Today we had a morning adventure. We decided to walk the opposite direction from Sliema around Balluta Bay and then around Spinola Bay. The body of water we see directly out our balcony doorway is St. Julian’s Bay. Balluata Bay is to our left and we can’t really see it. Its landmark, though, is the church that Christine’s mother went to when she lived in our neighborhood. Then on further is Spinola Bay.
If you look at the bottom right quarter of this map you’ll see Balluta and Spinola Bays. Our flat is off the map from the lower right edge, but not too far off.
Spinola Bay is a lovely area. It’s very charming, even though it is ringed by high-rise condos and apartments. You can tell that it still is somewhat of a fishing village, especially down along the water. There’s a boat yard there, underneath a fashionable restaurant. And all along the bay front were little garages where luzzu owners housed their boats and fishing gear.
Across the bay from our flat is the Cavalieri Art Hotel. In the lobby and around some of the wings of the hotel there is a wonderful art gallery, thus the name of the hotel. We wandered around the first floor for a bit looking at paintings. We got a map from the concierge and checked out the gift shop. We then went on around the neighborhood behind the hotel.
Right across the street behind that hotel is a huge construction project. You can probably see the two huge cranes in the photo above. We learned that it is an expansion of a luxury residential facility and marina. We found the current facility and marina, called the Portomaso. Wow! How the 1% live! We walked down a huge stairway to get to the marina.
Portomaso is a beautiful facility. The marina has all sorts of yachts and luxury boats.
We walked all around this marina and out to the seawall. It was really cool to be walking out to an area we see across the bay. In the high wind, the surf was crashing up against where we walked. Fortunately today, it was much calmer.
Christine then identified a building around Spinola Bay where she believes her family lived. It’s interesting because she gets a very strong sense about a place and is quite sure that she has a connection to it.
One of the things Eve said she would do in Malta if she was here for any length of time is to have a drink in all the hotel bars. We thought that was a grand idea, although bars might not be our only preference. So, we’ll try to have some kind of beverage in as many hotels as we can, especially the ones with good sea views. We’re getting good at snooping around in hotels and marinas. Today, we started with a nice cappuccino in the Cavalieri Art Hotel. Here’s to you, Eve!
We saw lots of neat things and what is really cool is that now, when we look out across the bay and see parts of Spinola, we know exactly what we’re looking at. It really adds to the ambiance.
We did a little grocery shopping on the way home. We had lunch at the flat, and then it was time for Christine to conduct a GoToMeeting with a client. Thankfully, all went well with the internet and she was able to have a long G2M and everything worked well.
This was a nice day. We had a little adventure and Christine had time to work. The balance was just right.
Here’s a couple more pictures. This is right across the street from our flat. The promenade runs about 5 miles around Spinola, Balluta, and Sliema. There’s a really cool round, marble sculpture fountain just across the street. The ball is moved by a jet of water underneath it. Christine likes to push the ball so that is moves in different directions..
