Malta 🇲🇹
Our third port of call on this journey was the island nation of Malta, a place we previously knew little about, other than that they probably have crosses and falcons there. We docked at the capital city of Valletta, a very pretty place with architecture that reminded us that northern Africa is not very far away.
We hadn’t booked a shore excursion in this port as we felt we could walk to the sites. The first 27 taxi drivers we encountered didn’t think so, nor did the first three guys promoting the hop-on hop-off buses. Running this gauntlet broke down our resolve, and so the fourth guy coaxed us onto his bus. We used this as transport to a neighbouring walled city called Mdina ( and no, I didn’t forget any vowels). Mdina dates back to the 8th century and is Malta’s former capital. It has a population today of 250, most of whom seem to be employed shuttling tourists around in their horse and carriages. We spent a very pleasant morning exploring the narrow streets and passageways there before exercising the hop-on option of our bus package to return to Valletta.
Our expectation that the bus would return us to the point we started from proved to be foolhardy. We reach a location where we could not see our reasonably noticeable cruise ship, or for that matter, even water. We sat there for a while before the driver climbed up to the top level of his bus and told us we were in Valletta and that we should get off. We asked him how to get back to the port and he said, “Take the lift”.
“Where is the lift?”, we wondered out loud. “It is there”, he replied as he waved his arm in a way that encompassed all directions at once. We were thankful we had allotted lots of time before our “all aboard” time, and set off to fend for ourselves. We wandered down a nicely landscaped promenade past the prerequisite statues and fountains, and soon arrived at a pedestrian shopping street that was teeming with frenzied tourists seeking Louis Vuitton bags, Rolex watches and fridge magnets. This was the point where we suspected that the bus driver was paid some sort of a stipend to drop passengers in this area. Well played, good man. Well played!
Eventually, we managed to spy the stack of our ship between the buildings and were able to plot a return route, unencumbered by designer watches or fridge magnets. We never did find the lift until we got to the bottom on foot. Glad we didn’t have to go up that way.
As I write this, I’m sharing yesterday’s events. Today is a sea day, an opportunity for cruisers to get even lazier. We had to turn the clocks ahead an hour. This is a devious ploy designed to speed up happy hour.
Our weather has been perfect. We haven’t encountered an erupting volcano in at least a day.
Life is grand!
Hope all is well with our friends and family back home. We’ll post again when we think of something to say.
Cheers.
Comments
Post a Comment