Entries about malta

Malta was one of those countries that used to be on my travel bubble. If I ever made it there, fine. If I didn't, I wasn't going to lose any sleep about it. However, it always seemed like an interesting place and the idea for the Sicily road trip originally started as a laid-back week just in Malta. It wasn't until I started looking into a brief detour to Sicily that the trip morphed into what it ultimately became.

Given its central Mediterranean location, it was inevitable that Malta was colonized and conquered by virtually every major civilization that dominated the region over the millennia. Malta's last controlling force was the British Empire, which set the stage for the island's sovereignty when the Empire crumbled in the 20th century. Maltese culture, language, and architecture are a strange hybrid of Latinate, Arabic, and Northern European elements.

Arriving into Malta's Grand Harbor is a breathtaking experience. The ferry passes between two massive medieval forts at the mouth and then traverses the entire length of the harbor with Valletta's elevated old town on the right and the peninsular Three Cities of Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua on the left. The view probably hasn't changed much in the last five hundred years, so one can imagine the awe that a Renaissance era sailor must have felt entering this formidable island stronghold.

We had decided not to bring our car, mainly because I didn't feel comfortable driving on the left side of the road. I know many people switch sides without any concern, but I have a tendency to let my thoughts wander while driving and I couldn't shake the fear of driving head on into another car while absentmindedly reverting to the right side of the road. I was curious to see how we could handle transportation with the three kids using just buses and taxis. When we got off the ferry in Valletta, I was surprised to see the disembarking passengers quickly melt away leaving our family alone at the terminal exit. There were no taxis in sight, and my Italian SIM wasn't functional in Malta. Fortunately there was one last passenger awaiting a ride, and the driver of the car who came to pick her up called us a taxi. Despite an extremely short ride to our Airbnb, our fare was quite high. That was when I realized we probably wouldn't have the option of using taxis to get between different destinations on the island.

The Airbnb was a gorgeous modernized three level apartment in an ancient building in the Floriani neighborhood, at the edge of the old town. Our very kind and friendly hostess settled us in, and we immediately packed up the kids for a walk into the old town. From the elevated promenade we could see the Three Cities across the harbor and the elevator that brought people up from the Valletta waterfront.

In the old town we encountered two large Easter processions close to St. John's Co-Cathedral. The parades were anchored by enormous religious floats that men carried on their shoulders. Watching them strain and sweat under the wooden beams was enough to make my own shoulders hurt.

We didn't have any luck at the two neighboring bistros I had targeted in the old town. One was closed and the other was booked solid. We tried a couple of others close by that were also booked and decided we would have to downscale our ambitions a little. Close to the center of the old town we found a busy corner with several pub-style restaurants with outdoor tables, and I chose the most promising after reviewing its menu. There weren't any free tables outside so we sat at the only table inside. The waitress brought over the menus, which didn't look familiar at all. I'd accidentally walked inside the wrong restaurant. I ran across the alley to the first place but they didn't have any tables open, so rather than uproot everyone I decided to bite the bullet and order. Surprisingly, dinner turned out to be our second best restaurant meal of the trip after Al Saraceno in Taormina. Sometimes the best meals are the result of careful planning, and sometimes they're the result of dumb luck.

The next day we broke out our bus map and took a short walk to the Floriani C stop on Triq Sant' Anna, the main drag of the Valletta peninsula. We had an uncomfortably long wait for our bus, to the extent that we started to wonder if it would actually come at all. Eventually one showed up as I was researching where the other bus lines would take us. It took about half an hour to reach Ta' Qali park, where there was a Saturday farmers market we wanted to check out. I was monitoring our progress on Google Maps, and at one point it seemed that the driver was going to bypass Ta' Qali completely and proceed to Mdina. The driver suddenly seemed to realize the same thing because he abruptly pulled the bus over and turned and looked back at me. He seemed to be giving me some instructions using a combination of Maltese and hand gestures, but the only interpretation I could come up with was that he wanted me to help him back up the bus which seemed improbable. After a minute of this, an older man went to the doors which the driver then opened, and he actually went behind the bus and directed him back onto a side street so he could make a U-turn back to Ta' Qali. That was my first time both for being on a bus whose driver forgot the route and for being on a bus that made a U-turn.

