One need not wonder why Christine’s favorite color is turquoise. Nearly her entire wardrobe is made up of various shades of turquoise. And here is the source of that love of turquoise.
At times, when the sun hits the wonderful waters of St. Julian’s Bay, the colors are varied and splendid. This is in Christine’s blood, her Maltese heritage and the colors of the sea.
This morning we walked up to The Imperial to meet Carol so she could take Christine to the pool. While they were swimming, I went off on a walk, not knowing where I would go, but just walking. One of the fun things when wandering is to look down the little side streets. Sometimes you’ll see amazing things, like the back of the Parish Church of Sacra Cour. Because this little street is at a higher elevation than the church, you’re just about in line with the dome.
I eventually ended up at what’s called the Sliema Front, or the Strand. This is where all the tour boats start so as you walk along the promenade, hawkers for each tour company try to entice you onto their boat. We’ve done many cruises from the Stand and enjoyed every one of them.
My walk along the Strand was for the purpose of taking pictures of the Valletta skyline. It is an iconic skyline with the Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel dome and the steeple of St. Paul’s Anglican Church. I never tire of seeing this site. And I’ll bore you with several photos.
The fortified walls of the city are very impressive, as well as the walls of the neighboring city of Floriana. These were all constructed in the late 1500s and early 1600s by the Knights of Malta. These photos don’t really show just how huge the walls are, especially below towards the right of the photos. That’s Floriana.
The harbor between Sliema and Valletta is called Marsamxett Harbour. The harbor on the other side of Valletta, between Valletta and the Three Cities (Birgu, Bormla, and Senglea) is called the Grand Harbor. With these two natural harbors, Malta became an important port city throughout the millennia with probably the Phoenicians being the first to create a port city in Malta.
At the end of Marsamxett Harbour is a small island called Manoel Island. There is a fort there build by the Knights in the 1700s which became the home of a major part of the British military after 1800. Manoel Island has attracted some developers who wish to create housing and shops. It is unknown what will become of Fort Manoel, but it is a beautiful Baroque building up on a hill overlooking the harbor and Valletta.
The area at the end of Sliema is called Tigne Point. It, too, was once the home of barracks and army buildings of the British. Tigne now is all tall, exclusive high rise buildings. I remember coming to Malta the very first time in 1985 and being at Tigne Point when there was still military buildings, no high rises, and being able to look over at Valletta. I was definitely awestruck at the time, and I still am. Also from Tigne Point you can see the marker at the mouth of the Grand Harbor where all the ships enter the harbor.
It was now time to meet Christine at The Imperial and get back to the flat for a bite to eat before taking off for our next adventure. One time when we were in Malta having lunch along the Birgu waterfront, some electric buggy-type vehicles went by and I thought that looked like fun. I had found a company called Rolling Geeks that provided these electric buggies. They included a GPS-guided tour around the Three Cities and other locations. I reserved our buggy for this afternoon. The advertisement was this.
We got a crash course on the route that we would follow (I should have paid better attention). We then got a crash course on how to operate the vehicle. Then off we went. At first, we followed a car from the company who was watching to see that we, and a buggy behind us, were being well-operated. After a short time, the guy sent us on our way. The entire course was about 18.5 kilometers. It took me a while to get the hang of operating the thing, but I wasn’t doing too badly. Christine, on the other hand, was quite frightened and wasn’t enjoying herself at all. There was a tablet on the dashboard that had a GPS. The route was showing as a blue line and the tablet would tell us which way to turn. Initially, we went out away from Birgu where there was little traffic, but then we eventually got back into higher traffic areas. I think our top speed was about 15 mph so cars were not too happy with us being in the road. We got lost several times. Fortunately, the tablet has an SOS button to push that connected us to the office. They were so nice in re-routing us and reprogramming the table. It got to be pretty ridiculous how much we couldn’t follow the route. But a calm voice over the tablet kindly directed us, each time adding, “you’re doing great, ladies.” The other thing the tablet did was tell us about the sites we were supposed to be seeing. I, however, was watching the road and dealing with traffic so I didn’t get to see much of what was being talked about. The other big issue was the bad roads which made our buggy bounce quite roughly. Malta also has a lot of speed bumps and if we didn’t come to a crawl over them, we would be practically bounced out of the buggy. Christine really did not like all the jarring around. Although belted in, the sides of the buggy were open, so you did feel quite exposed.
The final section of the tour was through Birgu. We were met at a turn into Birgu by another guy from the company how said he would lead us through Birgu. I’m not sure if he was doing that to prevent us from getting lost again, as it was already into hour 3 of a supposed 2-1/2 tour, or because there was some construction that we had to navigate around on a different route than programmed. At any rate, we were glad to have him escort us. And we went around all the little streets we had walked a few days ago, including going by where the bagpipers were. It was good to be on familiar territory. We eventually made it safely back to home base. I’m sure Christine will never do that kind of activity again, but I would. Despite getting off track several times, it was kind of fun to buggy around the Three Cities.
We then headed back across the Grand Harbor in a dghasja, which Christine does really enjoy. We then managed to get a seat on a crowded bus from Valletta back to Sliema. As a treat for a trying day, I told Christine we’d go to the restaurant Barracuda for a nice dinner. Barracuda is in the location of a restaurant called Piccolo Padre where we had eaten several times back in 2016. It’s also memorable because shortly after we ate there, the porch of the restaurant out over the water buckled and fell into the sea. Fortunately, no one was hurt as the restaurant was empty at the time. The building was renovated and heavy pilings were driven into the sea to support the porches. Barracudas is a very nice eatery with great views of St. Julian’s Bay. The only downside this night was there were several large tables of guests in the restaurant so it was very loud. Nevertheless, we both enjoyed our meals and we strolled home.
This was another exhausting day, but we’re still loving being here.