Malta - Day Four

Finishing Valletta

Following our tour of St. John's Co-Cathedral, we entered on the tour of the Cathedral Museum. It was, overall, fairly pleasant. Its main feature was the inclusion of some works by Caravaggio, who lived and worked in Malta for a short period of time.

Admittedly, I'm not particularly a fan of Caravaggio. I don't know if his paintings have dulled and darkened over the years, but they all have the tendency to have very dark backgrounds to the point that there is essentially nothing but foreground in his paintings. But that also seemed to be the tendency with all the paintings we saw in Malta, so that may be my own particular grievance with the Baroque style. I shall have to investigate Caravaggio further to find out. I won't, but I'm not telling myself that.

From there, we toured more of the museum, but I remember little of it. Subsequent investigation informs me that we saw Flemish tapestries, choral books, church vestments, and a large monstrance designed to hold the forearm of St. John the Baptist. I seem to vaguely remember the books and the monstrance. The rest is a loss.

Museum Completion

Following our adventure in the museum, we headed to the museum gift shop for some souvenir shopping. I found a dandy map of the Great Siege there, but unfortunately I was unable to buy it due to the sudden disappearance of the cashier. I stood there at the register for a few minutes, then decided that if they didn't want my money, I wasn't going to give it to them, so we took off. I probably should have been more patient, but I was really looking forward to an afternoon of relaxing with my wife and I figured that I could find another copy online if I wanted it.

I should mention that this turned out to be an abundantly false impression, so it seems I should have had some patience and just bought the map. They also had a beautiful book containing a full description of every marble tombstone in St. John's Co-Cathedral and I should have purchased that too. Yes, it was expensive. But it was probably the last time I will ever see it, barring a trip back to Malta sometime in the near future.

The Last Hours in Valletta

From there, we headed down the street to visit some other souvenir shops and we managed to find a couple tschotschkes that fit the bill. Chris found a very nice magnet for our refrigerator that the cashier was kind enough to drop on the floor and break. So we ended up with a pretty good magnet for our refrigerator.

The afternoon lengthened and we returned to the Valletta bus depot. With that, we bade farewell to the city and drove off toward our hotel.