Comino

I decided to spend my last night on a little island on the north side of Malta. The island is called Comino, and it's home to the Blue Lagoon, which is a breathtaking site!
Unfortunately the lagoon had pretty much been taken over with European university students on summer vacation when I was there, so I spent most of my time on the other side of the tiny island, where my hotel was located. I'm not usually one to hang around the hotel, but I loved laying on the beach in the sun in the peaceful quiet.

H1N1 in Malta

All the newspapers I’ve seen in shops today have a huge headline that reads “4 cases of swine flu in Malta.”

Even now, I’m sitting in a small café in Valletta, and a woman, who is obviously a friend of the owner of the café, walked in and said “they have just taken my son to the hospital to be tested for the swine flu.”

Try as I may, I just can’t get away from it!

Castille Hotel

I do love the little hotel where I've been staying in Valletta. It's nothing too fancy, but the owners are so kind and it's in a great location. Plus breakfast is served on the roof and gives a terrific view of the city!

Marsovin summer wine festival

Maltese wine + Italian food + a Spanish guitar and mandolin duet + perfect weather + fireworks = the most perfect night I’ve had in a while!
Earlier this afternoon I found out that Marsovin, a large wine producer in Malta, would be hosting its annual wine festival tonight in the Hastings Gardens, which are located just on the edge of the old city of Valletta, atop the city walls overlooking the sea. The event was described as a fusion of four Mediterranean cultures – Italian, Spanish, Maltese and Moroccan – over a celebration of Marsovin’s 90th anniversary. The gardens were divided into four areas, so that each culture could present food and entertainment to accompany the wine tastings. The Italian area served pasta and salads while classical music was performed by a pianist and flautist; the Spanish area had tapas and paella with a duet of Spanish guitar and mandolin, occasionally interrupted by Flamenco dancers; the Maltese area served traditional Maltese dishes, consisting mainly of rabbit and pasta, while two young men performed on the keyboard and guitar (mostly American music, oddly enough); the Moroccan area advertised shisha, falafel and belly dancing, but I have to admit I did my best to stay away from those reminders of Egypt.
It was a perfectly lovely evening. I wandered from area to area for a while, but settled for most of the night in the Spanish section of the gardens, listening to the hauntingly beautiful music of the guitar and mandolin and sipping on good wine. The scenery was beautiful with an incredible sunset over the harbor, and, just when I thought the night couldn’t get much better, fireworks began in the distance! I love love love fireworks, so this really made my night. Cheers!

St. John's Co-Cathedral

After spending most of the day visiting prehistoric religious sites, I wanted to see St. John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, which is considered an impressive example of Baroque design. On the outside, the church is stately, but simple.
After observing this simple exterior, the incredibly ornate interior is almost shocking! Every inch of the walls and ceilings is covered with intricate carvings and beautiful paintings, primarily designed by Mattia Preti, a member of the Order of St. John (more on that in a minute). The ceiling tells the story of St. John, with eighteen scenes from his life. The sides of the church are divided into eight chapels, each dedicated to one of the langues (or sections) of the Order of St. John. Even the floor of the cathedral is decorated with intricate marble tombstones of members of the Order of St. John.

Main altar

Chapel of Italy, dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria

Chapel of Germany, dedicated to the Epiphany of Christ

Tombstones in the floor of the cathedral

Now, although I loved exploring the symbolism and detail in the artwork around the cathedral, what I really found fascinating about St. John's was the history of the Order of St. John's, which was also known as the Knights of Malta or the Knights Hospitaller. The Order was founded around 1080 in Jerusalem to provide care for poor and injured pilgrims to the Holy Land. During the Crusades, the Order became a religious-military order with the purpose of protecting Holy Land, but after the Holy Land was conquered by Islamic forces, the Order was forced to move its headquarters and eventually landed in Malta. The history of the Order seems filled with stories of riches, military forces, religious relics, European monarchies, piracy and all those things that fill the pages of books like the DaVinci Code.