The market wasn't anything close to what we had seen in Catania and Palermo, but we were able to put together a meal of chicken and rigatoni from the one cooked food vendor that was there.

I had no idea where the closest bus stop was but we could see the medieval town of Mdina in the distance so I figured we could walk there if we had to. There was also something called Ta' Qali Crafts Village on the way, which I figured would be an interesting place to break from walking and see some local artisans. The walk ended up feeling much longer than we'd expected, perhaps because it was by far the warmest day we'd experienced so far on the trip.

The crafts village didn't turn out to be that exciting as it consisted mainly of showrooms, and we didn't stick around for long. We felt way too overheated to keep walking to Mdina, and one of the gallery owners directed us to a bus stop. Once again we had a ferocious wait for a bus, which appeared to be coming on an hourly schedule. Eventually we got picked up and taken to Mdina, which was very pretty and well-preserved but also extremely touristy. The absence of any sign of native life inside the walls was reminiscent of La Cité de Carcassonne. We did enjoy the view northeast from the highest section of the walls as the kids slurped ice cream from one of the innumerable gelaterias in the medieval city.

On leaving Mdina, we saw one of the Hop-On Hop-Off doubledecker tourist buses outside and decided that might be a better way to see the rest of the island than the infrequent regular buses. It was quite expensive, and the driver had a hard time believing I wanted to buy the tickets so late in the day. Nevertheless, I had no regrets as we pulled away from Mdina and we had excellent views of the walled city from the upper deck of the bus. Another highlight of our drive-by tour was Santa Marija Assunta church in Mgarr.

We decided to hop off the bus in Bugibba, which seemed like an energetic spot towards the northern end of the island. However, we soon realized that virtually all of the activity on the street consisted of lobster-red teenaged tourists from England pre-drinking for the evening's mating rituals. I split a beer with Ian (well, maybe he had a tenth of it) and we sought an exit strategy. We'd missed the last tourist bus so I used the wifi at McDonald's to chart a public bus route with Google Maps. This time the bus came mercifully quickly and we found ourselves back at the main bus station just outside Valletta old town.

We had better luck getting into one of our chosen restaurants this time round, probably because we hit the restaurant row on Old Bakery Street just as they were beginning to open. Top choice Rubino turned us away but after some internal debate Capistrano gave us a table. They asked us if we could be out by 8:30 which was two hours away, and I told them we'd be thrilled to get out much quicker than that if they could make it happen.

Soon after we ordered, a couple of women with Scandinavian accents came in with a little girl who was about six. They didn't have a reservation either, and the maître d' really didn't want to seat them. While they argued, the little girl came over and started watching Cleo's iPad over her shoulder. Eventually the staff relented and the Scandinavian women were guided to a staircase leading to another dining room downstairs. The little girl didn't want to go, so we told the women she was welcome to stay with us until their food came. She watched cartoons on the iPad with Cleo until our food arrived, and then watched on her own while Cleo was eating. Ironically, the food wasn't as good as our randomly chosen pub grub from the night before. We got through the entire dinner and were given our check without any reappearance from the Scandinavian women from the downstairs dining room. Eventually Mei Ling had to bring the little girl back to her family. I can't imagine leaving Cleo out of our sight for close to forty minutes with strangers. Perhaps that's an individual thing, or maybe it's cultural. I guess we'll have an opportunity to find out when we spend three weeks in Scandinavia this summer.

Sunday morning we walked down to the waterfront to catch the double decker tourist bus to the weekly Marsaxlokk fish market. I led us to the official Valletta waterfront area but we couldn't find the bus stop. All the businesses were closed and there was no one around to ask. Eventually we figured out that the stop was a good distance eastward and not in the commercial waterfront area at all. Once we got close to the stop we saw a bus there with a lot of people standing next to it and ran full tilt so as not to miss it. Just as we arrived a second bus pulled up with some people already on it and everyone immediately pushed their way onto the new bus. We didn't even come close to getting on before the bus filled up. It seemed the first bus was having some kind of mechanical problem. Neither bus moved for a few minutes and then they told all the newcomers to get off the second bus. Foreseeing what was about to happen, we jumped onto the first bus as soon as the door opened and I took the older kids to the upper deck. Whatever problem the bus had was now solved, and soon we departed. Amidst all the confusion no one asked us to buy tickets, but I didn't feel badly because the previous day we had paid an entire day's fare for just one leg of the route.

