June 24th is Christine’s 68th birthday and we get to celebrate this occasion in her homeland. Actually, this is the second time we’ve had the privilege and delight of doing this because in 1985, we were here in Malta celebrating her 37th birthday. My, my, how time does fly!
Christine wanted to go to Mdina for her birthday (yeah!) and do a couple of things. As you might recall, I had promised her that we would do a karozzin ride. That promise was made in Valletta, but we decided that a karozzin ride would be a little less scary if we did it in Mdina since there are fewer hills. I have a fear that going down some of those steep hills in Valletta that the horse might slip on the pavement, which is very slippery in places due to wear in the cobblestone. So we planned to do a karozzin ride in Mdina where most of the streets are level. She also wanted to do this little train ride, not in an actual train, but a vehicle that was made up to look like a train with 3 cars attached. The tour was a 25 minute ride through old Rabat and then to Mtarfa, the town on the hill across the valley. And then we were going to go to lunch at Palazzo de Piro.
We set off for Mdina on the #202 bus. We got seats, and I wanted to sit on the right-hand side to try and get a good photo of Mdina up on the hill. It’s amazing that one can actually get some pretty good shots bumping along on a bus looking through a dirty bus window. Going through Mosta, I got this nice shot of the Mosta dome. It really is a very beautiful church, Church of Our Lady of Assumption.
As we were getting closer to Mdina, I got ready to snap away. If I was lucky, there’s a roundabout and then a traffic light where the view is nice. And, yes! The bus stopped at the light long enough for me to take this picture.
And then just up the hill, through the dirty bus window came this shot.
A couple of other nice ones will come up a little later. After arriving in Rabat, we checked out a couple of souvenir places. We are so bad about all that and don’t like shopping, so we’ve been kind of stressed about finding a few things for our loved ones. We’ve put off souvenir shopping until the last minute. So be warned, loved ones! Souvenirs aren’t our thing.
We then went on our little train ride, which was fun and we got to see lots of things that we knew nothing about. But just as we were starting, we had to wait as many beautiful old cars went by and down the hill into the Mdina lower gate. We wondered if there was some kind of antique car show going on down in the moat (it’s not really a moat, but we don’t know what to call the ditch around the fortress walls). We’d check that out when we got done with our train ride.
Off on the train ride we went. We went through the Rabat old city, which we knew nothing about. Too bad we didn’t know, because we would have enjoyed wandering around its narrow streets and historic places. That will be on our list of things to do our next trip to Malta. We went by St. Agatha’s Church, St. Paul’s Church, the Wignacourt Museum, the St. Paul’s Catacomb complex, and through these very, very narrow streets.
And then on to Mtarfa. This is an ancient suburb of Mdina. Unfortunately, most of the Roman era buildings have been destroyed, which is unfortunate. The British moved in to Mtarfa in the mid-1800s and began building barracks and administrative buildings. There is a clocktower, built in 1895, that is the emblem for Mtarfa. Also, the British built a large naval hospital here, which can be prominently seen high on the Mtarfa ridge. Christine has vague childhood memories of visiting her father here when he was hospitalized at this naval hospital for treatment of an ailment. The hospital is now a secondary school. The barracks have been converted into a very large nursing home.
There were a couple of scenic overlooks that provided very nice views of the Maltese countryside.
We also got a scenic lookout of Mdina and Christine got a couple of really nice shots.
We also learned a little more about the Maltese railroad, which was the only railroad ever built in Malta. It ran from Valletta to Mdina. It operated from 1883 to 1931. It was about 7 miles long and the trip took about half-an-hour. Like many railroads, it was never financially sound, and so it stopped operations in 1931.
At the end of our train ride, we walked down to the moat to look at the antique cars. This was just an Old Cars Club and every once in a while, the members get together for an outing. Lucky for us that we got to see some of these beauties.
We then wandered in to Mdina and stolled some of the streets. We went to watch the Mdina Experience movie, which wasn’t what we thought it would be. It was another history lesson about all the conquering forces over time with just the added information about how all that affected Mdina. It was good reinforcement, though, and we now think we’d be able to give a fairly adequate history lesson about Malta.
