Malta

Visited: June 2017

Duration of visit: 5 days

Capital city: Valletta

Population: 495.000 (2017)

• Comino’s island Blue lagoon with all its splendor and crowds.
• Fantastic sunset over Dwejra Bay.
• Beautiful view from my hotel in Valletta.
• Exploring the narrow streets of Valletta, with picturesque churches, Maltese balconies and soft honey colored limestone structures.

Malta is a rather small island, so I decided to sleep at one location, from where I could easily visit the surrounding areas as a daily trip with rented car. My base was in Valletta, the European capital of culture for 2018 and the capital of Malta. The first ever planned city in Europe, with the designs being drawn out by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in 1565.

Valletta is a remarkable walled city, where almost every street leads to the sea. The traditional Maltese balconies, city gates, well preserved and beautifully decorated churches, Parliament building, Opera house and narrow streets exceeded my expectation. I enjoyed it a lot!

There is no wonder why the city has been listed in UNESCO World Heritage since 1980 with so many monumental buildings in a small area of less than one square kilometer, which makes it one of the most concentrated historic areas in the World.

A quickly noticeable features of Maltese houses is outstanding balconies. They’re usually wooden, closed and painted in bright colors. There aren’t any forests on Malta and wood is in short supply, so they used to be quite exclusive and expensive to manufacture. Later Malta was colonized by British and wood from UK became available at more reasonable prices.

Sliema Chalet Hotel was located close to downtown. We enjoyed beautiful view over the sea from the good size room on the top floor. Even being accommodated on the 6^th floor it was very warm at night, but what really surprised me was the quantity of mosquitos at night. I have never seen so many mosquitos as during the first night in my hotel bedroom.

I was trying to turn the AC on, but it didn’t work. Since it was so hot, I couldn’t live the balcony door closed. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling mosquito bites all over my body. I looked at my girlfriend who was sleeping next to me and noticed that pillow case was full of black dots – mosquitos. When I started the war against them, I had to count up to 55, before cleaning the area.

Early next morning I mentioned the receptionist about hordes of mosquitos in my room and he calmly suggested me to close the balcony door, if I wanted my AC to work. Oh, stupid me, that was the problem! Of course, AC didn’t work with balcony door open.

We explored the islands of Malta, Comino and Gozo in the following days. The roads are good, distances short, everything well organized and signalized. You just need to be careful driving on the left side of the road.

Blue lagoon of Comino’s island is a beautiful clear turquoise water bay with intense – postcard colors, sand stretches and rock formation surrounding it. I knew it was one of the prime spots to locate crowds of visitors at any time of the day, but it is a must to see. Being there in the first half of June didn’t make any difference. The place was packed with tourists, but it was still wonderful.

I swam through the crystal water to the rocky area on the other side of lagoon. The water temperature was refreshing, people everywhere, some boats anchored on the other side of protection buoys. If there were palm trees instead of pure rocks and limestone structures, the location could be anywhere in the Caribbean.

Gozo Island is a smaller, much quieter, less touristic and relaxed island that the bigger brother. We crossed five kilometers gap between the islands on a ferry and circle the island anti-clock directions by car. We visited some interesting spots, had a swim in a quiet bay and drove back to Valletta in the evening.

The first stop were still active salt pans outside Marsalforn on the northern part of Gozo. There are about 300 salt pans, from which eight families harvest the precious mineral from the sea. The salt process is done only in the summer, from May until September. Some of these salt-pans date from the Roman times or earlier. These are simply shallow and flat holes dug in the soft limestone that are either filled with sea water in a natural way (storms and large waves) or artificially (by a pail/bucket dipped in the sea). The sun evaporates the water and the salt remains. A simple process that has not changed much through the centuries is 100% natural.

Dwejra with some of Gozo`s most stunning coastal formations and cliffs offering beautiful sunset, which was the perfect ending of a day trip to this island. Even without the Azure Window – also known as the Dwejra Window, the area is quite stunning and beautiful to explore. The limestone feature, which was in Dwejra Bay close to the Inland Sea and Fungus Rock, was one of the island’s major tourist attractions until it collapsed in stormy weather on 8^th March 2017 after a period of heavy storms, leaving nothing visible above the water.

Malta is a perfect holiday destination in the Mediterranean Sea offering the cleanest bathing waters and perfect balance between raw nature and comfort with facilities. Air connection with mainland Europe is good as well as inexpensive, people know how to treat tourists, food is delicious, prices reasonable. It seems that massive tourism is not present to extend as in some other top summer destinations in Europe.

On the other site historical heritage in and around the capital Valletta is long and colorful, marked by Carthaginians, the Romans and the Byzantines, who left their traces on the Islands. The Arabs let an important mark on the language of the Maltese, Napoleon Bonaparte took over for a short time until British took over ruling in Malta for over one and a half centuries until 1964, when Malta became independent.

British connection is strongly present even today, when Malta`s identification with Europe remains strong, emphasizing nationalism and neutrality, forming a cultural bridge between Europe and northern Africa.