Pre-Travelogue. Midnight in Zurich. 8/27/22
Greetings from Zurich –
Just a reminder… as I say every time I write this blog… feel free to delete or ignore; no hard feelings; everyone is busy.
Anyway, here we are in Switzerland – a very calm and not very exotic trip, so probably shorter notes than usual and less exciting. Bigger travel to come in December. We are here in Switzerland for Michael’s niece’s wedding in Geneva which will take place on Saturday, September 3. Given that we were in Geneva in May en route to Malta, we were originally coming just for the wedding – four days and then back to the US. But as we thought about it and reconsidered. We decided to make a little Switzerland journey out of the trip—visiting cities we have not been to in many years. And so, here we are at the start of our trip – in Zurich. Took non-stop flight from SF and after watching 5 episodes of Yellowstone on the flight—I’m now hooked!—and one little sappy story about Barack meeting Michelle, arrived in the ultra-clean city of Zurich and similarly clean and scrubbed Switzerland. Apparently there are about 2,000 homeless in the entire country of nearly 9 million people. They are pretty invisible, and I have heard that there are very strict laws against sleeping on streets and in parks.
After checking into the tiny Hotel Helmhaus which is on the edge of the Old Town and about one block from the river, we set out for a walk along the river’s edge. The water is incredibly clean and supposedly is safe to drink. The Limmat River runs through the whole city and it is a delightful respite. As we strolled we noticed that there were literally hundreds or more people floating in the river and hundreds more in line to get into the river. Each had a little duck float that they were holding, tied to, or merely playing with. Adults, kids… everyone. And this had been going on for hours. Apparently it’s the end of an art week and this was some kind of celebration. I think it might also have been a bit of a fundraiser, but not sure (hope it was since it could have yielded some good funds for some organization). We watched everyone enter the water and float down river and get replaced by others just entering the river.
After a brief nap, we headed to Gul, a Turkish restaurant we had read about which turned out to be pretty great. Very casual.. three courses as a “surprise menu”.. but each course consisted of about four small plates. It was about a mile from the hotel so we strolled back at a leisurely pace passing lots of cyclists and pedestrians along the way. Tomorrow, after we pick up our rental car, we head to Lucerne; we will be back in Zurich for three nights at the end of our trip. Our drive will be: Zurich to Lucerne to Thun to Bern to Geneva, and back to Zurich. Hopefully pretty relaxing, although I did bring the final chapters of my book with me to try to move that along to meet my deadlines.
All the best –
Fern
8. Final Day in Malta. 5/20/22
Greetings –
May 20th–our final day in Malta, we headed to Rabat which was originally part of Mdina or vice versa but about a thousand years ago the Arabs walled and fortified Mdina. Actually. yesterday, when we went to Domus Romana we were at the edge of Rabat. While there are many religious sites in Rabat including the grotto where St Paul is said to have lived when he was shipwrecked, and a cave painted with 14th century murals (where St Agatha—the one whose breasts were cut off) was supposed to have hidden.. we opted for the 21st century and strolled the wonderful narrow streets (which are actually several centuries old) where people still live and work.
We stumbled upon an open door and were greeted by Harry Mallia, a former “tree surgeon” turned woodworker who invited us into his teeny studio. In what is probably less than 100 sq ft, he is turning wonderful wood bowls and other small vessels, in shapes driven by the grain and shape of the wood. He collects stubs and branches of pruned trees grown on the Maltese Islands as his medium and as he explained, he feels he is keeping pieces of Maltese trees alive forever. Basically he turns and hollows the stub to his desired thickness (really thinness) without letting the wood split, and then he preserves the wood by using natural oils which sometimes he must do over and again for as much as 300 days. He signs all of the pieces HMH, which doesn’t stand for his name which also happens to use the initials HM; rather it stands for something like “heart, mind, hope”. We were totally captivated by not only the objects and his love of wood but his passion for the integrity of wood and of his work. This is a guy who truly loves what he does. We wound up talking and seeing all of his tools and his lathe.
Of course, now Mike is set on getting a lathe and adding this skill to his own passion for carpentry. Harry loves to talk about wood and he found a good listener and questioner in Mike, so he went on and on and would have been happy to keep going, but we might have missed our flight. Since we spent so much time there we figured we should make a purchase. Each piece is signed and at the bottom he carves the number of hours each piece took him to make. His prices are based on that number (of hours it took him to create) times 12.5 euros. The pieces are all very small—between 2” and 8” I’d guess. I was most interested in a very simple plate, but It turned out that was his plate.. the one he’s been eating on for several years. It’s clear he practically lives in this tiny studio. So, the plate was not for sale. We bought a lovely little (2.5”?) vessel made of hibiscus wood. He made sure it was signed and then gave us some authentication papers and some instructions for keeping it in good shape… mostly we need to remember to oil it once every century!!! I think we will pass on this information to someone else.
From there we hustled to grab a quick bite along our walk back to Mdina and the hotel where our bags were waiting. We then drove to the Malta Airport in Valletta, dropped off the car, and flew to London (about 3.5 hours). We were reminded by the rental car folks of our little mishap with the car being stuck in that nasty hole and AAA coming to tow us out—-they had a video to remind us. Funny, so much had happened between then and now, we totally forgot about it!
