I slept in a bit today finally stirring about 09:00. I brewed a cup of tea and watched the headline news on Al Jazeera English and CNN. Before I set out for the day, I visited a bit with Patrick and met his wife Diane and his six-year-old daughter Mariah who is a big Michael Jackson fan.
My plan for the day was to explore Valletta a bit more and see The Malta Experience so I took a leisurely stroll down to the northwest end of the city. To get into The Malta Experience, you enter through a long tunnel into the gift shop
where you can purchase a ticket to the show. You listen to the soundtrack of the documentary through headphones. It’s available in 20 languages so you’re bound to find one you understand. The Malta Experience is a 45-minute multi-media presentation of Maltese history and unsurprisingly you learn that these small but strategically located islands have suffered a lot by way of war, sieges, and invasions over the centuries. I expect to learn more about (at least some) of this history as I spend more time on the island but here is a partial list of the various empires or ruling entities that have conquered or invaded Malta beginning about 725 BCE with the Phoenicians who were followed in turn by:
Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Aghlabid Arabs, Fatimid Arabs, Normans (we’re up to the 12th century here and the reestablishment of Christianity as the main religion), Swabians, Angevins, Aragon, Sicily, and Ottomans (at war through most of the 16th century including The Great Siege of Malta in 1565). There’s some measure of stability until the late 18th century when Napoleon invades in that grey historical period that marks either the late French Revolutionary Wars or the early Napoleonic wars. Negotiations in Amiens are supposed to bring an end to Franco-British hostilities but poor little Malta is the major sticking point.
Eventually, both sides agree in the Treaty of Amiens to return the islands to the Order of the Knights of St. John with their sovereignty to be guaranteed by all the major European powers. The cessation of hostilities lasted about a year and the British never evacuated their military presence from Malta as per the terms of the accord. Finally, Malta is ceded to the British by the Second Treaty of Paris in 1815. Then of course, we have the two World Wars of the twentieth century and I haven’t included the various native uprisings or the failed attempts to invade or otherwise intimidate the islands by groups such as the Berbers and Barbary pirates. And after all that, here I am watching a film about it all in air-conditioned comfort.
As for the city itself, the first stone for Valletta was laid in March 1566 after the Great Siege. Thus, the city was built during the rule of the Knights Hospitallers (Order of St. John of Jerusalem). The city is named for Jean Parisot de Vallette who was the Grand Master of the order and who had successfully defended Malta from the Ottoman invasion. The idea was to not only to create a fortified city but also to strengthen the position of the Order in Malta. De Vallette, however, didn’t live to see the completion of the city that would bear his name.
From The Malta Experience, it was but a short walk to the Lower Barrakka Gardens which afford some wonderful views of the island and the sea as well as being a charming place to idly pass some time watching people and boats pass by or simply basking in the sun and the view.
I wandered about a bit more and decided that the term I’d use to describe Malta is decrepit elegance. I think my pictures will show this.
I stopped for a late lunch of grilled salmon and fig salad (a recipe I’ll modify for a dinner at home later this week) at the same café where I’d sat with John and Sally on Friday. I chatted a bit with Kathy, the hostess. (John had introduced us on Friday.) Kathy, I learned, is from Budapest and came to Malta to find work and for the warmer climate. She has a husband and teenage son in Hungary with whom she talks twice a week. I surprised her when I told her that John and I had just met because her impression from our interaction yesterday was that we’d known each other for a long time. Such are the connections you can make when you travel but you have to be open to them.
After strolling about a bit more and making some notes of the location of the sites I wanted to see, I returned to the flat with a definite purpose in mind. I took a book and a Cisk (the locally brewed beer) and spent the first of my nearly daily late afternoons and early evenings on the rooftop terrace. John and Sally were there before me, so we had a nice visit and John recommended one or two places for dinner.
Being Sunday, of course I chose Chinese! (Where else would a Jew in Malta go to eat on a Sunday night?) The food was good though not great and I thought it was a bit pricey with everything including the rice being a la carte. My entrée was squid in oyster sauce but it was saltier than I would have preferred. The owner told me that the cuisine is Cantonese / Shanghainese and quite different from my American experience with Chinese food which is generally presented as Cantonese, Sizchuan. or Hong Kong style.
However, there were two great moments of conversation I overheard at the table next to mine that made the evening an eavesdropper’s delight. The older couple sitting there had clearly been together for quite some time and often communicated in the sort of linguistic shorthand that couples sometimes devise. Apparently, his birthday was imminent and the first bit of back and forth had to do with a gift that she planned to buy for him. He kept insisting that she tell him what it would be and she was equally determined to keep it a surprise. He insisted he wouldn’t like it and she kept repeating that he’d love it. Then he played the “You buy things and I pretend to like them” card but she ignored that and wouldn’t relent in her insistence that he would love the gift as he always did.
The other bit of unintentional repartee happened when they were looking at the dessert menu. This offered two types of ice cream – the bottom of the menu listed a choice of plain scoops and the top offered fried ice cream. She was looking at the top of the menu and he at the bottom, so she kept insisting that the ice cream was fried and he that it wasn’t. This “Yes it’s fried!”, “No it’s not!” debate continued for over five minutes before they became aware that they were looking at different parts of the menu. In light of the earlier exchange, I found this hilarious. Tomorrow, the sightseeing gets serious.