One Week in Malta, with Dad

Ear­li­er this month, my dad and I spent a week in Mal­ta. This one does­n’t have an elab­o­rate set­up sto­ry. He’s been want­i­ng to fly to some­where on the Mediter­ranean for a while, my mom did­n’t feel like trav­el­ling, and he did­n’t want to go alone. So I was invit­ed. Below are my pho­tos of the trip.

Two flights and our first night

We flew out of Toron­to with Air Cana­da on the evening of Octo­ber 8th. The flight was lousy because crew could­n’t dim the cab­in lights all night due to a “tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty”; no eye masks were offered to the plebes fly­ing econ­o­my class. We land­ed at Lon­don’s Heathrow the fol­low­ing morn­ing, and then hopped onto a KM Mal­ta Air­lines that took us to Mal­ta Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. We emerged from cus­toms around 16:00 and were at our AirBnB apart­ment on Sliema’s water­front by 16:30.

Day 1: Valletta

Despite our apartment’s over­ly hard mat­tress­es, I slept like a log after get­ting no sleep on either flight. I woke ear­ly to the sound of traf­fic and splash­ing. The apart­ment had a panoram­ic bal­cony over­look­ing Sliema’s water­front, Marsamx­ett Har­bour, Manoel Island and Val­let­ta. Unbe­knownst to me, there had been a storm that night, and the water­front road, Ix-Xatt, was flood­ed with rain­wa­ter spilling into the har­bour. Cars, scoot­ers and bus­es were dri­ving through almost 20 cm of water. Then, as I wait­ed for my stove­top pot to boil so I could make some instant cof­fee, the clouds cleared and the sun emerged.

We made it to the Sliema Fer­ries ter­mi­nal late in the morn­ing. Despite the brief trip across the har­bour, the fer­ry only departs every 30 min­utes. This is where we encoun­tered a frus­trat­ing trait of the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Euro­pean tourists vis­it­ing Mal­ta: no mat­ter what coun­try they were from, they had a near-uni­ver­sal dis­re­gard for queu­ing. We were among the first to arrive for the next cross­ing, but as the crowd behind us grew, more and more ass­holes (indi­vid­u­als, cou­ples, fam­i­lies, you name it) non­cha­lant­ly walked past us and filled any gap large enough to stand in.

We spent the rest of the day wan­der­ing around Val­let­ta, head­ing clock­wise along the perime­ter wall from the Val­let­ta Fer­ry Ser­vices land­ing to just shy of Low­er Bar­rak­ka, where we turned into the inte­ri­or. There, we bought two small cans of refresh­ing Cisk beer at a cor­ner store. (I also grabbed a Kin­nie Zero, which I loved and kept buy­ing all week!) The res­i­den­tial and touristy parts of Val­let­ta looked much more put togeth­er in per­son than in the Sep­tem­ber 2016 Google Street View images I’d seen: most of the doors, tra­di­tion­al cov­ered bal­conies and oth­er accents had fresh, vibrant coats of paint. The shops, restau­rants, cafés and bars lin­ing the very touristy stretch­es of Repub­lic Street and Mer­chants Street seemed inter­change­able with those of any oth­er Euro­pean hotspot, like Barcelona, Lis­bon or Rome. Even so, Val­let­ta feels unique. Near­ly every struc­ture is built almost entire­ly from hon­ey-coloured Glo­bige­ri­na lime­stone, cre­at­ing a strong visu­al cohe­sion punc­tu­at­ed by vibrant pops of colour from the bal­conies and doors.

At one point, we entered the Upper Bar­rak­ka Gar­dens just min­utes before 16:00, when the Salut­ing Bat­tery is sup­posed to fire its sec­ond dai­ly round. Crowds had already swarmed the ter­races for a view. Then I over­heard a guide tell her tour group the can­nons wouldn’t be fir­ing, and sure enough, at the stroke of 16:00, noth­ing hap­pened. I pri­vate­ly won­dered how long peo­ple would wait for a salute that would nev­er come before giv­ing up. The answer was about eight min­utes.

Even­tu­al­ly, we mean­dered back to the fer­ry to Sliema, where we got anoth­er taste of Malta’s free-for-all approach to queu­ing. In short, the offi­cial fer­ry didn’t arrive. Instead, a large tour boat let off pas­sen­gers at an adja­cent spot, def­i­nite­ly not where the mas­sive crowd had formed. Sud­den­ly, every­one from ahead of and behind us rushed toward that boat. Dad, I and about a dozen oth­ers made a bee­line for the gang­plank, climb­ing over the short fence in our way. Then it was a tight squeeze of bod­ies as over a hun­dred peo­ple vied for the nar­row, one-per­son plank. Dad made it onto the boat about a dozen bod­ies ahead of me, and they stopped board­ing just after I crossed, even though the boat was less than half full. A minute lat­er, they resumed. That’s when I fig­ured out why there’s a 30-minute round trip for a cross­ing that takes less than five. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Day 2: Two harbour cruise and Three Cities

We start­ed our sec­ond day with a two-har­bours cruise, fol­lowed by an after­noon in the so-called Three Cities (Bir­gu, Sen­glea and Cospicua). The har­bour tour was nice, but Dad got sea­sick on the return trip from the Grand Har­bour to Marsamx­ett Har­bour in Sliema, which briefly took us out into the open, heav­ing Mediter­ranean. We took a break at our apart­ment, then grabbed a Bolt to the Bir­gu Water­front. The fer­ry was an option, but it was nei­ther faster nor cheap­er, and after the pre­vi­ous day’s appalling expe­ri­ence, we had sworn off Malta’s fer­ries for the rest of the trip.

