A weekend in Malta January 28, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany, Travel , trackbackMy favourite client decided I needed to do a site visit to Malta, and as a Kiwi suffering badly from mid-winter sun deprivation, who was I to say no? I stayed on over the weekend, to have a bit of a look around at one of the very few European Mediterranean countries I’ve not been to.
It’s always interesting to visit places which attract huge numbers of tourists in the summer during January when its cold and wet, and the tourists few and far between. Malta is an interesting place for a city break though, and by no means reliant on its beaches for its attractions.
Valletta must be the smallest capital city in the world, in one of the smallest sovereign nations. The walled city itself is tiny, and full of well-organised streets on a grid rather than the maze similar towns tend to be, and wandering around it in a morning is quite easy. There are plenty of distractions though, particularly the wonderfully Hapsburg Cafe Cordina, with a fabulous range of cakes and pastries, excellent coffees and an elaborately painted ceiling. Avoid the Knights Hospitallier exhibition though, especially in January when there are no other tourists around and its rather creepy down in the tunnels below the old hospital, with dim lighting and graphic diaoramas of the results of late medieval warfare.
Malta is fascinating because it has been inhabited for so long, and layer upon layer of history has settled into the limestone which covers the island. Two of the earliest sights were the highlight of my weekend. The Hypogeum was carved out of the rock between 3600 and 2400 BC, and goes down about 10M, in a way a Stonehenge in reverse. I’m intrigued by the idea that people came to this little place for about 1200 years, burying their dead and who knows what else. It’s very carefully protected, and only 80 tourists are allowed to go through each day, so book well before you arrive in Malta if you’re going in the summer.
On Sunday, I hired a car and risked the narrow, flooded, potholed roads to get to the temples at Hagar Qim and Mjandra, in the South of the island. By then the weather had cleared up, and I had a happy afternoon exploring the stones in the sunshine. It must be risky with such delicate monuments, but being able to get close to the stones, see inside and touch them makes all the difference.
I presume it is because of the limestone that these monuments were built, and still exist. There’s a particularly soft limestone here which is fairly easy to work, so although building these must have been a huge task, it would not be an overwhelming one. The stone was probably quarried locally.
Finally, Mdina, the ‘Silent City’. This tiny walled city was the capital of Malta until the Knights of St John built Valletta, and is still the archbishop’s seat as well as the home of members of the island’s aristocracy. On Saturday night, my colleague took my for dinner at the Medina Restuarant where we had an excellent meal in an old palace. The creme caramel came in slices, rather than those mean little single servings which are far more common, and the scallops were the best I’ve had in a long time.
My lasting impressions of Malta are of excellent food, welcoming people, solid rock built forts, churchs and neolithic ruins, and terrible roads.
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