Photos : Malta Gallery Page 05/08
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Malta: the country of sandstone
Malta: the country where sandstone and its colour are revered, 1/2 of Britain holiday’s, great sunshine and rubbish. Walking around the city I was reminded of a movie called Groundhog Day as it appeared every day would be the same in terms of weather and people. And in another movie reference, the scenery was like Pleasantville where most every street looked the same. Unlike Spain where the house owners take great pride in their house plus the area outside it, Malta seems to have adopted the opposite approach. My expectation was for sunshine and historical buildings fairly well maintained environment however I was surprised to see rubbish strewn around the city and houses barely looked after.
Another surprising aspect, and it was out of ignorance, was the amount of new buildings being erected that aren’t in line with the current architecture. The current skyline is being decimated and will soon resemble Ibiza or other city/country where the Brit’s have poured money and ‘culture’. The shops resemble the UK with BHS and Boots plus the restaurants are foregoing traditional food and serving UK slop. Why? I understand the reason is money but why sell your city’s soul? Anyway enough of the rant and onto our self mis-guided tour.
And the winner is….not us
Our first full day was spent on the main island and our intention was to walk down to Valletta. As soon as we crossed the road from our hotel we came across a guy handing out some sort of promotion and whilst ordinarily we’d avoid them we decided to see what was on offer. Chris won a bottle of wine and as I opened my ticket I couldn’t see any prize. Typical as I’m not the one to be lucky. We were about to leave as the promoter looked at my ticket and exclaimed….Oh my god…this is incredible…you’ve won a week’s accommodation! yaddah yaddah yaddah. All we need to do to collect is “attend a presentation”. We knew the score straight away. Can you say Time Share? Nothing ventured nothing gained, and as we still didn’t know the particulars of the accommodation prize we went along with it. I can only describe the next 90 mins as arduous.
I’ll call our ‘guide/salesman’ Steve as I can’t remember his name. Steve took us by cab to a separate hotel and gave a guided tour of an outdated hotel that used to be 5 stars but the new one (he says pointing down the coast) is being built right now and will be ready by some date or other. We smile and think “all we want is our prize…get us the hell out of here!” Steve starts quizzing us about where we holiday and what we do. Red rag to a bull. I dare say both Chris and myself had a gleam in our eyes as we launch into the more unusual places we like to venture. We start with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan then Libya and I mention Pakistan for good measure. He wants to know if we go back to the same place more than once to which we respond “No. Too many places to go and not enough time” Steve was punching above his weight class and he knew it and he could see his time being ill spent on people who had a different perspective on travel and life. He knew there was never going to be a sale and whilst he had resigned himself to this fact, we were in the lobby of the hotel awaiting our free return taxi. Agonising minute after agonising minute small talk ensued as the taxi failed appear. Chris finally lost it and said “I’ve had it…let’s get another cab. See ya Steve”. We had learnt more about Steve in the last 90 mins than we ever cared to know and it’s safe to say we’re not better people for learning about him.
Valletta take 2
Restart of day 1 took us back to our hotel and from there hopped on a bus to Valletta. In this neck of the woods it seems all busses lead to Valletta so figuring out numbers and routes was a no brainer. Lucky for us as Steve had numbed our brain, so we were in luck. The route is along the waterfront fort the most part and shows you just how much of Malta is London. There was some sort of soccer match probably a final by the way in which people were celebrating, that meant our bus had to wait for the processions to pass before we could get to the port. We wandered around the city for the next 3 hours looking at the museums, government buildings, bays and general life. From this walk you can see the destruction…sorry mean construction of large hotels or apartments on the river front and you can see Malta being buried alive by the bricks, mortar and concrete. To prove the point here’s a pic of the wonderful skyline being developed. The view aside, wandering around the port was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. To get back to our hotel we decided to take the ferry. It’s only a 15 minute crossing and allowed us to view the port from a different vantage point.
Gozo
Gozo is a small island about 90 mins from Victoria. A short 30 minute ride via ferry from Cirkewwa to Fort Chambray lands you on Gozo. Compared to the “mainland” it has a better feel and is a cross between the Malta mainland and Spain whereas the mainland feels as though it’s a cross between Italy, Greece and the Middle East. A day in Gozo is enough as the island is quite small and the worthwhile destinations limited, unless you like scuba diving. Sign posts to the various sights are OK but not great and just when you think you are heading in the right direction you aren’t or there’s a sign telling you “private property”. The coastline is very pretty and the escarpments picturesque.