Tarxien Temples

After visiting the Hypogeum, I wanted to take a look at the temples that had been built above ground around the same time. Malta is also home to a series of prehistoric monuments called the Megalithic Temples of Malta, which were built between 3,500 and 2,500 B.C. The three temples built at Tarxien were built around 2,500 B.C. at the peak of temple civilization.

Carving of a bull on an altar for animal sacrifice

More carvings of animals on the altar

Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum

This morning, after a relaxing breakfast on the roof of my hotel in Valletta, I took a bus out to the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, which is just a short distance away. The Hypogeum, first discovered in 1902 by construction workers digging a cistern, is an underground structure from approximately 3,000 B.C. (You read that correctly – over 5,000 years ago!) It is a collection of underground burial chambers and temples that were carved by hand with only torchlight for guidance by some of the earliest settlers of Malta. Though you might expect from that description that the Hypogeum would be a series of rough caves, it is an impressive collection of smoothly carved rooms and temples carved with perfectly rounded curves and straight edges, with chambers that extend three levels under the Earth's surface and walls that are covered with carvings and paintings.

Unfortunately no photography is allowed in the Hypogeum, but I think you can find some on the internet if you're interested.

Valletta

I’m spending my first two nights in Malta in Valletta, the country’s capital. My flight landed around 4:30 this afternoon so I checked into my hotel quickly and then decided to walk around town a bit. The town is a wonderful grid of steep, narrow streets lined with shops, museums, churches and homes. It’s built on at the tip of a peninsula, so if you walk too far in any direction (well, except one, I suppose), you run into the bright blue Mediterranean Sea.

Yet the town was almost eerily quiet. The streets were almost empty of people, and most of the shops had either already shut their doors or were preparing to do so shortly. It took me a few minutes to remember that most shops in South Carolina also close by six or seven o’clock. Perhaps it’s that I’ve been living too long in Egypt, where the streets are full and the shops are open until almost midnight.
Still, I was able to browse a couple shops before finding a little wine bar at the top of a street so steep that it’s built not as a long slope, but as an enormous set of stairs. The wine bar was as little, with a small bar at one end and only about six or eight tables in total, as it was cute, with walls covered in abstract oil paintings and musical instruments. The best part, though, were the tiny tables outside on the street, where I enjoyed a glass or two of wine and a selection of local spreads and dips.

The little wine bar is at the top of this road

Evenings like this make me never want to go back to “the real world” and stay on holiday forever.

Malta

Hamdulillah!! (Thanks be to God!!) It’s a long weekend! Although I have a ridiculous number of official days off from work since we take holidays from both the Egyptian and American calendars, it’s been about six weeks since we’ve had a holiday, and this long weekend (for the 4th of July) is much needed with all the work that we’ve had lately.

To get away as much as possible from work and from the Egyptian summer heat, I’m spending the weekend in Malta, a small island off the coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. To be completely honest, I didn’t know much of anything about Malta when I bought the plane ticket (and to be even more honest, I still don’t know much!), but now that I’m here, I’m sure I’ll learn more very quickly. Here’s my first lesson…

While waiting for my flight at airport in Cairo, two men and a woman sat down nearby. I noticed by their dress and their look that they didn’t appear to be Egyptian, yet they were speaking Arabic to one another. I reminded myself that I should be studying more so that I can someday be one of those people who doesn’t look Egyptian but speaks Arabic well. After a few minutes, though, I caught them speaking French, or at least a phrase of French, and not long after that, their speech sounded Italian. I concluded that they must be Europeans with business in the Middle East, so while their native tongues may be French and Italian, their Arabic was quite good. But I still couldn’t figure out why they would be flying to Malta, so I was thoroughly confused. Little did I realize at that point in time that they were actually speaking Maltese!

Malta, from what I’ve gathered, has been influenced over the years by Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Crusaders, the French and the British. The language that has developed as a result of all these influences is a Semitic language that has borrowed a lot from the Romance languages. It’s most closely related to Arabic, but is still written using the Latin alphabet.