We landed in Valletta at about 9 pm, picked up our rental car, and made our way to the outer walls of the ancient city. Valletta was a British Colony for 150 years, so drivers are on the right side of the car and drive on the left side of the roads. Added in with a manual transmission and the dark, Brian was immediately panicked.
Six minutes later (it's a very small island), we found a short-term parking spot where Brian waited and I walked into the city to check in to our motel and figure out where we could park for the night. From the gates, it's a pretty steep slope down and then slopes back up pretty steeply on the other side. There were very shallow steps along the road which Brian researched and found were designed to help Knights walk in full armor without sliding down the street. I love random facts like that. At the bottom of the slope was a cross-street with a couple of restaurants and music and really good vibes. The rest of the city was really quiet...it was almost 11 pm by the time we got there. I got all checked in was told that there was a multi-level parking garage a few blocks away where we could park long-term.
From the parking garage, we were about 1/2 mile from our motel. We were pretty excited, so we took our time getting back...walking past the Tritons' fountain and through the massive stone gates into the illuminated city, which we had all to ourselves.
Our first day started with the most incredible breakfast feast at our motel. They had a continental breakfast with croissants, fruit, cold cuts, cheese, orange juice, yogurt, and fruit; and then also had a menu to order from which included some fancy options like eggs benedict, savory or sweet French toast, and various other options. We had cappuccinos and the sweet French toast with berries and mascarpone and it was so good. Then we hit the streets to explore. We've never stayed in one city for so long, so it was nice to just take it slow and easy and not feel like we had to cram a bunch of epic stuff into a short period of time. Despite it being October, it was in the high 80s while we were there and it's quite humid too. This made for a very sweaty and sticky few days of walking around. I was looking forward to exploring early (while the sun was still kind of low and the streets were mostly shaded) and then hanging out by our rooftop pool for the afternoon, but the pool was closed for maintenance, so we ended up just exploring all day long.
We grabbed snacks at the nearby market and took a midafternoon nap before setting back out again for sunset on the outer walls of the city.
The walls themselves were pretty incredible...I can't even image what the city was like back in it's heyday. Plus, Malta took a major beating during WW2 and was bombed more than anywhere else on earth (14,000 bombs were dropped and 30,000 buildings were destroyed), so many repairs have been made to it's original structures.
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| Above is what remains of the old Opera House. Below is what it looked like in all of it's glory :( |
It's amazing, considering how tightly packed everything and everybody is in Valletta, that there's anything or anybody left. Reading about it's history, let alone just it's place in WW2, was mind-boggling. I've included a few pictures from Google taken in the 40s after a round of bombings.
They've done an incredible job of bringing it back to it's glory and modernizing it over the last 80 years.
We took the scenic route back towards our motel and stopped for dinner at the cozy little spot on the steps just a block up from where we were staying. The food there was incredible and it was happy hour, so Moscow Mules were only 3 euros each :)
...and then stopped by the rooftop of our hotel to enjoy the view across the bay.
That night, I took a long bath and then we cozied into bed with a bottle of wine and watched The Maltese Falcon as a rainstorm rolled in.
On our second morning, we got up, ate breakfast, and went back out to explore Valletta. We started out in St. John's Co-Cathedral...one of the fancier churches I've been to. The entire floor was made up of customized grave stones, which I haven't seen before. There was also an exhibit dedicated to Caravaggio, who'd painted one of the main pieces in the Cathedral and who'd also painted a piece that we'd seen at Montserrat.
By the time we'd gotten finished with the church, the rain had let up and the sun was starting to come out.
After a couple of hours of exploring, the sun came out and it got sticky, so I made my way back to our motel for some roof-top pool soaking and sunbathing and Brian went to the War Museum. We met back up a few hours later and then took a water taxi across the bay to Birgu.
We walked through the narrow streets and found a jewelry store with the most beautiful rings and very reasonable prices, so I picked up a treasure souvenir. Then we made our way back to the marina for dinner and took the last water taxi back to Valletta.
I'll write about our last 3 days in another post, so see you then!