My research had prepared me for the Marsaxlokk market to be touristy, but it was still a disappointment. There was very little in the way of seafood to be seen, and very large amounts of tourist schlock. However, the waterside area was still very pretty with the old buildings lining the promenade and the brightly-colored boats anchored in the harbor.

After a seafood lunch at one of the harborside restaurants, we walked back to the promenade and allowed ourselves to be convinced to take a boat tour to St. Peter's Pool despite gathering storm clouds. The motorboat was just large enough for ourselves and one other family. It was a pleasant ride out of the harbor although it started getting very windy as we rounded Delimara Point.

There was a decent number of people enjoying themselves at the natural semicircular pool, and our driver idled the boat so we could watch a couple of them take the plunge off the fifteen foot overhang.

On the way back it started raining fairly briskly and the waves kicked up as well, so it was quite a cold and uncomfortable return that seemed much longer than the outward leg. Fortunately the real downpour didn't start until we were back on land so we were able to make it into a cafe without getting completely soaked, and we waited out the rain over hot chocolate.

The area of Malta we were most curious about and hadn't yet visited was Vittoriosa, the central of the Three Cities. Vittoriosa, also known as Birgu, is an impressively fortified peninsula with its own extensive history as an independent city. The public bus dropped us off in the main square and we made our way down to the yacht marina on the western shore. At the tip of the peninsula is the Fort Saint Angelo which is only connected to the rest of Vittoriosa by a narrow bridge that crosses another tiny marina. Inside here was a restaurant that one could park one's boat immediately outside and a noble-appearing archway connecting the fort to the mainland.

Just inland from the marina is the beautiful St. Lawrence's Church with its distinctive red domes.

We spent an hour or so exploring the nearly-deserted interior of the small city. We found this much more to our liking than Mdina, despite the absence of gelaterias on every street corner. The narrow streets were lined with weathered, ancient buildings that showed interesting signs of their modern inhabitants.

We had to time dinner carefully to catch the hourly bus back to the Valletta main station, and eventually settled on another pub called Cafe Du Brazil in the central square near the bus stop. Despite its somewhat gritty appearance, they provided a very satisfying dinner which included a delicious braised rabbit. We finished our last meal in Malta somewhat mystified as to how these very downscale-appearing pubs acquitted themselves so well in the kitchen. We never did discover what the connection was with Brazil, as there wasn't anything remotely Brazilian on the menu.

We took a slightly different route back to the Airbnb from the bus station and encountered the magnificently illuminated Church of St. Publius.

Our ferry departure was at 6:30 in the morning, so we had arranged in advance to be picked up at 5:00 by the same driver who had brought us there from the port. Unfortunately, 5:15 came and went with no sign of the driver and I didn't have any way to call in him. I sent an e-mail, which naturally went unanswered, so we threw the kids in the strollers and I put Spenser on my back and we began the long walk to the ferry terminal. Fortunately we'd left our large bag in the car in Pozzallo, but it was still a painful effort to schlep the strollers, backpacks, and suitcase almost a mile to the terminal. We'd given ourselves plenty of time, so we weren't in any real danger of missing the ferry, but by the time we got ourselves up to the deck we were exhausted.

I was looking forward to a relaxing ride back to Pozzallo with groggy kids, but as soon as the ferry left its mooring it was clear that wasn't going to happen. The enormous boat immediately began to pitch from side to side to a degree I'd never experienced on a ferry. I looked outside and saw huge swells and troughs everywhere. Within five minutes the first people started to reach for their motion sickness bags. I kept a watchful eye on Spenser in his stroller. He seemed nonchalant at first, but then started crying and almost immediately threw up his breakfast. I cleaned him up and then Mei Ling took him in her arms and he fell asleep. Within half an hour it seemed like half the passengers were heaving into their bags. Mei Ling was sick as well by this point. I hoped the older kids would be OK, since they'd never had any motion sickness problems, but even Ian finally lost it after about an hour. Only Cleo and I got through the ride unscathed. I guess she'll be the one joining me on fishing trips when she gets a little older.

