Malta: Day Three - Part One

Valetta as seen from The Grand Harbour.  The hotel is the building with the loggias to the right of the red dome and steeple.

By today, I’ve mastered hello and thank you in Maltese.  Which is kind of cheating, because hello is pronounced “bon Jew” - in other words the French bonjour.  As for thank you, it’s the Italian grazie.  Add to that a cheerful ciao when you leave and you’re in business.
       This is my last day and choices have to be made.  There are plenty of other ruins I’d like to see, but Josephine and I haven’t made transportation arrangements, so I choose to stay closer to home.  The city across the bay has been enticing me out my window ever since I got here, so let’s take the ferry over to Vittoriosa (or Birgu, as it is called in Maltese).  After all, it leaves from just down the street.  And I do mean “down”.  As I reach it, they’ve pulled up the gangplank, but have mercy on me and let me board.  (The next ferry would have been in half an hour.)  I’m not even asked to pay!

View of Vittoriosa, with the huge black Maltese Falcon moored

The sky is blue, the Mediterranean too.  A striking setting for the pale-yellow limestone of the forts and other old buildings.  And the arm of the harbor we enter is just one big marina, with the star of the show a luxury yacht:  a clipper with a modern sail system of three self-standing and rotating masts.  I count how many sails that is:  15.  That’s my first destination, and I’m in luck because there’s a young man cleaning it.  He’s British and has been with the ship only two months, but tells me it’s a yacht for charters and events.  It’ll only set you back half a million dollars per week in the peak season.  And the name?  Why, Maltese Falcon, of course.

Carrack

       I slip into the Maritime Museum, which, like everything, used to be something else... in this case, the naval bakery.  Several rooms are being overhauled - again, Malta is a work in progress - but there’s a temporary exibit of scale models, all extremely detailed and ranging from the old Phoenician round ship to Greek and Roman triremes to World War II British naval vessels.  There’s a big carrack of the sort that the Knights Hospitaller would have arrived on, but the star of the show is a mid-18th century ship-of-the-line, a three-master that could be the ancestor of the Maltese Falcon down the dock.  My naval architect friend would love this place.

Fort St. Angelo

       My ticket to the museum also gives me the right to visit Fort St. Angelo.  Or so I thought.  As I puff up the steep incline to the gate of what the British called H.M.S. Saint Angelo during their reign, the guard yells “We’re closed!”  I plod on, asking what time they open.  “No, we’re closed to the public.”  I explain that I have a ticket; he counter-explains that’s not possible.  And he’s right.  The other entry is to the Inquisitor’s Palace.  As I apologize, he asks me where I’m from. Turns out Albert - that’s his name - was once a merchant sailor on the freighters that sail up the Saint Lawrence Seaway and through the Great Lakes.  He tells me I can look around a bit, but his boss is watching so I have to stay where he can see me.  I go to the water’s edge, to take a photo of Valetta across the harbor.  When I turn around, there he is, behind me.  He points up to where a man - his boss - is watching us both.  We walk back together to the gate, me taking photos as we go, and he gives me a kiss on both cheeks.  Ever the sailor, a girl in every port.  And unmarried to boot.
       (P.S.  I asked Albert why the top two floors hadn’t been all spit-and-polished like the rest of the fort.  He told me that they still belong to The Order of Malta, but that there are negotiations on-going.  The refurbished section should be open in about a month, even though work is running late.)
       My next stop is just a quick look into St. Lawrenz Church outside the walls of the Fort.  It’s typically baroque with nothing much different that the others.  So it’s on to the Inquisitor’s Palace.

       Of all the places I’ve seen so far, this one gives the best idea of what a palace would have been.  Of course, it hasn’t been turned into something else, so it does look like a residence.  The prison cells are spartan and the idea of peeing and all through a grill in the floor, and then having it fall into a kind of “fountain” in the courtyard below... well that must have been whiffy.  I know the Roman Inquisition wasn’t as cruel as the Spanish Inquisition, but still it makes me laugh when I see a big sign in the courtyard that says “The Roman Inquisition in Malta” and it’s right behind a nice wrought-iron table and chairs; if that’s how they questioned people... over drinks and a pastry...  Actually there are none of the torture equipment I’d expected to see, which is fine with me.

It’s about time for lunch, and I haven’t seen anything that strikes my fancy here, so I decide to head back to the ferry and Valetta to try out another of Mario’s Restaurant Picks.  So far he’s two-for-two.

Vittoriosa (Birgu) and its harbor

Malta: Day Two - Part Three

Blue Grotto

At 2:00, Josephine arrives to drive me to Mdina, the Silent City.  She tells me I must also visit the Blue Grotto, which lies at the southern end of the Dingli Cliffs that I saw from the airplane on arrival.  The water isn’t as strikingly blue as she announces because there’s quite a lot of wind and it’s whipped up the Mediterranean   Still resolutely blue but not transparent, the water laps at the base of the natural sculpture it’s carved out of the limestone to form the grotto, just like the ancient Maltese used this same limestone to carve their temples.
       There also appear to be oil rigs off the coast here, but they’re so small that they may just have been test wells... or something altogether different.
       We drive across arid but not barren countryside broken up into fields and towns, each with its towering church.  Josephine drops me off at the city gates and points out the bus stop, even though she says she’ll come back for me if I want.  It’ll probably be easier to figure out which bus to get on than it would be to find a telephone booth.  Everyone here seems to have a cellphone riveted to their ear.

