We begin our Malta travel


Monday, March 5, 2018  Sliema, Malta

Malta is an island about 19 by 10 miles in the Mediterranean south of Sicily and north of Libya:



It has a population of about 450,000 and is an independent country and a member of the EU.  It has the 8th greatest population density of all countries in the world!  There are a couple of smaller islands which are also part of Malta.  We’ve always wanted to go as the history seemed so intriguing.  So, here we are.

Saturday was one of those awful travel days.  Up at 3:45 AM for a 4:30 Uber to the airport in Nice in a driving cold rain, for a 6:30 AM flight to Malta via Amsterdam.  Don’t ask.  Working with Delta, Air France and KLM, this made economic sense, but certainly not geographic sense.  The flights went as they should, and we met up with Ellin and Bill Friedman in Amsterdam, who are taking the Malta Road Scholar trip with us.  All went well until we stood at the baggage carousel in Malta until we were the only ones there.  One of our bags had gone missing—it was mine.  We filed the report, but it wasn’t even in the computer, despite the fact that we had the bag tag stub.  We got to the hotel mid-afternoon, and Joyce and I took a nap, while Ellin and Bill researched a place for dinner.  We then went out and ate—it was lovely.

Our group gathered for the first meeting on Sunday at 6:30 PM, so as on Sunday morning, neither the KLM nor the Air Malta web site had heard of my suitcase, I was getting ripe.  Not in the system, doesn’t exist.  After breakfast the four of us decided to take a long walk around the area.  This part of Malta has a couple of peninsulas jutting out into the Mediterranean, and Sliema, where we are, is just across the water from Valletta, the capital.  In this map, Valletta is on the lower right, and Sliema is on the peninsula jutting towards Valletta:



We knew there is a large shopping mall near the tip of the Sliema peninsula, so we walked the periphery along lovely broad promenades:



Where there is a great view of Valletta across the narrow channel:



We went into the mall where I bought some clothes, and changed into them right there in the fitting room.  We then had lunch on a patio in the lovely weather—60’s and sunshine!  We met up with the group in the late afternoon, had an orientation talk and dinner.  A welcome surprise was my suitcase in our room when we went up after dinner!

Our first lecture was this morning, and we had an introduction to the Maltese language.  It’s quite a story, and I won’t go into too many details, but it is essentially a Semitic language, based mostly on Arabic, but written with Latin characters.  Here’s the example we were given:



It’s impossible to separate the language from the history, and we heard of some history dating back to 5200 B.C.E.  Spoken, it sounds a bit like Italian (and there’s lots of English and Italian in it), as it’s musical with a song-like quality like Italian. The Maltese language is generally the first language of Maltese children, spoken in the home, but English is introduced very early, by age four or so, and all Maltese are at least bilingual in Maltese and English.  The talk was very well done!

We then drove around the base of the channel and got this view of Sliema on the left and Valletta on the right:



We drove into Valletta and watched a movie at the Visitors Center, which was a very well-done abbreviated history of Malta in 45 minutes.  Impossible to summarize, it went through invasion and occupation by many invaders from Phoenicians on and it vividly described the Siege of Malta in WW II.

We then drove out of Valletta into the heart of Malta, passing fortified hill towns:



We arrived at our lunch spot, which specializes in rabbit:



It was served in a flavorful sauce, and as best as I could tell, under the sauce, it tasted like chicken:



I don’t ever need to try it again.  Joyce had fish.  After lunch we drove to the gardens of the Presidential palace, and then had a brief view of the palace itself.  The gardens were not very remarkable, except that  the simple existence of extensive gardens in a country where land is densely populated and the majority of the water comes from desalination is special.  On the outside of the presidential palace is this plaque:



Which Google Translate says means

13 December 1974
Malta pride
whose parliament
great majority
declared it
republic
the top honor gained
for the first time
in its event

Malta gained its independence from Britain in 1964 and was, for ten years, an independent sovereign Commonwealth “realm”, officially known as the State of Malta, with Elizabeth II as its head of state.  In 1974, Malta became fully independent and left the Commonwealth as it began life as a republic.  The plaque, apparently, honors that date.

The only room in the palace we were able to visit was the president’s private chapel:



Tomorrow we begin our exploration of Malta’s past with an early morning lecture on the prehistoric cultures who settled here.

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