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