And then we realized all the places we wanted to see but didn’t find time. It was a good trip and I’d definitely recommend a visit to Malta. You need at least a week to really see it and feel it. It’s known for its beaches and diving and we never went anywhere near those places, but we did note that the water was crystal clear. The old settlements and towns are incredible—wonderful to walk in the day and also in the nighttime. It’s unfortunate what they’ve done in recent years on the outskirts of all these wonderful towns and villages—uncontrolled growth and very ugly buildings. Not sure who is building all these apartment complexes and for whom; their population is not growing and it appears that these new condo or apartment high-rises are empty. My guess is developers see Malta as a prime location for second homes for Europeans??
Anyway, if you stay inside all the wonderfully charming older cities and towns you’ll never see those places. You only run into them when you’re on the road driving from one place to another. People are delightfully friendly; the streets are immaculate; food is good and at times great; and though it’s a small island with about as many people as Oakland it’s quite international because so many foreigners come here to work. It’s also more cosmopolitan than you’d expect given that so many young and middle-aged Maltese return after living abroad.
Enjoy Malta. Happy to make suggestions.
Fern
Day Seven. 5/19/22. Mdina, Mosta, and Rabat
Today, we walked practically every street in Mdina, the wonderful original capital of Malta until the seafaring Knights arrived in the 1530s and sidelined the “city.” But it exists almost as if time stood still… bustling with tourists and school children on class trips by day and totally silent at night when only the 300 residents and about 40 guests at the hotel and some small inns remain (us among them). We visited the Domus Romana, which had been a Roman villa around 100 BC and over centuries others built on top of it and the remains were finally discovered in the late 1800s. A tiled central courtyard was found and during WWII several feet of sand were poured on top of that floor to protect it. We also stopped into a few churches, and lunched in a lovely courtyard. Then we drove out of Mdina to Mosta to see the Mosta Dome—a gigantic dome (used to be the third largest dome in all of Europe but is now the fourth largest because a newer and supposedly bigger dome was built in Gozo in the 1970s. Still the people of Mosta believe their dome is bigger if you measure the width rather than the height. Either way….. the Mosta Dome is visible from much of the island.
We really just wanted to see the inside space of the dome which is a parish church, but when we arrived we had to follow the course prescribed at the ticket stand. So we started by walking down some rather precarious uneven concrete stairs that led to the bomb shelter about 15’ under the plaza where many Maltese hid during WWII. Then we emerged back up…at the other side of the plaza and began the trek up 74 steep spiral stairs (again pretty uneven) to reach the balcony at the rim of the dome. From there we could see the inside of the church and also see the dome up close. And then it was down another set of 74 spiral steps to get into the actual church space.
Also, as the story goes (most of it factual), on April 9, 1942 about 300 people gathered for Mass, when a German bomb hit the Mosta Dome. The bomb sank to the floor and somehow never exploded. The Maltese have interpreted this to be a miracle. There is a replica of the bomb in the lobby of the church, along with photographs of the church during WWII.
Malta is definitely not a country for people with disabilities or those having difficulty walking. Indeed, in the whole week we really never saw anyone in a wheelchair. Then again, you do see a lot of elderly people, some with canes. Not sure how they really get around.
And continuing my quest to know who is living in Malta, I’ve now questioned all service people we have encountered (waiters, hotel reception folks, bartenders, taxi drivers, car rental folks, shopkeepers, etc.) and thus far we’ve met (mostly young people) from India, Italy, France, Australia, Spain, Philippines, Africa (unclear where); many came during Covid and several had interesting stories about their route. One Indian waiter (who holds an MBA) had left India in 2019 to do graduate work in Europe and then had to leave during Covid—initially he went to Portugal and then to UAE and then to Malta. He’s from Delhi, but finding Malta (especially Mdina) peaceful and wonderful. The manager of the restaurant we ate at last night was from Malta, but 12 years ago decided to move to the US (NY in fact) and says in retrospect “What was I thinking coming from this little island and going to such a busy place… but he said for three years he learned that he could get anything he wanted at any time of the night; everything was always open. From NY (he lived in Kips Bay) he went to Chicago, took a train across the US to Los Angeles via Colorado and New Mexico, and eventually took a job with an airline in Abu Dhabi for five years… met his wife who is Japanese and studied in Boston.. and returned to Malta to raise a family. His kids are fluent in Japanese!
He told us that there are a lot of Maltese that go to the US as many have relatives who fled Malta after WWII because conditions were so bad. And there are Maltese who live in the states for a few years and eventually return because they miss their own country. A group of them gather every July 4th at a plaza and have a 4th of July barbecue and sing American songs and talk about their times in the US.
