0.285 of a holiday in Malta

Malta in the Spring. Sounds lovely doesn’t it? Well it was until the first Pandemic for a hundred years arived and SPOILED IT.

Damn you Covid 19!

But we (Julie, Josie and me) did get 0.285 of a holiday, which was a delicious taster, a kind of “amuse bouche” of Malta.

It is the smallest country in the EU with and area of just 122 square miles, and is right in the middle of the Mediterranean. It’s so small it doesn’t actually show up on a map, the word Malta is bigger than the outline of the island.

Over the course of history many different empires have invaded it; the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragon, Knights of St John, French, and finally the British. Since 1964 it has been an independent country, and is the smallest member of the EU. Greater London is five times the size of Malta in area.

In March, Malta is generally warm (but not hot), cheap to get fly to, and not crowded. So it appeared to be an ideal place for an early spring break in March 2020. At the time we booked our holiday, the Covid 19 virus hadn’t got out of China. By the time we arrived at Luqa airport, it was raging across Europe. But there were only about 50 cases in Britain and 5 in Malta.

On March the 11th Julie, Josie and me got up at stupid-o-clock and drove down to Gatwick to get a 7.30 am flight on Easyjet, my favourite cheap airline.

The flight was about three hours, and we arrived at Valetta in warm sunshine yay! It was about 5 miles to the flat we had rented in Sliema, but the bus took an hour, it was almost quicker to walk.

Sliema is across the bay from Valetta, which is the capital and most interesting part. The advantage of being in Sliema is that you can see Valetta, the view is amazing. 

Our apartment was a modern one, on the second floor. It was about twenty feet wide, but 67 paces long, it was enormous! It overlooked the Marsamxett Harbour and was close to the ferry over to Valetta.

Sliema is on a peninsula pointing east into the Mediterranian. It is part of the Valetta urbanisation where most Maltese live. Around the edges are modern blocks of flats, overlooking the sea, but the central streets are full of lovely stone-built houses with projecting covered balconies. At the tip of the peninsula is Fort Tigne, one of the many fortifications that cover the island, it must be the most fortified country in the world.

The streets of Sliema away from the coast are made of of pretty, old houses with projecting balconies, much better architecture than the modern concrete and glass blocks overlooking the sea.

Close to the main high street in Sliema is the Tower Supermarket, where we stopped for supplies. Unlike most shops that go up, in the Tower you go down to reach more floors, so it is cramped and a claustrophobic, similar to Sports Direct, which I think is the Worlds Worst Shopping Experience.

In the evening we walked a short way along the waterfront to Ali Baba, an excellent Lebanese restaurant. With our selection of small dishes, we had some Maltese wine which was very tasty, similar in flavour to Chardonnay.

On Thursday morning we took the ferry from Sliema over to Valetta, a journey of about ten minutes. The ferry passed Manoel Island, which is the site of a former quarantine hospital. People with fever were contained there for forty days. The French for forty is quarante, hence quarantine.

Not a lot of people know that.

Close to where the ferry stops is the Fortification Interpretation Centre, a museum all about the fortifications of Malta, and there certainly are a lot of them. It is housed in a 16th century building near the walls of the city which may have been a store for ammunition.

The museum is on several floors, and explains fortifications from ancient (pre-Roman) times up to the Second World War. I was with my wife and daughter, so I couldn’t read all the boards as I usually do, but there was loads of stuff to appeal to the nerdiest of history-lovers. 

The Brits even built their own version of Hadrians Wall across the Island, the Victoria Lines. It was a twelve-kilometre long line of  walls and forts to protect the south of the island (where the harbours are) from invasion from the north. Since the Suez Canal had been built, it was probably to protect us from the French, but Wikipedia is too polite to say that.

If you like a fort or a wall, its worth a visit. If you prefer a cappuccino and a cake (like my wife and daughter) you might find it a bit dull.

Here’s a bit of historical background. As I said wrote earlier, all the local empires had owned  Malta for thousands of years. In the 16th century the Mediterranean was owned by the Spanish and French at the western end, and the Ottoman Turks at the eastern end. A particular thorn in the side of the Turks were the Knights of St John. These guys were originally Knights Hospitaller, who looked after pilgrims visiting Jerusalem. But they took up arms to protect pilgrims and became a major maritime power. They were booted out of Jerusalem by Islamic forces in 1291, and settled on the island of Rhodes. They annoyed the Turks so much that Suleiman the Magnificent invaded the island and the remaining Knights were allowed to leave. 

The Pope asked the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to give them Malta, since he had it lying around in the back of a drawer and wasn’t using it much. He gave Malta to the Knights, and the Maltese didn’t have a say in the matter. The rent was very reasonable, one Maltese Falcon every year.

Dashiell Hammet’s famous book was about valuable statuette of a Maltese Falcon, but Sam Spade doesn’t visit Malta. It was what Hitchcock would call the MacGuffin, look it up on Google.

The Knights moved in in 1530, and naturally wanted to redecorate the place. They started to build walls and forts all over the island, and never finished fortifying the island.

In 1565 Malta was invaded by the Ottomans, who besieged the Knights in their forts. The Knights (with their Maltese helpers) withstood the siege and the Grand Master, Jean Parisot de Valette, decided to build a fortified city on the Sciberras Peninsula. The city was built in just five years and is named Valetta after the Grand Master.

