In the footsteps of the Apostle Paul
Good morning or evening, whenever you're reading this. This morning we sailed into Valletta, the capitol of Malta, which sits right in the middle of the azure Mediterranean Sea, and it is gorgeous. The capital, Valletta is one of the most unique sites in the world despite its small size (the city is less than 1/2-square mile!). The whole town is a UNESCO world heritage site, and we could see why. There is amazing history and architecture here. We quickly met up with our guide, Trudy, and got started on our day.
Arriving Malta
The view from our stateroom and we were glad we didn't need to climb these stairs, but we still did others as most of these villages/town are up hill!
Looking across you see our ship on the left of the crane and anther ship in wet dock.
We started off from the gardens that overlooked the harbor. The cannons are used to shoot off at 4 PM and 6 PM. We don't know why, but we enjoyed them. After a quick driving tour of Valletta we started out towards Rabat. Trudy took us to a church - I cannot remember the name but I think it was named after the apostle Paul because he was shipwrecked in Malta while on his way to Rome and lived there for about 3 months. You can look up the episode in Acts 27 & 28. The people of Malta treated the shipwrecked people with kindness. There was a grotto under the church where Paul lived. In addition, there were some catacombs that we walked through along with a lot of underground rooms where people lived during the bombing of the area in World War II. Did you know that Malta was the most bombed area in World War II because of its strategic location?
Apostle Paul lived here for 3-months.
A brief pause in our story for some interesting facts about Malta.
* The island was a base for the British navy during World War II which made it a target for German and Italian bombing.
* They have a law that during elections there is no campaigning until 6 months before the election and no campaigning the week before the election. We decided that we need to adopt that rule in the US.
* National language is Maltese which is a combination mostly Arab and Italian. Most people speak English also.
* Malta has been occupied by many countries over the past 7000 years and they are now a republic with a peace treaty with NATO.
* The British Knights of St. John occupied and built the city over a period of 500 years.
* FDR and Churchill held a conference on Malta in 1945 to present a united front towards Stalin.
After enjoying some time in Rabat, we drove Mosta and later to Marsa. Besides strolling through these lovely towns, we stopped at the magnificent Carmelita Cathedral which had a unique oval dome, and the interior was decorated with beautiful frescos.
We stopped for a few minutes at a small harbor with the typical Maltese boats and a small marketplace.
The marketplace.
Karen was able to find a pretty Christmas tablecloth to bring home. Of course, Bill bargained with the owner, and she lowered the price a bit.
Karen's beautiful Christmas tablecloth
We made our way to another harbor where we were to meet up with Victor to take us back to our ship, but before going back Trudy took us to a small place to have a nice little lunch and there was a gelato place right next door (how convenient).
Victor & Trudy
Victor has been running his little gondola-type boat round the Valletta harbor for over 50 years and we enjoyed the cruise around the harbor seeing the surrounding architecture and beautiful yachts before returning us directly to our ship.
Thank you, Trudy - fantastic tour.
We rested on the ship the rest of the afternoon and enjoyed what has always been a good dinner in the Grand Dining room. Our next stop is not a stop - it's a sea day!
This little picture is a novice error - ignore it.
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