The weather was quite overcast, and as we were walking around, there were a few raindrops, but then the sun would come back out. We made our way to Palazzo de Piro. We checked out the upper terrace, where there are striking views, but the tables were in the sun without umbrellas because it was too windy to put up the umbrellas. We didn’t see a table inside to our liking, so we walked down the street to Fontanella’s, another nice Mdina restaurant. We went up to their upper terrace where there weren’t any vacant tables, but they did have an enclosed area. We sat down, but with the windows not open, we found it very hot, so we moved on.
We both thought of a sweet little place called Coogi’s, and headed there. Coogi’s has a small courtyard with tables under umbrellas, an inside, and a terrace out the back. With the weather a little iffy, we opted for a courtyard table under an umbrella. As it turned out, this was a lovely spot for a birthday lunch. We shared a Maltese platter and a rocket salad, with Cisk for me and an iced cappuccino for Christine. It was really nice, and the umbrella proved to be valuable, because it did spit raindrops a couple of times while we were having lunch. Christine did most of the picture taking here (why didn’t I???) and so there aren’t many shots of her. And we still need more practice with selfies!
By now, it was growing very dark, not from lateness, but from storm clouds. Neither of us was much in the mood for a karozzin ride at this point. Guess we’ll need to save that for our next trip. We decided to head back to the bus stop. On our way, we picked up a couple of souvenirs that we spotted during the morning. We didn’t want to carry them around all day, but now we had our purchases. We got to the bus stop and were able to take a seat at the bus shelter. As we sat there, it began to pour down rain. Before we knew it, about 25 people came running into the bus shelter, packing themselves in to the relatively small space. Everyone was pushed in so that we were kind of trapped at the back, seated, so all we could see were peoples backs and bottoms. And then a whopping big thunderstorm began. There was one huge crackle of lightening and boom of thunder about a second apart which shut everyone up at the bus shelter since it was really scary. A few seconds later, everyone was talked with great animation all at once, probably because we were all scared to death.
Eventually the #202 came and we all got pretty soaked getting on the bus. We got seats, fortunately. At the next stop, there was no bus shelter and all the people getting on the bus were absolutely soaked to the skin. It was an unusual occurrence, this big thunderstorm and long downpour. Summer is not the rainy season in Malta. There was so much rain that all the streets were like rivers, of course, since most of the streets are downhill. The ground is so dry that so much rain just bounced off the ground and ran downhill. I’m sure the farmers were happy to see the rain. Christine said it was her birthday present to Malta – a good rain. She took some pictures out the bus window because the bus was running through lakes and rivers of groundwater throwing up big sprays. I’m sure lots of people walking along the streets and roads were even more soaked when the bus came by.
The thunderstorm lasted quite a while and we saw huge bolts of lightening right down to the ground. After about a half hour, the thunderstorm subsided and just a little rain continued. We were happy to be back home when we arrived. But, we walked in to the flat and turned on the lights. Nothing! We clearly had lost power. It was just in our flat, though, since the elevator worked and the hall light could be turned on. So, a phone call to the flat manager. We’re so glad that we now have a new number for him. Christine talked with him and he instructed her on what to do to reset the circuit breakers which were hidden behind a picture frame on the wall. But that didn’t work. He then instructed us to go to the first floor into a little room and find the main circuit board for our flat. We found something for #8 and flipped the switches down and up. Back up to the flat, but the lights still weren’t on. The flat manager said he’d come. In about 15 minutes, we were waiting for the guy to come, and then we heard the telltale beep of the microwave, so he must be in the main circuit room.
The guy arrived and walked us through all the instructions. He took us back to the main circuit room. Oh, we didn’t see the box higher up than the #8 box we fiddled with. So once the breakers were reset in the main circuit, we had lights. Again, we’re so glad we can now get in touch with the flat manager. And, while he was there, we told him that the AC wasn’t working. He said he didn’t know anything about AC, but said he’d be back in a minute. A minute later, back he came with a young fellow in tow who fiddled with the AC remote for several minutes and figured out how to correctly work the AC unit. Wish we had had AC during the heat wave last week! But now, if it gets hot again, we’ll be ready.
What a day we had! But, all in all, I think Christine did have a good birthday. Some of the happenings certainly will be long-remembered. Happy 68th birthday, Christine!
What a great Birthday adventure! Happy day after