Day 12 Valletta and Mdina Malta

I woke early this morning, 4am, and the ship was stationary.  We must have made good time and needed to wait for the pilot to take us into port. The engines started up again at about 7am and we arrived in port at 8am.  It was a lovely sight going past the sandstone buildings with views to many forts and of church domes.  There are 365 churches in all of Malta.  I had no idea it was such a small country.  Its total population is smaller than Tasmania, with 400,000 people but double that number of cars.

After breakfast we decided to make our own plans to see the sights.  Valletta is the capital of Malta and dates back to the 16^th century .  We were able to share a taxi and our first destination was the Presidents Palace and Gardens.  We were very surprised at how open this was.  No guards or fenced off areas.  We wandered through the gardens and into the forecourt of the Palace and only saw two people in uniforms and they were not interested in us at all.  I’m sure we could not do that in our PM’s residence.  There were a number of very familiar plants, hibiscus, nicatanias, stocks, linarias, succulents and quite a number of weeds.  It is a very old garden and also Malta has a water shortage, same as parts of Australia.

From there we found our taxi driver and proceeded to Mdina (pronounced Madina) which is the former capital of Malta which is a walled medieval city.  It  is also called the silent city as it has very narrow streets and only the residents, who are all ‘nobles’ can take cars into the city.  There are signs with a picture of pursed lips with a finger indicating that visitors should keep quiet and respect the residents.  We were really pleased to be able to hire a horse and little carriage, just big enough for the four of us, and were taken on a guided tour of Mdina.  Some of the streets are so narrow it was only wide enough for our horse and carriage and we were glad no-one came the other direction.  We hopped out at the far end at a lookout point.  It is said that you can see most of Malta from this point.  It was very obvious that Malta is a very dry place.

We returned to the ship in one piece.  The driver took great delight in driving very fast through an arch.  His mother-in-law is also Vivienne and so he was happy to see a Vivienne with a scared look on her face.  He obviously likes to ‘treat’ all of his passengers to this little extra thrill as they tour around Valletta and Mdina.