We drove back to Mdina and then headed to dinner at Root 81, which is named after an old bus route. It’s situated on the stairs leading from the edge of Mdina to Rabat. It’s about an 8-minute walk…or at least that’s what it should be. But there was a lot of construction going on and the path and the stairs were closed. We wound up walking on a major road, in the dark (not helped by my very NY travel wardrobe which is almost all black). There aren’t any real shoulders on the roads here and definitely no sidewalks on the edge of major roads. Then we reached the stairs and they were still under construction, so we climbed very uneven concrete. But I lived to tell the story. After a nice dinner, we walked back along the major roadway which definitely was not laid out for pedestrians. And we spent our last night at the lovely Xara (pronounced “charra”) Palace in the “silent city.”
Tomorrow we plan to walk into Rabat and then head to the airport. More tomorrow about Rabat and final thoughts on Malta.
Fern
Day Six. 5/18/22. Valleta to Mdina
Greetings –
Took a walk this morning along some Valletta streets we had not yet visited, including the network of pedestrian streets; grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed to the garage at the bus depot to get the car to bring to the hotel to load our bags. Went pretty much without a hitch. Arrived back at the hotel at about 3:00 pm and headed out of town to Mdina (pronounced “emdina”). The route was fairly simple and we arrived at 3:30 pm. Everything is very close in Malta, given how small the island is. We could have easily stayed in Valletta and driven to Mdina as a short day trip, but we had decided it would be fun to stay in another town and be able to see it in both day and evening, and we are glad we did that.
After checking into the Xara Palace—housed in a 17th Century palazzo; 17 very spacious rooms—we took a walk through the fortified city of 300 residents (although it is contiguous with the city of Rabat which has more than 10,000 residents. Our room has a loft sleeping area that you access via a spiral staircase; given that we always seem to leave something on the wrong level, we are getting a lot of steps and flights into our exercise app.
The hotel has only 17 rooms. We have what is referred to as a “street view”, but because of the floor we are on and the proximity of buildings within the fabric of the town surrounded by ramparts, we really look at a wall—albeit a very old and nice stone wall. There is a bronze plaque on the building that says “The Maltese nobility assembles within the walls of this ancient palazzo in order to elect its Committee of Privileges.”!!
Mdina sits on the tallest point of the island of Malta. It was founded in the 8th Century and its total area is less than one kilometer…I said it was small. It was the original capital of Malta through the Middle Ages. It’s referred to by the Maltese as the “silent city”—which I assume refers to the fact that there are so few residents and so many churches and convents. I have no idea just how many churches and convents there are in this little village—but I’m pretty sure that we walked by at least 9 churches and convents.
Then we headed to dinner at the Michelin star restaurant called de Mondion which is conveniently located inside the hotel. We opted for the a la carte menu rather than the “tasting menu”—but there was a lot of tasting that they brought to the table as small starters, including a cracker like bite that had tiny caviar sprinkled about and perhaps some other goodie; a tiny cracker shaped like an ice cream cone but very very thin, inside of which was some kind of beef tartar and horseradish; a paper thin tomato that wrapped local goat cheese. Then something that looked like a small tomato arrived, but again the red tomato like covering was wrapping some kind of tuna and capers. Eventually we got to the actual meal: I began with amazing sweetbreads that came with tiny turnips and some kind of anchovy with sage and Mike went for the octopus that had some unagi and also some vegetables that were cut like linguini. For the main courses, I had the pigeon which had beetroot and some kind of truffle cream and a pepper sauce on the side. Mike had the beef fillet and I’m not certain what was with that dish. For dessert we shared a lemon yogurt souffle. But in addition, they brought tiny tastings of panna cotta and some other thing. We had a bottle of wine from Malta—we’ve been drinking local wine the whole time and the one we’ve settled on is called Marinisi (sp?)
By the time we finished dinner, you could have rolled us to the room.
More tomorrow about Mdina as we will explore it more and possibly also Mosta which is nearby.
All the best-
Fern
Day Five Malta. 5/17/22. Tow Trucks and Towers
Hope all is well.
What started out as a really laid back day headed north to the “wild” areas of Malta turned into a wild experience for us, but not because of the natural currents.
We had breakfast at the hotel and headed out to get our car at the garage; following yesterday’s fiasco, today was a breeze—found the car quickly and set out for the day. Mike is now quite good at British style driving and I’m the official navigator. We were headed north to the area around Mellieħa whose landscape is different from the other areas we’ve visited. All went well, except for a few glitches of missing some turns but those were quickly corrected and we arrived at Paradise Bay, where signs told us there was no nude bathing (so we obviously had to change course) and then we were just outside Mellieħa. We saw a sign for the Red Tower and decided to investigate. When we arrived at the top of the hill (pretty high up), I mentioned to Mike that there was a parking spot on the left side, but Mike chose a spot on the right side; there weren’t any markers for parking so it was a bit of a scramble. It was a dirt parking area and there were very very few cars. We then climbed the stairs up to the Red Tower and were greeted by a very chatty 80+ year old who clearly likes his volunteer job.
