The North Tour of Malta

Every tour seems to go through Valletta for an official start, but we boarded across the street from our place and set out toward Valletta. We opted to sit in the open-top seating of a double-decker bus. Within seconds of starting out, I wondered why I had bothered to blow dry and flat iron my hair. My efforts were in vain. So I put on my Tilley hat. Well, ultimately that made it worse, but who cares?

Here are some scenes along the way:

St Julian's - the happening place that seems to be all hotels and shops

Sliema - very crowded and almost adjacent to Valletta

Triton fountain at the entrance to Valletta

Then we began our walking in earnest. Earnestly and honestly, my left foot was already complaining but I waited a while before complaining aloud. I'm taking measures to reduce the plantar fasciitis which arrived approximately the moment I deplaned in Malta. Ah well, these things are sent to try us. And they do.

Not to be deterred I am happy to brag that I took 13,000+ steps today. I'm currently employing ice on my left heel and it seems to help a bit.

But I digress, so best to get on back on track. This sign seems to exemplify the spirit of the Maltese, but we didn't stop to see if was all true.

And what follows are some random photos taken in Valletta as we walked uphill (as little as possible) and downhill (whenever we could). 

The balconies for which Malta is famous

We bypassed this street hoping (in vain) to find a flat area

At the edge of the Grand Harbour
I have no idea what those little buildings are, nor what those
wall paintings of boats are about

We wanted to be on street level with those buildings at the top because we'd chosen downhill routes
And, fortunately, we found the elevator that made it possible, with hardly a puff or pant. Yay!

,

We rewarded ourselves with Pastizzi and Capuccinos, but couldn't wait for the drinks to arrive before taste-testing the specialty pastry of Malta. We will be doing comparison tasting most days, in different areas as we travel around. I will try to avoid using my hat and sitting on top of a windy bus because it resulted in a nasty case of hat head.

St Mary's church in Mosta
During WWII a bomb fell through the dome during a Mass but
it didn't explode and nobody was injured. 

Yes, we climbed the 74 steps to have this view of the interior
I took a vertical panoramic shot to get the dome in the picture

The next stop was at Mdina/Rabat but since we'll be spending at least one day there in about a week, we didn't hop off our bus. This is not tourist season and it was very busy. I can't imagine how packed it must be in the summer. Our weather today was perfect for touring - I think it got up to 20C and it was sunny almost all the time.

When we left Valletta for the ongoing tour, we sat downstairs because the seats up top were fully occupied and thus we avoided the wind. The damage to my hair was beyond redemption by then anyway. We had an audioguide to use on the bus as some descriptions (of where we were and what the sights were), was available in many languages. After asking a fellow tourist, I tuned in to Channel 2 for the narrative in English. My Maltese stretches to "Bongu" and "Grazzi" and I'm still waiting to hear someone say "Mela" which they say corresponds, more or less, to how and when we use "Eh" in Canada.

Lunch was enjoyed in MGarr but the ancient temples (I think that's what's nearby) were nowhere to be glimpsed, so we hopped on the next bus. That's a lie. At this point, hopping was not possible. Staggering was closer to what I could do. But we decided that instead of dessert with lunch, we'd postpone that until we hopped off at Golden Beach. I waved to the guys as they descended to the beach and instead, I found us a table on the terrace overlooking the beach. When they returned we all enjoyed local favourites – John had a Kinnie, I had a Farson's Shandy, and Glenn had a Cisk 0%. All tasty. Well, apparently, the Kinnie is tasty but having tasted Iron Bru in Scotland, the thought of tasting a drink with a similar description was dismissed immediately. Maybe later as there is a bottle on the kitchen counter. But probably not.

We boarded the bus for the final time and had the last part of our ride on top of the bus once more. It was really windy and got chilly, but we had our jackets at hand. Happily, I'd used the idiot tie on my hat so it only blew to the back of my head and not off into the wild. 

Now back in the condo, we shall forego a walk after supper. I'm going to indulge in a peanut butter sandwich followed by one of my hand-made truffles. I might stay awake as late as 8 pm. Tomorrow we don't have to meet the bus until 9:10 giving us an hour more to sleep than we had last night.