Marvelous Malta
April 24, 2018
Malta is not very large, and I was on foot so I saw only a bit, but what I saw is breathtakingly gorgeous. After several days in hardscrabble Egypt, it was a joy to open the curtains in the morning and see the UNESCO Heritage Site city of Valletta, the capitol.
One of the best berths of our whole 60+port journey... the odd chain-mail to the far right is part of the public elevator from the pier up to the historic Upper Barrakka part of town.
You all know I’m a language nerd. I’m guessing this sign in Maltese says something about a restoration project... but I could be wayyyyy off.
The positively gold-encrusted high Baroque interior of the St John Co-Cathedral. Some 375 knights of the Order of St. John are buried here. Originally sent to Malta to tend to sick pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, the knights turned into a crack military order during the Crusades.
A ceiling in the [Knights’] Grand Master’s Palace...
The 16th-c. Casa Rocca Piccola (below) still belongs to an aristocratic Maltese family... the Marchioness leads some of the tours of her home. I’ve seen lots of fancy dining rooms in my travels but I especially liked these windows and the blue-sky-and-cloud paint job.
When you’re an aristocrat, you have to keep your family tree well-pruned...
In the Casa’s courtyard... he (she?) was an extrovert.
Being in the middle of the Mediterranean, Malta was bombed non-stop during WWII. We hiked down, down, down into the Casa’s subterranean bomb shelter. FDR honored the entire population of the island with this plaque, which bears reading...
Back on board, I opened my Malta Office. The Café had opened all the glass doors — they’d only done that one other time on the trip. #
ORIGINAL POSTS*
*I've been having trouble recently getting the Original Post links to work. If you'd like to read any of them: Go to the right column and scroll down to ARCHIVE, then locate April 2018. The Original Posts are there.
