Contents

Day 1

The Last Leg to Malta

Arriving in Malta

Day 2

The Plan to Valletta

Valletta - How to Get One

Valletta - What to Do With It

Valletta - The Manoel Theater

Valleta - The State Rooms

Valletta - The End of the Peninsula

Valletta - St. Paul's Shipwreck Church

Valletta - The Fading Hours

A Few Notes On Busses

Back to the Hotel

Day 3

Mdina - St. Paul's Cathedral and Museum

Rabat - St. Paul's Catacombs

A Few More Notes on Busses

Day 4

Altering the Plan

Valletta - St. John's Co-Cathedral

Finishing Valletta

Relaxation Spoiled Only by a Map

Day 5

A Few Notes on Pants

Introduction to Gozo

Gozo - Ggantija Temples

What Not to Do in Gozo

Gozo Done Wrong

Gozo - Il Kastell

The Parting Hours

Day 6

Of London and Buckeyes

Day 7

The Worst Breakfast Ever

The Long Flight Home

Malta - Day Three

Into Mdina

Where the hell are we?	If a man were to design a city that is laid out like a maze, sprouting offshoots, dead ends, blind alleys and the occasional throughway, that man would be an idiot. Because Mdina is already like that and nobody likes plagiarism. I assure you, it took every ounce of our sense of direction to keep a clear idea of where we were going. It's a good thing I spent so much of my junior year of college playing Doom, because it may be the only reason we did not require a search party to rescue us. Just inside the door, we came across what I seem to remember was a shrine to St. Agatha, who seemed to also be popular in Malta for reasons I never knew or can't remember. It was really not much more than an apse carved out of a wall and there were only a couple of benches for the supplicant to kneel at (supposing he or she supplicated their way through the iron grating that covered the door), but it was dense with an ornate beauty that gave us good reason to pause and admire. But it was not large enough for more than a pause and we were soon on our way.
We found ourselves in a long, beige street between tall, beige walls interrupted only by the colorful doors that marked the homes of Mdina. After all, Mdina is not just a tourist spot, it is home for many people. And, as in other parts of Malta, the people of Mdina have solid wooden outer doors protecting the entrance to their home. But in Mdina, they also seem to take a great deal of pride in their doors, as they are the only outward sign showing any of the character of the people who walk through them. So, amid the beige on beige décor so often found on these islands, the brightly painted doors of the city fairly burst out like fireworks.
Very picturesque. Until you realized you just walked down a dead end street.	Dammit, not again.
After following the outer wall of the city past an annoyingly insistent woman selling tickets to the Knights of Malta exhibit (the second annoying Maltese person we encountered on our trip), we wound around to the rear of the city and the wall looking out across the plains far below. It was broad and grand and had a lot of small, loud children visiting it, so we quickly headed to St. Paul's Cathedral. As mentioned earlier, St. Paul is very popular in Malta.