He inquired where we were from and told us his daughter lives in San Carlos and had worked for FaceBook for several years and then went to a startup with even better salaries! Her husband works for Apple. And then he began to explain about the history of the Red Tower which is also called Saint Agatha’s Tower. FYI Saint Agatha was apparently a feminist and is the patron saint of breast cancer and wet nurses. Because of her “activism” her breasts were cut off and in many paintings of her you can see her breasts on the ground. The story of the Tower is complicated—it was built between 1647 and 1649, and its design is quite different from other towers built at the time. It was the last large bastioned tower to be built in Malta and has clear views of both Comino and Gozo islands and at the time could also see eastward to the line of other watchtowers along the north shore of Malta. It was the Knights’ primary stronghold in the western part of Malta, and had enough ammunition and supplies to withstand a siege of 40 days.
Anyway, we climbed the spiral staircase to the top and got really great views of the coast and the land below. And then we headed out on our journey to visit several coastal villages and areas. We got into the car and Mike inched forward and then into reverse to turn the car around to leave the parking area. But the car didn’t go anywhere and the tires sounded like they were spinning. I got out to see what the problem was and saw immediately that the left tire was suspended in a square hole that was about three feet deep, about two feet wide and about a foot long.
There also was a very large rock wedged between the underside of the car. There was no way for us to get out of the lot; no way to move the car. Additionally there must have been some kind of plastic barrier that was “announcing” this ditch-like situation, which we never noticed or thought it was merely announcing a parking space on that right side. If it wasn’t such a mess, the whole thing might have been pretty funny.
A young couple immediately tried to help. I think they were Scandinavian. But they didn’t have a rope and only had a small rental car like us. Then a woman from Malta came to help and she phoned the rental car company figuring she could do a better job of explaining our location. At this point, Hertz said they would send a tow truck but they are based at the airport at the completely other side of the island. It would take at least an hour. We resigned ourselves to this solution and went back inside the red tower because it was cool and there were chairs. The guide we met when we entered was leaving and the second shift (another 80-year-old guy) had just come on duty. We explained what happened and I said “I’m really glad I was not the driver.” He responded, “I just heard him whisper that it was all your fault!” Later when he saw me photographing the tow truck and the car’s situation, he stated to Mike: “Uh oh… she’s going to post all of this on FaceBook!”
We hung out near the 10-minute video of the history of the tower and I think we “saw” it about 8 times (although neither of us paid much attention). Finally the Hertz guy showed up with a huge flat-bed truck, tied our car to his truck with a cable and pulled our car out of the “ditch” and away from the rock…. And we were on our way again, just about two hours later than planned.
We decided to eat at a beachside place called Munchies. Given the options, this was the best place. We only had salads and they were actually OK. By then it was about 4:45 so we decided to head back to Valletta to avoid arriving in the dark and encountering any more problems. We parked in our now “usual” space (which we now know exactly how to find) and strolled along Republic Street.
By the way, yesterday we stumbled upon a demonstration about a journalist and assumed it was tied to the Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israeli forces, but it turns out it was about a corruption journalist who was murdered in 2017. Daphne Caruana Galizia had uncovered all sorts of corruption in Malta’s government. She was killed by a car bomb. A recent report conducted by a group of judges released last week says that the state “failed to recognize the real and immediate risks” to the journalist’s life and “failed to take reasonable steps to avoid them.” According to the Guardian, “Her death was met with outrage across Europe and embroiled Malta’s ruling Labor Party in a political scandal.” The report concluded that the assassination was either intrinsically or directly linked to Caruana Galizia’s investigative work. There is a lot more to the story and I’m sure you can google to find out more. Caruna has been described as a “one woman WikiLeaks.”
Then we headed to Rubino’s for dinner. Rubino’s is a little family-run restaurant about 7 blocks from our hotel. You enter at ground level with the restaurant being on the first floor of a building that has upper floors. There’s a small dining room on that level with about four tables and then another room at the next level down, also with about four or five tables, and then another level below there is an additional dining area with one long table, for probably about ten or twelve diners—a family. The food was really good. We started with stuffed zucchini flowers and moved on to orecchiette with an Amatriciana sauce and spicy Maltese sausage. Then we shared the blue ling fish that was cooked in parchment with white wine, herbs, and lemon. The fish just melted in your mouth. Potatoes and veggies accompanied the main course. With this we had a bottle of Maltese wine.. the Marinisi which we’ve grown to really like. And we ended with a homemade cheesecake that was smothered in fresh lingonberries. Chatted a bit with one of the owners and headed on our walk back to the hotel.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow we leave our little home away from home at 66 St. Paul and head to Xara Palace Hotel in Mdina (they use a lot of consonants in Maltese). It’s only about a 30-minute drive, but we decided to stay two nights in central Malta to see what it’s like. Mdina used to be the capitol…
Best-
Fern
Greetings-
Hope all is well; we are once again in shock about the most recent events back home. But here we are in Malta and focused on understanding more about this small country. We’re also trying to understand their politics. As I understand it, since Malta gained independence from Britain in 1964, its politics has primarily been dominated by the Christian democratic Nationalist Party and the Labour Party (social democrats). More on this later.
