Back from Malta

Nice to be back after our week's holiday and catch up with my blog.  The holiday didn't have an auspicious start as we flew into stormy weather.  The flight last Saturday was delayed from 11.20 pm to just after midnight from Gatwick and the last flight out of the airport.  Sunday was still stormy with heavy rain and heavy seas just look at the photo below. The wall that you can see if the edge of a swimming pool with the wave crashing over.

On the Monday the sea was still stormy but at least sunny by now as we explored Sliema, the town where we were staying.  The town is quite a popular resort and there is a lot of building work going on to build more hotels, apartments and a new shopping centre.  It seemed almost like home with familiar shops such as M&S and Next.

This was the sea just a couple of days later. Nice and calm and the weather was a lot nicer and warmer too.

Above and below are a couple of pieces of artwork on the streets of Sliema, as you can see above there's David stopping for tea.  Below is a cutout of people enjoying the promenade casting the image on the pavement.


Tuesday saw us venture into Valletta, Malta's capital.  It is a fortified city with walls around the town to defend the country from enemies as it's had invasions from various countries in its history. Malta is famous as the centre for the Order of the Knights of St John and in the middle of Valetta is the Co Cathedral of St John where the knights are buried in this elaborate Cathedral.

 Above and below are the chapels dedicated to the Grand Masters

The floor are where the Grand Masters are buried, made in marble depicting death and glory.  The stones often showed skeletons or skulls on them.

This is looking down the cathedral to the altar with the chapels being in the arches on each side (there are 8 in all).

After the visit to the cathedral we explored more of the city ending at Upper Barrakka Gardens over looking the harbour.  There were cruise ships, we saw a sea plane which flies between Valletta and Gozo and walking through the park there was a piano which invited one to play on it.

The next day we took an island tour bus on the southern route taking us through Valletta (again) out to the towns surrounding the harbour, to the fishing village of Marsaxlokk, before stopping off at the Blue Lagoon and back to Sliema.

We had a visit to the island of Gozo on a tour, which was quite good, but will post some photos of this in my next post.  

For now though, it's back to work tomorrow, but we can feel already that autumn is in the air and things are a lot colder on our return to the UK.