta, however it rained while we were there off and on and was quite cold at night. We wanted to see the Blue Grotto as well, which I assume is something like Capri’s Blue Grotto but the wind was insane. In a very unsafe way, the area by the Blue Grotto was not blocked off, nor were any Maltese anywhere near it, so Armando and I and a few other brave tourists walked down near the edge of the water and took pictures of the waves crashing against the shore and the crazy light between the clouds before a storm. This was after we went to the temples, which luckily we made it through despite the insane wind. The temples are part of a complex of megalithic temples dating back to around 3200 BC. They were essentially giant pieces of stone, much like what I’d imagine Stonehenge to be like, placed in semi-circles, fitting so tightly that you wonder how they shaped and moved these giant blocks of rock so many years ago. I was satisfied with my trip after seeing the temples. We even tried to sneak a peak at one other temple in Paola, the Tarxien, but it had closed 10 minutes before we got there and they refused to let us in. So in our funny way, we took joke pictures peaking in and “attempting” to jump the fence.

That about sums up my trip to Malta. There are probably other fun facts I’m not thinking of, so maybe I’ll update this post later. I’d love to go back when it’s warm and check out some of the beautiful beaches, explore the rest of the island and the other two and maybe learn how to surf.