We were quite late in getting our act together this morning, but eventually hit the streets and walked to the garage (near the bus terminal) where we had parked our car last night. It’s next to impossible to find street parking in the old section of Valletta so we knew early on we’d need to find a garage or parking lot and then walk into town, which was fine. Anyway, we got to the garage and I recalled we had parked on level “-2A” so we headed there. We walked the whole level and could not find or car. We remembered that it was in a sort of triangular shaped area near the ramp. It was really dark in the garage last night but we were sure of these details. But alas, no car. So we went to the cashier desk and explained where we thought we parked the car. The guy said we could not have parked on the second level because that is a “members only” floor and that we must have parked on level 4, 5, or 6. I was sure we did not park on those levels but again the guy stated that levels 2 and 3 were member only. So we went to level 4 and searched everywhere— no car. We had now spent about 25 minutes looking for the car and it was beginning to feel as if we would never find the car or that we needed the garage folks to drive us up and down each lane of every floor. We were about to look at level 5, but I finally convinced Mike that we should return to level 2 where we both thought the car was parked. As it turned out we were parked in a little side section of the 2nd level that is entered before the “members” use a special fob to enter that level. 45 minutes after we entered the garage, we were finally in our car. But then, we had used up the “free minutes” that the pre-paid ticket gives you to exit the garage. So, the arm of the garage exit would not open when we scanned our ticket. The garage guy showed up and looked at our prepaid ticket and proclaimed: “You’ve been in the garage for 45 minutes looking for your car?” And he needed the manager to approve our exit. All in all, could have been a Seinfeld episode (and there was one where George and Jerry and Kramer could not find their car and they were hauling an air conditioner around the garage.)
Finally, we were on our way to Marsaxlokk (pronounced Marsa-schlock, I think)—a little fishing village with about 3,500 inhabitants. The fishing boats are all painted bright red, yellow, blue, green, and white. There are many restaurants lining the edge at the water and naturally the fish dishes are very fresh and literally “just caught.” We ate at one of those little restaurants at a table where we could watch the boats and the fishermen (yup, all men), and then we strolled the town. In the middle of our rather late lunch there were canon-like sounds, followed by what seemed like traditional music from a live band, so I jumped up to see what was happening and was in the middle of a funeral procession coming down the harbor street.
From Marsaxlokk we headed to Ghar Dalam, Malta’s oldest pre-historic site, but it was closed on Mondays—so maybe tomorrow. Mike was very disappointed not to see the prehistoric bones of dwarf elephants. We then headed to see the famous Blue Grotto. I was navigating on the iPhone Google Maps and all was well until we hit a road that was closed due to construction, requiring us to back out and figure out an alternative route. We wound up on some extremely small roads—about 9 feet wide (two-way roads) with 6’ stone walls on either side for many miles; the road we went through vineyards and teeny towns, eventually arriving at viewing points to see the amazing Blue Grotto– sea caverns on the south east coast. The location of the caves is responsible for the seawater reflecting shades of blue on the cave walls and ceilings.
From the Blue Grotto, we headed back to Valleta and to our favorite garage (which we now know very very well) and parked in our same spot on the second level. Hopefully, we will find it easily tomorrow. We strolled along Republic Street past the new Parliament Building and new city gates (both designed by Renzo Piano), which are strikingly effective and blend in to the city well (without much of the fanfare and “look at me” style of many new buildings set into historic settings). The buildings use the traditional materials and echo a lot of the scale of the older buildings.
After some emails and some work, we headed to Guze for dinner. As with all the other meals, our waiter was not from Malta; this time it was a transplant from Macedonia. He’s been living in Malta for 12 years and it’s permanent. We chatted a bit about the reconstruction of the city following WWII, given all the destruction from the bombing by the Germans. Interestingly a lot of the reconstruction was paid for by Libya! Khadafy saw Malta as an Arabic land, with language that is tied to Arabic. The tiny restaurant – Guze—is located on the ground floor (and partly underground) of a building that is 400 years old and apparently was the only building standing on that street after the war. Another interesting fact we learned was that the Italians were supposed to be bombing Malta, but they mostly dumped the bombs into the sea because they had affection for Malta. Once Hitler found this out, he sent the Germans to do the real job of bombing the island; the damage took about 45 years to rebuild
We also chatted about schooling in Malta, especially languages used. Seems as if Maltese and English are taught concurrently. Remember, Malta was part of the British Empire until 1964 so English was the common language. Apparently many Maltese do not know the language and only older people use the language regularly.
Queen Elizabeth, when she was just a mere princess lived in Malta with Prince Phillip from 1949 to 1951. Prince Philip was stationed nearby and they lived in an 18th century limestone villa loaned to them by Lord Mountbatten. It was said to hold very happy memories for the couple, who tried to live a fairly ‘regular’ life (if that is possible while living in a mansion). In any case, just last week it was announced that this villa will become a museum.
We strolled back to the hotel (clocking in at 11,033 steps) across several plazas and down an untold number of steps.
Tomorrow is another day.
