TELGEN VACATION REPORT

Malta, February, 1999

On the beach in Malta! Okay, so England in February isn't snow-covered and gloomy, like Michigan. But rainy and gloomy is not much of an improvement, so when winter break rolled around we wanted to go someplace warmer, sunnier—Mediterranean! We chose Malta, a small island country 59 miles south of Sicily, 220 miles north of Libya, and around 180 miles east of Tunisia. Not only does Malta enjoy a pleasant Mediterranean climate, it was a British Commonwealth nation until 1964, so English is widely spoken. (Which was very fortunate for us, as the Maltese language is of Arabic origin, with blendings of Spanish, French, and English, making it very difficult to decipher at times. Not that it would have mattered much, since all the Maltese we met were extraordinarily friendly and helpful, and eager to tell us about their beautiful country.)

Here David and I are on the "beach" in Sliema, a city on the northern coast that was our base for the weekend. As you can see from the background, most of the island's coast is sharp and rocky rather than soft and sandy. But along this boardwalk, there are stairs leading down to the rocks so that you can take a good look at the ocean or maybe even do a little fishing. There aren't any warning signs or guardrails (which explains why I'm clutching David so tightly), so there's no impediments to seeing the beauty of the sea.

St. John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta Sliema is a short bus ride from Valletta, the capital city of Malta. (And what a bus ride! The buses are something to behold, being rather squat and old-fashioned—think of an extra-fat VW bus—and decorated with whatever symbols the driver feels most appropriate: anything from religious images to Jim Morrison towels.) Valletta is a walled city on a peninsula protected by a harbor on each side, and has an extraordinary history. While Malta itself has been occupied by various civilizations—Phoenicians, Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, French, Spanish, Ottomans—the city of Valletta largely belonged to the Order of the Knights of St. John, a Christian order first founded in Jerusalem to care for sick pilgrims but which became more military during its battles with Islam. The Knights built the city in the late 1500s, with the aid of the pope's architect, and it is thus one of the first planned cities of modern times. The streets follow the natural contours of the peninsula, which means they sometimes have very steep slopes. You can look down a street and it seems to end right in the sea.

The most interesting thing we found in Valletta was St. John's Co-Cathedral, also built by the Knights of St. John. The Knights essentially ruled the city until Napoleon kicked them out in 1798, so many of them are buried in the Cathedral. While the outside of the Cathedral is very plain, the inside is extraordinarily ornate, with frescoes, paintings, and carvings covering every inch of the walls and ceilings. Most unusual, however, are the marble sepulchral slabs that seem to cover the entire floor of the cathedral. You can see David sitting by one of these slabs in the picture above. While I thought this was one of the most striking slabs, it was hardly one of the most ornate—some of slabs portrayed coats of arms, religious figures, and other complicated images made of hundreds of pieces of precisely fitted marble. The colors were incredible, since in many instances they used the natural shadings of the marble to create shadows in the pictures.

Hagar Qim temple, Malta Another reason we wanted to see Malta was the number of prehistoric sites available to the tourist. Malta and its sister islands are all that remains of a land bridge that used to connect Europe and Africa, and people have inhabited it for thousands of years. After visiting the Neolithic Tarxien temples, which are in the middle of a city and were only uncovered 85 years ago, we drove out into the less populated countryside. There is a cave, Ghar Dalam, in which the remains of prehistoric hippos and deer have been found. The layers of rock within the cave have yielded evidence of human occupation from the Phoenician era (1st century BC) to Neolithic times some 7000 years ago! Less than twenty minutes drive from there (if you don't get lost, as we did) is the temple of Hagar Qim ("standing stones"), which you see behind Bill and David in the picture. Unfortunately you can't see the entire setting of this temple, which is on a high hill near the southern coast. You get quite a spectacular view of the ocean and the uninhabited island of Filfla nearby. Anyway, Hagar Qim is nearly five thousand years old, dating to around 2800 BC, and was used for sacrificial rites, experts believe, since there are mushroom-shaped altars with raised sides that they think were to prevent blood from dripping off the side. (Cool.) Although no roof remains, inside the large wall there are several chambers you can wander around in. The largest stone in the temple (which may be one of the big ones in the picture) weighs over 57 tons and measures 19x9x2 feet. An amazing feat of engineering, for, as we always remind David, there were no backhoes or bulldozers in those days.

Mnajdra temple, Malta Walk some 500 yards to the west, however, and there you will see some really old structures. The Temples of Mnajdra have been dated to around 3700 BC, or almost six thousand years ago! These temples are a little more complex than Hagar Qim, with four kidney-shaped chambers that apparently had an astronomical purpose, similar to Stonehenge. During the spring and fall equinoxes, the first sunlight will fall upon a stone slab, while on the summer and winter solstices the sun hits the corners of two stone pillars in another chamber. (Never mind the engineering. Just wonder how, without clocks, they figured out which day was the solstice.)

Among the other sights we saw as we drove around Malta were the Dingli Cliffs, an 800- foot escarpment with no guard rails or warning signs but with a gorgeous view; the Blue Grotto, a series of natural caves on the south coast which you can tour by boat; Ghar Hasan, a cave purportedly occupied by a Saracen hiding from authorities in 1120; St. Paul's island, where legend says the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked in AD 60; and the walled city of Mdina, which affords a panoramic view of the entire island. We drove a car around the island, which was an adventure in itself. Not only because the roads were narrow, twisty, and full of potholes. We've experienced all that before, if not all at once. But shortly after we began driving around, the first car we rented began making an interesting scraping noise every time we stepped on the brakes. By the time we returned to our hotel that night, the scraping was a grinding and it was evident even to the passengers that the brakes weren't exactly slowing the car down as they should. Luckily the rental company replaced it, and we felt much more comfortable setting out for the cliffs the following day. The rest of our trip flew by without any mishap; we only wished we'd had more time there! Perhaps we will return during a warmer season so David can play on the beach with his construction equipment.

Malta, February, 1999

Previous / Next