Saturday, May 7, was our first poor weather day since we left home on March 18. It was very windy and cloudy with daytime rain, the first we’ve seen. But, that was a good thing because it meant we could laze around the flat all day and recover from our cliffs/temples day. And, a happy belated mother’s day to all our friends. We got a nice note from our daughter Eve letting us know that she’s coming back to Malta for a visit for a week in June, before she goes back to Burlington for the summer. This will be her first summer ever where she’s not working, finally taking advantage of that bonus of being a teacher. How nice for her!
Christine’s cousin Carol, whom we had dinner with last Thursday (we took pizza and salad over to her flat since she is still ailing), continues to keep us posted on things to do. She saved us a newspaper article reporting that this weekend was the Valletta Green Festival, which is an event celebrating green spaces in urban development. Of course, this interested us and so we planned for a Sunday outing to Valletta.
Valletta is such a fascinating city, and it is celebrating its 450th anniversary. We Americans know little about what’s “old.” I just love walking around Valletta and taking in the beautiful architecture.
One of the big projects in the Valletta Green Festival was the creation of an infiorata, artistic flower presentation, in St. George Square. The Environmental Landscape Consortium (ELC) in Malta has worked since 2002 beautifying the public parks, especially within the many roundabouts all over the country, with eye-popping flower plantings in fabulous colors. The ELC grew from seed, starting them 16 weeks ago, all the flower pots used to make the flower display, over 80,000 pots. The infiorata this year was in celebration of Valletta’s 450th birthday and the arrangement included a map of the first plan for Valletta. It was so colorful, and very large.
For a donation of one euro, one could go up to a balcony in the Grand Master’s Palace to see the entire infiorata from above.
The white area with 450 anniversary outlined in green is the depiction of the original shape of Valletta when first planned. And, I unknowingly caught Christine in the picture on the left.
Of course, while I was in the palace, I snuck a peak down a couple of hallways.
We may go on a tour of this palace at some point. It looked really fantastic. The courtyard was a nice space, as well.
As part of the Valletta Green Festival, two private gardens were open to the public, the Archbishop’s Palace Garden and the St. Catherine’s Monastery garden. I must say that the Archbishop’s garden was kind of a flop, meaning not much to see. The building, dating from 1591, has now partly been turned into flats. There is a small square garden containing mostly citrus trees and not much else. So this stop wasn’t too thrilling.
The fountain was probably the most interesting thing because it draws from a natural artesian well and flows all the time.
Then on to the next stop, a really interesting viewing because this is the first time in 400 years the monastery has been open to the public. The St. Catherine’s Monastery is actually a convent for Augustinian nuns. They are a cloistered, contemplative order (meaning little to no outside contact) and there are only 6 remaining nuns here at this monastery. The youngest is 64 and the oldest is 97.
Originally this building was the residence of Marquis Giovanni and Katarina Vasco Oliviero, and it was known as Casa Vanilla. In 1576, this couple went through a rough time when their son contracted the plague, and in desperation, Katarina, who was a devotee of St Catherine, pledged to donate her house to the Church if her son survived. The boy did survive and Katarina was adamant to keep her word. However, when in 1611, she got to know of a group of girls known as ‘Orfanelle della Misericordia’ who had decided to become cloistered nuns and were taking care of children with family problems, she decided to give her property to them.
In order to change this palace into a monastery, the couple had to buy some of the neighboring properties so that they could accommodate about 45 nuns, 15 girls and a chapel. This is why today, this monastery stretches out into Republic Street, St Christopher Street, Strait Street and also a section of St Dominic Street. Incidentally, within a year from their testament this noble couple died and since their son had already died before them, the cloistered nuns of St Catherine inherited all that remained. Their history has had ups and downs and eventually they did not have the funds to continue their care of children, but there have been nuns in this place for a very long time.
We entered the monastery down a very dark hallway that went down a level via a slanting, uneven pathway to the garden level. However, it was also what I call the basement level and we were able to circumnavigate all the rooms around the courtyard garden. The monastery basement wasn’t any different than most of our basements – full of junk!
I could really picture old nuns in black habits scurrying around doing the washing and baking and other things in all these various stone walled and floored rooms back in olden times. The remaining nuns live comfortably up on the light, airy floors above the garden. They even have a rooftop on which to enjoy views of Valletta and the sea.
