Malta Day Two

Was woken quite early this morning by fireworks - there was a Festa (Maltese festival day) at a town a couple of miles away) that had fireworks going when I arrived in Valletta about 6pm and went on until 11. The fireworks started this morning at about 8 and in fact were still going when I left Valletta on the Monday morning. I can only conclude that the Maltese love fireworks. They were very loud and not particularly spectacular.

After breakfast at the hotel, and looking at the area where the filming had gone on the night before, which was now a normal street, I walked around to the Malta Experience, an audio visual presentation of Maltese history. It was quite cheesey ("10,000 years ago Malta was formed...") and the English voiceover was done by Derek Jacobi, but it gave a good overview of the history of the country. This history consists mainly of getting invaded or attacked every couple of hundred years!

After sitting in the cool of the theatre for an hour, I spend a while walking around the city, vaguely following the Lonely Planet walking tour. Valletta is actually one of the world's first planned cities, overseen by Jean de la Valette, one of the Knights of St John who had settled on the island in the 15th century. He decided that the streets should funnel the sea breezes, that the streets should be relatively wide, and that each building should have a statue on the corner. Most of the buildings today still fit this pattern.

Wandered around for a few hours until I was overcome with the heat, had to sit down and have a couple of drinks and a sandwich, and later a nap!

Decided to go out to Mdina in the late afternoon - although I had told the driver where I wanted to go, the bus seemed to overshoot the town and I ended up a couple of miles down the road, the only passenger on the bus. Thankfully the bus turned around and deposited me at the gates to the city.

Mdina is also a fortified city, although quite a bit smaller than Valletta. It was much nicer in the cool (er) air of the late afternoon and most of the tourists had gone. I wandered around for a bit and took in the view out to Valletta, Sliema and Buggiba - half the island in fact! Had a drink and a cake at the Fontanella Tea Rooms which has the fabulous view, and later some dinner at the Xara Palace Hotel (somewhere I'd have liked to stay...). Caught one of the buses back to Valletta - thankfully it got me to where I needed to go easily!