We ended our visit to Malta with mixed feelings. It's certainly a unique place, thanks to its long history and mix of influences, but it falls short of many other parts of Europe when it comes to atmosphere. Except for Vittoriosa, much of what we saw had a plasticky, artificial veneer that seemed geared towards package tourists. Of course, we never made it to the smaller island of Gozo that contains many of Malta's most famous natural attractions. It's also likely that the main island keeps many secrets that we simply didn't have enough time or mobility to discover. However, given the amount of Europe and the rest of the world that we still have to explore, I don't foresee us returning.

We retrieved our car and loaded up our still-queasy crew. It was only eight in the morning and we had to be in Agrigento by lunchtime.

Easter vacation is tough when it comes to choosing a travel destination, because it raises the question of whether it's worth the two 9-10 hour flights across the Atlantic to Europe and back for a one week trip. Most of the places we want to visit in the US are too cold for us in April, and Latin America gets repetitious (we were just in Nicaragua in January). I was thinking about Malta for a few reasons: it was probably going to be acceptably warm with lows in the 60's, there seemed to be a lot of fun things for kids, it was tiny and isolated so we probably would never get there on a longer European road trip, and it would be a new country for everyone. However, as usual when I look at Google Maps I can't keep my hand off the scroll button and my eye kept getting drawn to Malta's larger island neighbor Sicily to the north. I'd been there twice before: with my parents when I was about five, and for a couple of days in my twenties. My memories were very vague from both trips. I had planned to include Sicily on a future road trip from Rome down the Amalfi coast, but after doing a little research I realized I didn't want to wait. I started working on an ambitious itinerary that would cover all the main attractions of Sicily as well as Malta and determined that the absolute minimum time for the trip would be two weeks. We don't like taking Cleo out of school now that she's in pre-K, but eventually we decided it wouldn't upset her to miss about a week. Of course, there were no direct flights from Miami to Sicily or Malta but I found very reasonably-priced two-leg itineraries to Palermo with a connection in Rome. The rental car ended up being inexpensive as well thanks to our discovery in Munich that a larger car could accommodate three car seats across the back seat, which meant we wouldn't have to go with a costly and cumbersome minivan. I did my best to confirm that our seats would fit in the promised BMW 218D and decided we would deal with the issue at the rental agency if that turned out not to be the case.

We did a great job on our end of preparing for the trip. After forgetting a few things on our last two road trips we had made an exhaustive checklist of all the essentials which ensured everything got into the bags before we left. We had an evening departure which meant the kids would sleep most of the flight and take much of the sting out of the nine hour ordeal. I had booked flights on KLM but the check-in desk redirected us to Alitalia which was apparently the actual airline we were flying on. At Alitalia, the check-in agent sent our bags through but then found herself unable to assign us boarding passes for our flight from Rome to Palermo. She called over another agent and after much scrutiny of their computer screen the second agent informed us our second flight had been canceled due to "a strike at the airport". While Mei Ling tried to get more information from the agents I Googled the strike and found it it was actually an Alitalia strike and had nothing to do with the airport. I brought this to the agents' attention and the second agent smiled and nodded. "Yes, it's an Alitalia strike." Apparently these strikes have been a fairly regular event lately and last for part of a day. Alitalia then cancels a whole bunch of flights, screws over hundreds of their passengers, presumably rebooks them, and business continues as usual until the next strike. At that point we decided to proceed to Rome and hopefully rebook on a later flight to Palermo. If worst came to worst, we could take a ferry or drive down to Sicily and salvage most of our vacation. Rome isn't the worst place in the world to be stranded anyway.

