Today we visited the absolutely gorgeous city of Valletta on the Mediterranean island country of Malta. Check another country off the list! We would have to say, without a doubt, today was one of the most beautiful harbor sail-ins so far for this trip. The city was officially listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. The city has 320 monuments, all within an area of 0.21 sq mi, making it one of the most concentrated historic areas in the world. Sometimes called an “open-air museum”, Valletta was chosen as the European Capital of Culture for 2018. Valletta was also listed as the sunniest city in Europe in 2016. And today lived up to that designation.
Today started with booking a local 2 hour Hop On Hop Off tour near the pier to give us the lay of the land. Things did not go as expected. We were assured the next bus was 5 min away, 20 min later, we were again assured the bus was only 5 min away. When the bus finally arrived, we boarded and were on our way only to find that the audio playback would randomly cut in and out. The driver did pull over a couple of times to “reboot” the system only to have it fail again 3 min later. Traffic today was also a nightmare and the bus could not make all of it’s assigned stops (I’m sure folks were left stranded at some stops). We did make a drive by the Roman Catholic church Rotunda of Mosta as well as the old capital of Mdina, before stopping at the Basilica of St Paul in Rabat . At this point we were an hour and a half into the tour, but less then a third of the way along the route. At this point the driver announced that he was turning around and heading back to the ship and if we wanted to continue the tour we would need to wait for another bus, It should be noted that there was a long long line already at the stop. We stayed on the bus and returned to the ship. We later heard from others that decided to continue the tour that it took 5 hours to complete the 2 hours route.
Sue stopped at the port side pharmacy to pick up some drugs to help with the crud we’ve been fighting for weeks while Dan head out to explore and climb the steps to the old town of Velletta, and climb he did. There is also an elevator (Barrakka Lift) that will take you to the top for 1 euro, but what fun is that? Dan wandered the streets, tunnels and alleyways of Valletta until the sun began to set and then returned to the ship for a sail-away illuminated by the lights of the city. There is so much history and culture here and we barely scratched the surface of this remarkable place. Will have to come back.
Random photos from today may display truncated. Click on photo for full view.
Malta is a fascinating place to me. It’s there, minding its own business. LoL