It was one of the first planned cities in Europe, built on a grid of streets. The entire city is built of golden yellow limestone, similar in colour to the stone used in the Cotswolds. They quarried the stone from the rock beneath the city

It is an incredible feat of engineering. The walls are amazing, massively built and surrounded by a dry moat that was excavated from the bedrock. At the western edge of the city is a modern gate in the walls designed by Renzo Piano, famous for designing the Shard in London. I think its a bit dull as city gates go, but I’m not an internationally famous architect. He probably thinks my blogs are a bit shit as well.

The builders carved a huge ditch out of the bedrock and used it to construct the walls, as you can see below.

The entire old city covers 0.61 of a square kilometre, it’s tiny. But every building is a Renaissance gem, perfectly designed and preserved.The Pope sent his architect  Francesco Lapararelli to plan and design the new city, and Phillip II of Spain paid for much of it. Malta was a bastion against the further western expansion of the Ottoman Empire, so Phillip was happy to pay for it. At the time Spain was enormously wealthy with gold and silver shipped from Mexico and Peru.

Valetta is a gorgeous city, and with its Baroque architecture looks both Italian and Spanish. Then you see a red telephone box, and old signs written in English. There are also many British chain stores around, there is even an M&S in Sliema!

Malta was part of the British Empire from 1814 until 1964, and English is still the second main language spoken after Maltese. The Maltese language is derived from Sicilian Arabic spoken in the 8th century, and place names like Is-Swattar, Tal Fuklar and Rabat look very strange in an English speaking country.

The Knights of St John were divided into different groups according to where they came from, these were called Langues. Each Langue had its own HQ called an Auberge, many of them still exist. The English Langue was dissolved during the Reformation, Henry VIII didn’t like Catholic Knights with connections to England.

Because we were there in March, it was still relatively quiet, but there were still plenty of people around. The tiny city must be rammed in the summer, especially when the cruise ships come into the Grand Harbour.

The huge natural harbours are the reason that Malta was so fought over for thousands of years. Both Marsamxett Harbour and Grand Harbour could contain a fleet of ships. Marsamxett is mostly dedicated to yachting and leisure, whereas Grand Harbour is an active dockyard.

Overlooking Grand Harbour is Upper Barraka Gardens. Every day at 12 noon  a cannon is set off which as part of a formal ceremony by men dressed as British Royal Marines. This was a tradition which gave ships Captains the exact time to set their chronometers, which were crucial instruments for navigation. 

Malta was a vital fueling station for British ships going to India through the Suez Canal, which is why Mussolini and Hitler wanted to destroy it during the Second World War.

Upper Barraka Gardens looks over the Harbour to the Threes Cities, which where the strongholds of the Knights were before Valetta was constructed. They were some of the many places we didn’t get to visit. I could give your a list, but it would just make me resentful and angry.

At about midday, while we were relaxing somewhere in the sunshine, Josie got an alarming WhatsApp from a friend. The message said that Malta had suspended flights to and from Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland due to the virus. Mmm, that’s a bit of a worry.

In the afternoon we partook of the Malta Experience. It was a film about the history of Malta, followed by a tour of the Hospital of the Knights Hospitaller. The main old war is 155 metres long and could accommodate over 900  patients in an emergency, it is enormous! It was available to both rich and poor men, but not women. 

All Thursday afternoon we were checking our phones for the latest news about the Covid 19 situation, and tension was mounting in both the news agenda and in the family.

We bought a pizza and wine for dinner from the Tower Hell-Hole supermarket and talked about what we should do next. It was decided that on Friday I would call the British Consulate and asked for advice. 

Both Julie and I slept very badly and got up at 2am. We decided that the British Consul wouldn’t know any more than we would about how the situation would develop. Things could only get worse, and we didn’t want to get quarantined in Malta. So I immediately got onto Skyscanner and booked three expensive single tickets for Friday afternoon with Air Malta.

On Friday morning we packed our bags and got ready to leave. I had to abandon two bottles of Cisk beer in the fridge, Noooooooo.

The flight wasn’t until 5pm, so we got the ferry over for a last lunch in the sunshine in the square next to the Cathedral of St John. It was quiet and we were enjoying a delicious, and substantial Italian meal. Then some knob-end of a busker started singing sub-James  Blunt love songs through a loud amplifier, he was crap and very annoying! He must have felt the bad vibes and lack of takings because he buggered-off after 15 minutes.

We got a taxi to the airport, which was very quick, Malta was already closing down. On Friday afternoon the Maltese Government announced that British tourists would have to stay inside for 12 days, so we had made the right call.

The Maltese Airlines plane was an hour late taking off since some passengers from England who had arrived on Friday were going straight back to London, the poor sods.

So our 7 night holiday in Malta turned into a 2 night holiday or 0.285 of a 7 night holiday.

Also we arrived at Heathrow and our car was at Gatwick, that’s annoying!

But we got home safely and weren’t stranded in another country, unlike some people who are still a long way from home. It was disappointing, but could have been much, much worse.

Perhaps we will go back one day in better circumstances when I can complete the list of places I wanted to visit, the other 0.715 of a holiday in Malta.