Bir­gu is small and scenic. We start­ed by walk­ing north­west along a mari­na filled with plea­sure boats and yachts that grew larg­er and larg­er. Beyond those, we climbed some ancient steps and emerged onto a rocky beach beneath a sen­try box of Fort St Ange­lo, where about a dozen sparse­ly spaced peo­ple were sun­bathing. Fur­ther along, I found a large swasti­ka pre­cise­ly carved into the flat rock. Very strange, and like­ly not from this cen­tu­ry. While look­ing around, I noticed it was near­ing 16:00, and we had a per­fect view of Upper Bar­rak­ka and the Salut­ing Bat­tery across the Grand Har­bour. A crowd had gath­ered on the ter­race, await­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al can­non fire. But like the day before, 16:00 came and went, and no can­nons were fired. We didn’t stick around long enough to watch the crowd dis­perse.

We climbed up to the entrance of Fort St Ange­lo but didn’t go past the tick­et gates. The shal­low steps lead­ing up to the main entrance were a prime exam­ple of the prob­lem with Malta’s pedes­tri­an paving: the smooth­ly pol­ished stone is dan­ger­ous­ly slip­pery, and it’s ubiq­ui­tous across the islands. (I had a flash­back to slip­ping while hik­ing the La Cloche Sil­hou­ette Trail with Porthos last year!)

Most of Birgu’s struc­tures are built from the same lime­stone as Valletta’s, giv­ing the build­ings and streets a pleas­ant har­mo­ny. All of the wide-angle pho­tos from this day and the pre­vi­ous one were shot hand­held with my Canon TS‑E 17mm f/4L, and I think it did a great job of cap­tur­ing the atmos­phere.

The sun was get­ting quite low as we approached the Senglea–Cospicua Foot­bridge, and I want­ed to reach the La Guardi­o­la sen­try box before it set. We walked along the Sen­glea water­front, stop­ping briefly for pic­tures, until we reached the city’s tip and climbed sev­er­al flights of stairs to the park above. I expect­ed this icon­ic spot to draw more sight­seers than we saw walk­ing through Gard­jo­la Gar­dens, so, hap­pi­ly, I man­aged a few deep sun­set shots of the sen­try box with­out any strangers in the frame.

We end­ed the day by walk­ing south through Sen­glea to the square with the Madon­na stat­ue in Cospicua. There, we ate some strange “veg­e­tar­i­an” pas­tizzi from a cor­ner pas­tizze­ria and ordered a taxi back to Sliema.

Day 3: Boat trip to Gozo and Blue Lagoon

We left the apart­ment extra ear­ly on the third day to catch a 10:30 boat trip to Gozo. The jour­ney there last­ed about one-and-a-half hours, with the boat going a steady 22 km/h at sea. At times, the waves were rocky, which gave us a mild roller­coast­er expe­ri­ence and sort­ed pas­sen­gers into those with and with­out a sense of bal­ance. Per­son­al­ly, I enjoyed surf­ing the waves upon the deck, both seat­ed and stand­ing. The boat, oper­at­ed by Luz­zu, had a pre-record­ed guide that would point out var­i­ous land­marks along the coast. Peo­ple were espe­cial­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by the grot­tos dot­ting the Mal­tese cliffs.

Upon arrival at the Mgarr har­bour, we were shep­hard­ed onto a dou­ble-deck­er tour bus and dri­ven to Vic­to­ria. There, we had two hours to explore Cit­tadel­la, the citadel. Prac­ti­cal­ly every sur­face of Cit­tadel­la is built from the same hon­eyed lime­stone as Val­let­ta. From on top its walls and bas­tions, we enjoyed a panoram­ic view of the Gozo island land­scape. Upon fur­ther reflec­tion, it should­n’t come as sur­prise that a defen­sive struc­ture would occu­py a strate­gi­cal­ly advan­ta­geous posi­tion with excel­lent vis­i­bil­i­ty over the island.

After con­clud­ing our patrol of the walls, we left the citadel, and ate a cou­ple of sad slices of over­priced piz­za on a bench in Inde­pen­dence Square in Vic­to­ria. We enjoyed a cou­ple quick beers at a dif­fer­ent loca­tion and then hopped on the bus and dropped off at the har­bour as our boat arrived.

The tour boat took us to the “world famous” Blue Lagoon at Comi­no Island. Per­son­al­ly, I feel that Mal­ta’s tour indus­try has over­hyped the Blue Lagoon by a laugh­able mar­gin. It’s an alright nat­ur­al loca­tion crawl­ing with hordes of tourists, each elbow­ing the next for every square meter of hard rock to drop their tow­el and stand waist deep in the water. Or maybe they’ll snorkel. There are sparse ameni­ties and no change rooms, but plen­ty of hawk­ers sell­ing drinks and some time on a sunbed. It’s awful and I hat­ed it, and the boats unload tourists in droves. This is the most regret­table part of the trip.

Day 4: South Malta, Marsaxlokk, Blue Grotto, and old ruins

Day 5: North Malta, Mdina, Golden Bay, and Manoel Island

Day 6: Sliema Promenade, St Julians,