Valletta & Mdina, Malta - April 10

Once again it was a beautiful sail in to Malta with the fortresses and the city walls. (yes, one day you’ll see photos…)

I had set up a private tour with Joan of Mata Tour Guide. www.maltatourguide.com

Joan was an amazing guide, with a good sense of humor, she gave us a lot of information, but she made it interesting. She does everything from our simple highlights tour for a one day shore excursion to multiple day tours with different specialties. You can’t go wrong with contacting Joan and she will set up whatever you want to do.

Throughout our day with Joan we covered 7000 years of history, including Medieval in Mdina, Neolithic and Temple Period in Hagar Qim temples, and modern history from 1530 to today in Valletta: the Knights Hospitallers, the French period (Napoleon) and the British period (1800-1979) including also the 2 Great Sieges, the Great Siege against the Muslims in 1565 and the Second World War, when they were the most heavily bombed place on earth.

Today we were joined by Karen & Steve, Julie & Jeff, Bob & Phyllis and Joe & Perla. Another great day with friends!

 sail in

Our tour was to start at 8:30, but Joan was there early and the driver Victor drove right into the port to pick us up. The weather today was cold and WINDY! Ugh. We had layers, but it was almost 40 MPR winds and it was cold.

We headed straight to the center of the island to walk around the medieval capital of Mdina. As we walked about the walled town I joked we were on the “door knockers” tour. Every door had these huge ornate door knockers. Just beautiful architecture and workmanship with the buildings. The Princess tours were just starting to arrive as we were leaving. Good timing! We did get a couple of shopping stops for those of us that like to get magnets and/or Christmas ornaments.

 views from the van

 Mdina

 walking to the walled city

 our group watching the artist work in his shop

 the artist at work

 the shop was named the Maltese Falcon

We also had a stop where Joan treated us to pastries at her favorite place. We didn’t know what she was getting, she just came up and asked each of us if we wanted cheese or peas. No one could understand her when she said peas so we all ordered the cheese. She said no one wants peas? Finally, we asked what are peas? She explained the vegetable. OK, that’s what we thought she meant, but not knowing what she was getting us it seemed out of context. OK, so does a pastry stuffed with a pea mixture. So, several of us switched from cheese to peas so we could try both. Both were very good and just hot out of the oven.

 part of the restaurant

 they specialize in cakes

 our pastsries

 Greg

We then drove to the west coast to visit Hagar Qim temples which date back to 3600BC and the visitor's center. They featured a 4-D video that showed the excavation of the site (a bit like Stonehenge). These are the oldest free-standing megalithic monuments in the world. We then walked out to see them in person.

 walking to the ruins

 Joan, Karen, Julie, Perla, Joe, Phyllis, Bob

We stopped for photos from the Blue Grotto belvedere. It was quite picturesque and if the weather had been warmer there are boat rides that go through the arches.

Then we made our way to the southeastern side of Malta, to the picturesque fishing village of Marsaxlokk. Joan was pushing the fresh fish, but not all of us are fish lovers and she assured us that the restaurant had a lot of choices. She preordered the fish lunches so they could be prepared and a couple of us wanted Rabbit, but the restaurant didn’t have any that day. So, the 3 or 4 of us that preferred not to have fish waited until we got to the restaurant to order.

 the restaurant

The food was good here, but wasn’t one of my favorite lunches of the trip. Most had the fish and a few of us got the pasta with chicken. It was way too much food and quite heavy. We all seemed to enjoy the platters of sweet peppers, cheese, olives and the bread and olive oil they served before the meal. All meals came with fried potatoes and salad. The salad had the most tasty capers that they grow locally. It was in a lovely location next to the marina, though because of the weather we had to eat inside.

Our last stop was in the capital of Valletta where we started with the Upper Barrakka Gardens for a fantastic view of the Grand Harbor and the Three Cities followed by a walk along Merchants Street past Auberges and Palaces of the Knights. We had an internal visit of St John's Co-Cathedral and that was truly amazing. Every square inch of this Cathedral was a work of art. (floors, walls and ceiling) This is the most important monument artistically and architecturally south of Rome.

 Steve, Karen, Jeff, Julie, Phyllis, Bob, Perla, Annette, Joe, Greg

 St John's Co-Cathedral

We finished the tour outside the Grandmaster's Palace. I can’t say enough about Joan’s guiding services. She was very helpful with a couple on the tour that needed some extra assistance and she did her best to find the best way to get from point A to B.

Here we split up. Some wanted to be taken back to the ship and the rest of us stayed in town as it was walking distance back to the ship. Greg and I went in search of Gelato. We did find some very tasty gelato.

Then, we headed to the Grandmaster’s Palace to see if we had time to tour it. The Palace State Rooms were closed for a function, but the Palace Armory was open so we toured that.

Then, we went in search of the gift shop of the church that had a great magnet of the Maltese Cross, but the store had closed. We passed a café that had a sign on it for strawberries & cream with ice cream and a strawberry prosecco, so of course we stopped to get one of each.

We wandered some more and I shopped for another magnet. Then we saw this gelato shop that had a huge long line and everyone was coming out with these really cute ice cream cones and they were photographing them. So, we decided we could handle another gelato stop so we got in line. The gelato was super yummy and the ice cream looked like petals on a flower with a center of another flavor of ice cream in the center and a macaroon in the middle with an Easter bunny head on it. (yes, I know you can’t wait to see the photos)

 aren't they cute

Greg had been looking for a battery for his “good” watch and we stopped in about 5 jewelry shops until he found one for only 6 euro. He had looked in several ports so it was great we actually found one.

 not sure WHAT they were selling....

 elevator from the lower to upper level

 the yacht is getting a delivery from the smaller boat

 We started to wander slowly back to the port.

 back at the port

 

 inside the port the walls were cute......

We dropped our things and went upstairs and grabbed some pizza & salads before going to the evening entertainment which was a repeat of the Latin Production show HEAT. It’s one of my favorites. Captain JP broke into the show to announce our sail way and luckily it was right before the male lead was starting a solo. The band stopped and so did the singer and the audience cracked up as JP just kept talking. Of course, he had no idea he was disturbing a show and it is “his ship” after all. Finally, he stopped and the show continued.

Then, it was off to bed for our day in Sicily tomorrow!