Drivers here are impatient and willing to risk their lives and your to save 2 mins a trip. I’ve travelled in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, China, Borneo, Tajikistan an Sri Lanka (to name a few) but even when in those countries the speed is less and driving more controlled. Maybe I’m just getting old!
Malta : The final chapters
After our second day in Malta I’m convinced Maltese are an unhappy bunch. That’s not to say there are happy ones and not to mention I have friends who are Maltese however here smiles are an optional extra that don’t come with service. The drivers are stupid, crazy, rude and have short life expectancy. Service in restaurants is a cross between boredom and choredom and whilst cordial they lack any semblance of enjoyment and don’t try to get a smile out of them. The food is generally good and good value for money with sizes ranging from sensible to huge. A salad that cost about 10 or 12 Euro was large enough to avoid needing a starter. There are restaurants scattered around the place and the more upmarket ones will rival those in other major cities; the quality can be excellent.
Our last day was finishing off driving around the main island. From our hotel we headed towards Rabat and found en-route some more cathedrals. Malta must have more of these per square foot than any other city on earth…including Israel…how do I know this? Well I don’t but there’s a heap of them. 🙂 Well worth a visit is the historical area Mdina that overlooks a valley of, well brown. I’m not sure what should be grown in the valley but it tried to materialise through the brown haze. With Chris’s expert navigation we managed to only make a couple of wrong turns (not due to Chris’s navigation but the haphazard to road signage adopted by the Maltese). The map might say left or right but the road might merely come to a T intersection with no signs. We opted for 
the ‘lick finger and hold up to the wind to gauge wind direction then randomly pick a road in the vain attempt to head in the right direction’ approach. I grant you it may not be the shortest description but wasn’t too far from the truth.
Along the coast you are once again presented with great escarpments that seam to have teeth trying to bite the ocean that attacks its gums. One such place is the Blue Grotto that is popular..I assume because it’s blue. The divers relish the pools at the base of the rock face and I’m sure it’s worth the visit but as I’m a land lover I can only speculate.
The shots from the cliff tops may not do the scenery justice but if you get the chance to visit Malta you should make the effort to travel the coastline around the whole country as it changes from region to region.
Marsaxlokk
Last destination of our misguided tour was the port of Marsaxlokk where the boats of the local fisherman are moored. So what? Well the attraction is the boats are many and whilst relatively small boats, they are colourful. There’s nothing else here except a small port, some shops and houses.
Until today I was convinced the Maltese only knew how to make great food. We thought lunch by the bay in Maroloxx, as it’s renowned for seafood, would be a good way to end our trip. The service was par for the course, unsmiling and disinterested, but this was overshadowed by the slowness of the food to arrive. If it wasn’t for the fact we had to catch our plane we might have been more relaxed but the 45 minute wait for a pizza and a serving of jumbo king prawns was a little longer than we’d hoped for. Some things in life are waiting for but this wasn’t one of them. We couldn’t wait to leave; not only because of the food was bad but also because our flight was due soon and we didn’t know how long it was going to take to get to the airport. Malta is quite small and I thought most places could be reached within a few minutes but you can never tell so I assuaged my tour director’s begging to ‘get my a$$ to the airport’ and headed in that direction.
Another difference to Malta to other destinations, is that when hiring a car you don’t need to fill the tank completely but you need to return it with the same amount of fuel as when you commenced your hire. The trick is the gauge on the hire car doesn’t register your filling of fuel for quite some time therefore you tend to overfill. Oh well…The extra fuel I filled in the car is probably outweighed by the thrashing the car was handed. First gear is designed to do 80km and is good for a car isn’t it?
The main island is quite small and with a car you can cover most of it in 1 to 2 days depending on whether you dive. Anyone wanting to sun bake (and yes I do mean bake as that’s what I saw most of the Europeans doing) there’s ample sunshine for you.
We travelled back in business class however on Air Malta business class is an oxymoron. The moron being the dominant factor. The lounge is akin to an old waiting room in a retirement village. Rather than have a refined lounge where you expect to find businessmen and people who opt for a more ‘pleasant’ trip to cattle class, you walk into a room that has the warmth of a dentist’s waiting room but rather than having the dentist and a tooth filling at the end of the wait, you have a plane ride with the overly excited and exuberant Maltese (insert sarcasm). I think I’d opt for the latter however it would be a close race.
We’re glad we’ve been to Malta but can’t see us revisiting the country as we have done everything we wanted to.