A really creepy part was the crypt. Apparently, when the nuns die, they are buried in the crypt room at the monastery. There is a nice little shrine to St. Catherine just before entering the crypt, but then you go in this room where the nuns are buried. Around the room are photos and little remembrances of the more recently dead nuns. But then there was a glass case having the skull and bones of some nun, which was kind of gross.
The garden was quite lovely, though, and the nuns have a long history of growing plants and herbs for making natural remedies. It was a very peaceful garden.
We were fortunate to be able to partake in such an historic occasion, entering a monastery than has not been open to the public for 400 years.
We then headed for Upper Barrakka Garden, but passed by a beautiful church. We wondered which church it was and saw that the front entrance doors were open (this being Sunday), so in we went to find out about the church. We were delighted to find it was St. Paul’s Shipwreck Church, a place on our to-do list. This church commemorates St. Paul’s time in Malta and it has two significant items. One is part of the pedestal upon which St. Paul was beheaded, and the other is a piece of St. Paul’s wrist bone. The church also has a huge wooden statue of St. Paul that is carried through the streets on St. Paul’s feast day, which is February 10, a really big deal in Malta. St. Paul is the patron saint of Malta. The church is fantastically beautiful.
After seeing this beautiful church, we treated ourselves to a cappuccino and a pastizzi. Then it was on to Upper Barrakka Garden. Upper, and its sister Lower, Barrakka Garden was built on top of the bastions and was built for the Knight’s entertainment and enjoyment back in the late 1500s. There are arched walkways, a fountain, green space, statues and plaques, and a fantastic view overlooking Grand Harbor and the Three Cities. One level down from Upper Barrakka is what’s called the Saluting Battery where canons are fired daily, which is a tradition started by the British. Upper Barrakka (and Lower, above the Great Seige bell) are just wonderful spots.
After spending a bit of time at Upper Barrakka, we wanted to go down to stroll along the Valletta Waterfront. We took the Barrakka lift down, bypassing a long downhill walk (Fran, you were with us as we glided downhill). We came out right at water’s edge and saw the old Valletta Customs House and also got a real sense of how large and massive the walls and bastions are.
We wandered down all the shops along the Valletta Waterfront. The row of buildings used to be the storehouses of the Knights and their commerce area. Now, it is the cruise port terminal. There was a ship in port, and also Mother’s Day, so it was crowded as there are many nice restaurants along the waterfront. We eventually picked a place for a late lunch, waited a bit for a seat, and then had a nice lunch while people watching and enjoying a fine day.
After lunch we walked back to the lift, and once back up top, we decided to stop in at the Museum of Archeology. At all the temples we have visited, it was made known that many of the items found at these temples have been placed in the museum, so we wanted to check out some of things we’ve been learning about.
The museum is a good one with manageable displays with enough information, but not overwhelmingly so. We got audio tour guides, which provided helpful information about what we were looking at. All the Neolithic period material was very familiar to us. But it is amazing just how old some of this material is, considering that some of the temples in Malta were constructed 1,000 years before the pyramids. While the museum focuses much attention on the Neolithic period, there were also displays covering Bronze Age settlements and the Phoenicians influence in Malta.
I kept thinking of our friend Deeny, the potter. So much of the archeological work described here focused on the importance of pottery and how pottery is used to date findings. I found it fascinating, including a video I watched that showed how a primitive kiln was constructed with nothing more than a pile of rocks. The clay pots were placed on piles of straw and twigs, surrounded by fist-sized chunks of rock, and then the whole thing was set afire. When cooled, the rocks were removed and out came wonderful pots.
After the museum, we were too pooped to do anything else, so we walked to the bus terminal, and waited with a crowd for our #13 bus. Although we got on, we had to initially stand, squished in like sardines, with the bus driver yelling several times “move back, please,” so more people could squeeze in. Ultimately, 2 young women gave us their seats, which was really nice, but I can’t really accept yet that young people look at us as old people needing a seat on the bus. But by now Christine was feeling uncomfortable from a bad back, so sitting in a secure position was good for her rather than standing and swinging around from the hand holds overhead.
So yet again, we had a wonderful and exhausting day. As I write this, I really get in touch with how much we cram in to one day, so no wonder we’re exhausted. Yet, what a blessing this all is that we are here and are able to go on such excursions and adventures. Tired, yes, happy, YES!