Best-
Fern
May 15, 2022
What a day… We headed to the Malta Airport right after breakfast to pick up our rental car…. Which was fairly simple and straightforward, except for the rental car guy who was a great salesman about getting their insurance, despite the fact that AmEx covers all damages related to rental cars charged to that account and the fact that our regular insurance has some kind of clause related to rental cars worldwide. Anyway, we got out in our little Hyundai and Mike was the designated driver for British style driving. I was actually glad he chose to be the driver. It was a little scary at first, but he quickly seemed to get into the mode, remembering all the other times we had to drive British style, including in Thailand.
Our plan was to head north and take the ferry (as passengers, leaving the car in a lot on the Malta side). The hotel reception person and the rental car guy, as well as the taxi driver who took us from the hotel to the airport to get the car all advised us to take the car with us to Gozo so that we’d have more flexibility and we were contemplating the options. One great comment someone said was: “It’s really nice to drive on Gozo because they don’t have those cameras that monitor traffic and driving!”
The drive did give us a chance to see the Malta countryside. The terrain is mostly low hills with some fields terracing on the slopes; there are lakes and streams and many ridges and valleys. The shorelines are pretty rocky, but there are also good beaches and I learned today that it is one of the best places for diving. The water is unbelievably clean and you can see down to the bottom. The route was dotted with huge cacti. Gozo has more arable land than Malta.
And everyone told us the drive to the ferry would be 45 minutes and we’d just drive right on to the ferry. Still we thought maybe it would be easier to go on the ferry as passengers and take a taxi. We had already booked lunch at a little restaurant in Victoria, Gozo; then we thought we’d either walk around or maybe walk all the way back to the ferry – about a 90-minute walk. Well as it turned out there was a ton of traffic; seemed like everyone in Malta decided to head to Gozo on this bright sunny Sunday. And apparently even though it was the weekend and no work was being done, the workers keep the equipment on the road and so the roads are closed down over the weekend. Anyway, it took us more than an hour and 45 minutes to get to the ferry and then we waited on the car line for a quite a long time before we actually got on the ferry.
So we didn’t expect all the traffic and road delays. We contacted the restaurant we had booked for lunch and learned they would close at 2:00, and that most restaurants are closed on Sundays. Malta and Gozo are pretty Catholic; Gozo—with only 30,000 residents, has more than 40 churches, basilicas, and cathedrals—and they are huge, what you’d normally find in much larger cities. Not sure if this is tied to restaurant closures on Sundays. We told the restaurant we’d do our very best to get there by 2:00, and then searched for a backup plan. By the way, everyone says that it’s not possible to get lost in either Malta or Gozo as they are so small. But I think that is an exaggeration. And everyone says it only takes “5 minutes” to get to anywhere, but that too is a bit of an exaggeration.
Enroute to the ferry we came upon a little promenade of old Mustangs—one following the other on the highway. Maybe some kind of club outing. The ferry was full of families with young children, and I did spot a woman in a string bikini wearing a “cover-up” over the bikini, but the cover-up was totally sheer; Mike seems not to have seen this. Anyway, we managed to make it to the restaurant—Maldonado’s Bistro—exactly at 2:00 and they could not have been nicer, and the food was great. All locally sourced and some new takes on very traditional dishes. Malta (and Gozo) is famous for a particular kind of sheep’s cheese and they are pretty creative in how they use it. We had chicken that was raised on Gozo, local Gozo wine, house-cured olives, and a ravioli dish that used the local cheese and was laden with all sorts of wonderfully fresh herbs that were growing right outside the window. At the end, the waiter presented us with some wonderful limoncello that was also house made—apparently a Covid project that took all of Covid to perfect.
Another interesting thing to note: nearly all of the service people we have encountered come from outside Malta— Tunisian taxi driver, waiters from Albania, Italy (Amalfi to be exact), Spain, southern and eastern France, Philippines, etc. The Albanian waiter was especially impressed that we had been to Albania and traveled throughout the country.
And I should mention that the whole country is built of sandstone, creating a unified visual vocabulary. Much of the country is from the 17th Century when the craftsman building these structures were amazing.
After lunch we strolled the center of the town and also decided to go inside one of the basilicas. I’m still trying to figure out why a town of 30,000 would have so many churches and who built them all. Then we drove to the sea to look at the “salt pans”… Pythagoras said: “Salt is born of the purest parents: the sun and the sea.” And so it goes in Gozo.
We then raced to get the return ferry; according to Google maps we were just 15 minutes away… and most of the drive went as planned with remarkably accurate instructions from both Google Maps and also Waze. But as we approached the ferry, we realized something was wrong and we were guided to join the mile-long queue!! By our calculations this meant we would probably need to sit out the first three ferries and hope to get onto the 4th one. The ferries only go twice each hour, so that meant 90 minutes or two hours. And we patiently waited and inched up whenever a ferry departed. It took us close to two hours to wait of the ferry and then sail. But we made it back. Only glitches were that we realized it would be dark by the time we got close to the hotel (and navigating those narrow winding streets in the medieval town of Valletta would not be easy; we would again be late for a reserved dinner and were unsure how late the restaurant would be open on a Sunday; and we didn’t know where we would be able to park the car. Our hotel doesn’t have parking.