Mdina

The name Mdina is one of those Arab words that come with the island’s history.  It feels like the medina of Marrakech or Casablanca in Morocco.  A medina, according to the dictionary, “is typically walled, with many narrow and maze-like streets”, which is a good description of The Silent City of Mdina.  In modern Arabic it merely means a city or town.
       There are horsecarts waiting outside the city walls, the horses tripped out with red tassels to keep the evil spirits away.  One even has a pheasant feather atop his head.  But I decide to go on foot; it’s not that big a place, even if it was the island’s capital until the Grand Masters moved it to Valetta for a more easy-to-defend position against the Ottomans. Still, these protective walls aren’t shoddy and I suspect the walkway across the dry moat wasn’t always made of stone but rather of something more drawbridge-able.
       As I walk around, I’m so glad I’ve come in winter; I can’t imagine the crush of people there must be later on in the season!  These streets are narrow canyons between high walls and might look more like a medieval amusement park otherwise.  As it is, I sometimes have a tiny square all to myself.
       Where Valetta is somewhat of a work in progress, with electric cables hanging from windows and garbage bags waiting to be picked up sometimes, Mdina is more spit-and-polish.  And more tourist-y, a fact that becomes very clear by the décor of the restaurants and the density of souvenir shops.  As I walk, I notice more greenery than in Valetta, where it’s mostly limited to the three parks or to courtyards not visible from the street.  Mdina has several wells in small squares, plus a wide choice of ornate door knockers and many arabesqued wrought-ironwork protecting the ground floor windows or highlighting balconies, often hung with flower pots.  Some houses look almost Venetian in their baroqueness - especially the windows - and there are escutcheons over many doorways.  The cathedral is less ornate than Valetta’s, but inside are the same marble slabs depicting skeletons or just skulls, and the dome has a show-stopping frieze with a trompe-l’oeil blue sky and clouds at the very top.
       In short, this is a rich town, which explains all of the above.  And the few cars that are actually parked inside the walls - residents only - tend to bear witness to the thickness of the Mdina wallet.

I decide to take my chances with the bus.  I see the bus stop, but several buses stop here. A lady and her two children help me by shouting out “Valetta, Valetta” even though the bus says Dingli... and I know that’s not in the same direction.  I decide to trust them and end up sitting next to a British man who is staying at... the Grand Harbour Hotel.  Small world!  We discuss what we’ve seen and what we have left to see, all the while looking at the towns go by along the road (including Dingli).  Then suddenly, after only about 15 or 20 minutes, there’s the big plaza just outside the City Gate.  I feel proud of myself for having done it. And it was fun seeing people get on and off in the various towns along the way.

Mosta

There’s still time before dinner, so I decide to try to see St. Paul’s hand again.  But when I get there and open the church door, I find myself nose-to-nose with a huge cross and chanting people behind it!  It’s the Stations of the Cross, in Maltese.  I edge past the people, my heretical camera around my neck, and make my way to the far chapel where the hand awaits me.  But there are two elderly gentlemen sitting right beside it and chanting the Stations along with the others.  I step up and look at the hand - part of a wristbone somewhat visible in an opening in a silver jewel-encrusted hand spread upward to the heavens.  But the two gentlemen are staring at me and I can’t bring myself to take my picture.  I decide to sit them out, and listen once again to ecumenical Maltese.  The Stations are almost finished.  But no!  It is not meant to be.  The priest arrives, and then choir members start showing up for Vespers, one by one.  I give up and leave St Paul to his hand.

     Carnival now over, the streets are much different tonight.  After changing out of my ratting-around-prehistoric-ruins-and-medieval-medina clothes, I head off to another of Mario’s Restaurant Picks.  I’m just not sure which one.  We’ll see which is open already on this holiday.  The first, Michael’s (definitely upscale), is dark.  The door of the second, Palazzo Preca (also ritzy), is ajar and a young couple are saying sweet nothings to each other and playing kissy-face.  She leaves and he goes through the door.  I ask when they open and he says “in about half an hour”... too long for my stomach, which is now remembering it’s only seen four date mqareks all day.  On to the next restaurant pick, right up on the corner.

       The side streets of Valetta are on the hillside, as I said elsewhere, and so anything that extends into more than one building - as this restaurant does - is by definition split-leveled.  To enter the restaurant you go down a few steps, as was also the case with Nenu Bakery last night.  Which means the waiter has to shuttle back and forth between the kitchen and the two different levels of tables.

       Unlike the two other restaurants, Guzé Bistro is open for business, and they’re playing jazz music in the background.  There’s already a Japanese couple waiting for their food, both glued to their smart phone screens.  I order another Maltese specialty, the fish soup with mussels, prawns and grouper.  But before that can arrive, I’m given some of that good Malta bread with a spread, and then a miniature bowl of artichoke soup, both of which are delicious.  By the time I’ve finished the fish soup appetizer and the risotto with porcini mushrooms comes, my appetite is half asleep.  I manage to finish only half of the excellent risotto, with its huge chunks of porcinis.  That chagrins the waiter no end, and my praise of the cuisine and both the red and white Maltese wines softens the blow only so much.  Once again, there will be no dessert.

On the way back to the hotel, I hear the cruise ship horn calling its passengers home.  It will be gone tomorrow morning when I wake up.  Mario is behind the hotel desk so we spend a good half hour talking.  I answer his questions about what I saw today and he tells me about his 40 years in the business.

       Up in my room, I try to watch an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.  I would have liked to listen to it in Maltese a bit, but it’s in Italian, so I opt for the English-language version.  After all I’ve seen and done today, the plot isn’t enough to keep me awake and I drift off into a land of wristbones and forts and harbors and medieval streets and prehistoric ruins.