The flight to Rome wasn't too bad, although the kids didn't sleep as much as I'd hoped and I didn't sleep at all. Once we landed, we quickly found a desk where Alitalia agents were supposed to be helping people rebook their canceled flights. After about a twenty minute wait I came to an agent with a shaved head. He looked at my itinerary and immediately passed it back to me, telling me that since I booked through KLM I would have to go to KLM check-in in the departures area. That seemed to make no sense to me. It's an Alitalia flight, I told him. He just shook his head and gave me a very insincere sympathetic look, the kind of expression that is intended to make it very clear that it is not meant sincerely. He wouldn't talk to us any more. We would have to go to KLM. I asked him if we should go to baggage claim first and get our luggage. No, he answered, your luggage will be going on to Palermo. How does our luggage get to Palermo if the flight has been canceled? For a second, his smirk was replaced by a look of confusion. Then the smirk reappeared, and he told us that yes, we should go to baggage claim. We were pleasantly surprised to find all our bags piled up next to the empty baggage carousel. We schlepped everybody and everything to the KLM check-in where as expected, they told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with domestic flights within Italy which were exclusively conducted by Alitalia. They were courteous enough to take us directly to Alitalia check-in, where a long line of displaced passengers awaited reassignment, and prevail upon the agents there to attend to us immediately.

Despite cutting to the front of the line, we still had to spend an hour sprawled in front of the check-in desk while the agent scrutinized his computer screen wordlessly aside from barking nastily at any coworkers who spoke to him. Eventually he informed us that all flights to Palermo the rest of the day were fully booked and the best he could do was ten in the morning the next day. I asked him if that was the first flight to Palermo that day and he told me there was one at eight. I asked him if there was space on that one and he said there was, with no explanation regarding why he had just told us that ten in the morning was the best he could do. It actually made a huge difference for us, because the earlier arrival meant we would be able to catch one of the morning markets in Palermo that we were desperate to experience. We booked the tickets and the agent told us that we would be comped for a night at a Holiday Inn close to the airport. During this long interaction there was only one other agent tending to the queue of refugees in a similarly slow fashion, so the line didn't move at all the entire time we were there. I felt a little guilty about cutting to the front, but when you have three exhausted little kids you accept any favors you get. Hopefully none of those folks ended up spending the whole night on that line.

We got to the Holiday Inn shuttle stop only to find out we'd have to wait an hour for the next bus, so we took a taxi instead. The Rome airport is actually in Fiumicino, about twenty miles from central Rome, and our hotel was in an isolated business park halfway between the two. Once we were settled in the hotel, we had to decide if we were going to simply use the hotel dinner voucher we'd been provided or find a restaurant. Eventually I decided that the Holiday Inn dinner was probably going to be awful and I didn't want the Alitalia fiasco to have a permanent impact on the quality of our trip, so I used the "Restaurants near me" function of TripAdvisor to pick a place to eat. I wasn't sure that Uber was reliable in Rome and I already had the European Mytaxi app installed on my phone. Mytaxi showed me a very inexpensive fare and I summoned a taxi which took about 15 minutes to arrive. When we arrived at the restaurant, the taxi driver entered his own fare into the Mytaxi app which was about three times higher than what I had been quoted. Later I determined that Mytaxi is basically a dispatch app and the fare estimate they provide has no basis in reality. At the end of the ride, the taxi driver determines the fare and he charged us for the mileage he drove to get to the hotel as well as the mileage to the restaurant.

Fortunately, our dinner at Scuderie San Carlo was quite good and the restaurant was beautiful and peaceful, which made me feel like the effort to drag ourselves from the hotel had been worthwhile.

We took a Uber back to the Holiday Inn which was less than half the price of the Mytaxi. Mei Ling used the voucher to get more food from the hotel restaurant, but the overcooked rigatoni in canned red sauce and baked chicken thighs ended up in the trash can. I felt a small sense of victory that we hadn't let Alitalia reduce us to eating garbage on the first night of our vacation.

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn and took the shuttle bus back to the Fiumicino airport. One cool feature in the departure area was the rectangular columns with LED screens that displayed a continuous loop of sharks and fish moving inside a large tank. Very realistic.

Overall things went much more smoothly than the previous day and we got to Palermo without any issues. As we approached the airport, I was amazed by the topography that was visible from the airplane window. I could see the two massive cliffs of Monte Gallo and Monte Pellegrino bookending the beach of Mondello. Behind were rows and rows of low mountains with towns and villages occupying most of the valleys between them.

We had arranged for our Airbnb host to pick us up at the airport for about the same price as a taxi, which meant we didn't have to worry about the driver locating our apartment in central Palermo. We unloaded our stuff into the apartment as quickly as we could. Our first market was just a short walk away.