In conclusion, we made it back, we found a parking garage, we walked from the car to the hotel, we made it to the restaurant (Grain Street) just in time to order before the kitchen closed, we ate and walked to the hotel. And here I am to tell you my tales. Oh, the photos of Mike squeezing into the car is on the ferry. They guided us to park really close to the wall and then Mike couldn’t quite get out of the car,. And then back into the car. But, alas, he managed to will himself to be skinny.
Stay well. A little on Malta’s politics tomorrow.
Fern
Day Two Malta: 5/14/22. Valletta, The Three Cities, Protected by Saints; Ferries, The Hotel, and More
After breakfast at out little hotel –66 St. Paul’s, a delightful and well appointed small hotel in the thick of Valletta – we set out to walk and see the town (city). The hotel is set inside a 17th century palazzo, and has been modernized into a wonderful set of 11 or so spacious rooms with great bathrooms and a pleasant lobby space. Our room also has a balcony from which we can see the sea and the tops of some interesting nearby buildings.
Malta has a complicated history including being controlled by the Romans, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, British, Spanish, Turks, Arabs, French, Italians, and more (not in that order); during WWII they were bombed extensively by the Germans and the Italians. And the Inquisition lasted until 1798. The Maltese language is tied historically to the Arabs, they drive like the Brits on the opposite side of the road. The food is a true combination of all of the cultures who created the island. There are London style public telephone booths scattered around, although I don’t know if they are functional or decorative. The food is clearly fusion. Another point of note, apparently Malta was the most bombed place in the world during WWII; 154 days and nights and 6,700 tons of bombs.
Facts: Malta is really tiny—about 17 miles by 7 miles and only has 40,000 people. Valletta, the capital is only 1 kilometer by 600 meters (.6 miles by less than 1.2 mile). So everything is really close and I assume that everyone knows everyone?
We strolled the narrow streets that change in elevation and have tons of steps that rise and fall depending on location. Throughout the walk, music is wafting in the background—Classical, Beatles, punk, and more from the open windows and radios of residents and contractors. We walked about three miles by then and tried to stay on the shaded side of the street. After a brief stop for a light lunch, we headed to the ferry which involved us getting in the middle of a wedding (or maybe two weddings—hard to say) that was taking place at an outdoor high-end restaurant and hotel, as we walked to the ferry. We had decided to take the 15 minute ferry to what is called “the three cities.” And then we walked some more… always “protected” by the many, many statues and reliefs of saints throughout the area.
Eventually we took the ferry back (Oh- turns out the wedding folks were on our ferry and they were all dressed up and walking to another venue—but perhaps it was another wedding; hard to say). Then we walked back to the hotel and set out for dinner… at Taste, which like many of the restaurants have most of their tables outside. And many, like Taste are located on streets that slope precariously down toward the sea; the streets are actually all stairs that are about 2.5’ deep non a 16% slope (I think).
So they all have little tables whose base fits on the 2.5’ stair and chairs that also fit. If there are more than two people they use two tables, one on each step.. so the table tops don’t line up. The tables and chairs line the entire street as the restaurants sort of blur one to the other. People going from one street to another are walking between two sets of tables. But it all seems to work. (Photos of this arrangement to follow tomorrow.)
Tomorrow we will rent a car and drive north to take the longer ferry to Gozo, a separate island, where we will explore Victoria and have lunch… and be back for dinner. We’ll use the car on the subsequent days to explore the island more… On Wednesday we shift hotels to stay in Mdina for our last two nights here. Mdina is really only a 20 minute drive, but we thought it might be fun to be in another setting while we are here. I may regret that decision when I start packing and unpacking for this mini-trip. While we could probably rely on buses and taxis, it seems like a car will enable us to feel more free to roam around and stop and go as we please.
14,000 steps today!! And lots of stairs.
Take care-
Fern
Day One Malta: 5/13/22: Flying to Malta; Timing; Covid
Greetings from Malta-
After a simple breakfast in the little park around the corner from the hotel (Cottage Café), where the birds swept in as soon as it was clear we were finished eating, we headed to the Geneva Airport to move on to Malta. While the Swiss are super-efficient, their boarding process for planes never ceases to amaze us—it’s a bit of a free-for-all. We flew to Zurich and then had an hour or so layover for our flight to Malta on Air Malta. Interesting, we needed to show proof of vaccines for the Malta flight and they were very serious about the process. And, after being in the airport for more than an hour without masks and where no one was masked, we needed to be masked on the Air Malta plane. The flight was late to take off and they forced us to check baggage so we were pretty far behind schedule by the time we landed.
Normally wouldn’t care, but we had dinner reservations at Noni and it’s a very tiny restaurant (only 11 tables) and it is booked months in advance. As many of you know, we had planned to come to Malta in December 2020 and then again in December 2021 and both trips were canceled due to Covid. We were supposed to eat at Noni on New Year’s Eve 2021, so when we could finally make this trip we re-booked dinner and were worried that we would never make it. We called to delay the reservation by 90 minutes. We hopped in a taxi at the airport and headed to the hotel (more on that tomorrow). The taxi driver must have been trained for the Indy 500. I think he was going about 100 kph in 60 kph zones; maybe even faster. Anyway, we made it to the hotel… checked in and ran out the door to get to Noni, which was well worth the exhaustion of dashing the ½ mile on the stone streets and steeply graded passageways.
The town looks great. Lots of life and people (mostly young) filling the narrow cobblestone streets with restaurants and bars spilling onto every possible flat area and even on steps that cascade down the slopes. But we’ll know more tomorrow.
Noni (with its Michelin stars) was wonderful with each dish and all the extra “nibbles” they kept bringing to the table beautifully arranged and utterly fantastic. We decided on the three-course meal rather than the four course or the “tasting menu” that had eight courses. The first set of “nibbles” included a little cup of some kind of soup that was made of cauliflower and vanilla and some green oil; little gems that had some kind of cheese-like quiche with the freshest peas you can imagine (it was about 1” tall and 1” circumference); a little parmesan crisp filigreed to be like a leaf with tiny dabs of a fruit and something else, and a few other dishes that I cannot remember at the moment. For our “starters” Mike selected the risotto with sea urchin and I went with the rare tuna which was a little work of art striated with radish and one other fish. For the main courses, Mike went with the rabbit which was sort of deconstructed and I had the bass which had a crisp skin and totally luscious flesh underneath and it was all sitting in a dashi. For dessert Mike had the apple tart which looked nothing like a tart but was definitely apple and it came with some “milk ice cream.” I had a chocolate thing which I first thought would be a little like a mousse but in the center there was a mixture of caramel, banana, and miso! I should report that the little restaurant with its 11 tables for two is inside a 250-year old building, whose interior for the first floor restaurant has been beautifully restored and modernized as a great contrast to the exterior and the structure.
While I thought they would need to roll us out—there appeared little ending nibbles—chocolates, fruit jellies, nougats, and more. Good thing we still had some wine with which to finish it all.
Then we strolled back to the hotel and the streets were still popping at midnight. After we got back to the hotel, I had to go to the reception desk to ask for an extension cord and met the owner who was very surprised we were able to get a reservation at Noni. Deciding that I was some sort of culinary aficionado, he then listed all the best places to eat in Malta. I was pleased and pleasantly surprised that we already had reservations at many of his picks! We rarely do this much pre-planning, but we figured we’d be gone most days exploring the island and it would be good not to have to be figuring out where to eat each night. So we did a little research.
Tomorrow, I’ll fill you in on Malta’s history and politics and what we see. For now, glad we chose this little place which is elegant and right in the center of the oldest section of the city. On Sunday we will rent a car at the airport to be able to explore well beyond this area. There won’t be anywhere to park the car so we are prepared to leave it in some car park each night and walk to the hotel. And we are bracing ourselves for driving British style on the other side of the street, something we haven’t done in years.
Last thing.. they speak Maltese which doesn’t seem to sound like anything I’ve ever hears before. But everyone also speaks English (and Italian and French and lord knows how many other languages). A good line from one of the three waitresses at Noni who told us she had live in the US for two years, and worked in hospitality at Disney in Florida: “I learned while there that I really didn’t see or live in America—I lived in Florida and that was very different!”
Best –
Fern
8. Birdie, Evian les Bains, and BBQ in Troinex. 5/12/22
Happy Thursday (although for me the clock has passed midnight and it is already Friday)
We headed out to Birdie this morning, a little organic breakfast place that we’ve eaten at many times before when we stayed on the other side of the town. It was about an hour walk at a leisurely pace. When we got there it was undergoing renovations, but its sister café (which is usually just for take-out with a more limited menu was operating more like a regular café so we ate there—I had the Birdie Brekkie, an avocado toast with beet hummus and tahini/lemon, pomegranate, and chili on the side and fresh herbs and greens, and a carrot-apple-ginger root lemon fresh juice. Mike had the yogurt and granola with stewed fruits and honey.
Then we headed to the tram to meet Elizabeth in Carrouge and head to Evian les Bains (yup where all that botted water comes from) which is about an hour’s drive from Geneva. Like Geneva it is on the southern part of the lake but further east (and in France). It’s halfway to Montreux which is at the easternmost edge of the lake on the southern side. The drive to Evian goes through really beautiful countryside that is super lush. And the town of about 9,000 people is considered a spa town. We walked along the water’s edge which included a municipal park, complete with a public miniature golf course. As with everything else, the public domain is kept clean, lawns mowed, and not a candy wrapper to be seen. Evian is also home to two casinos although they seemed to be undergoing big renovation at the moment.
Then we headed back to Geneva and to Troinex for a BBQ with lots of wine in the backyard. Once sufficiently stuffed and after some ice cream we bid farewell to everyone as we head to Malta in the morning. And actually we will be back in September for Julia and Julian’s wedding.
It was a good trip and we look forward to seeing everyone again soon.
More from Malta, which is a place we have never visited before and also where I hope to get some work on the book done.
Fern
Fern's Travel Notes 