Valletta, Malta

We arrived in sunny Malta, the largest island of the Maltese chain after a three hour flight from Amsterdam. The airline managed to lose one of our suitcases that remained in Amsterdam. The quickest way to get it to us was for them to ship it to Germany first and then on to us the next day.Valletta is the densely populated capital city of Malta. It is only 1 kilometer long by 600 meters wide.  There is a lot of history packed into this small area and all is easily accessible on foot, save a lot of steps. The history of Malta goes back to 5,000 BC and there are 7,000 year old fascinating sites to visit. Valetta is a "walkable" city and we spent a lot of time exploring the narrow streets by day and in the evenings. 

Real estate is at a premium in the city, best evidenced by the parking spaces that are marked more on the sidewalks than the streets. 

A pleasant experience is to stroll around the perimeter of the peninsula, encountering gardens, historical batteries and great views of the harbors and the Mediterranean Sea.  Our first stop was the Lower Barrakka Gardens. There is an upper Barrakka Gardens to stroll through nearby.

The city of Viottorisoa from the gardens

Fort St. Angelo

Earlier in the day we visited the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum (underground necropolis) and the Tarxien Temples. The Hypogeum dates back more than 4,000 years and is thought to have been started even earlier than that, some archeologist think it actually began about 6,000 years ago, predating even the Egyptian Pyramids by a thousand years.  Cameras are not allowed inside of the Hypogeum so we only have a picture of the outside.  It was only discovered in 1902 when digging to build a cistern for new houses.  Unbelievably, even today a private residence lies on top of part of the Hypogeum. 

Take a moment to click on the following link to take you to the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum website to take a visual tour of the multilevel interior. Use the arrows to move forward and back on the tour. All the carving to create the space was done by hand out of the native limestone and with crude tools like animals antlers over many hundreds of years. There are exquisite wall carvings inside the Hypogeum. Bodies were placed in the underground caves and often stacked one atop another to conserve space. Entire rooms were filled with the dead unlike being interred in wall niches that we found in the catacombs of Siracusa later in the trip.

The Tarxien Temples were built between 3,600 and 2,500 BC and little is known about the purpose of the temples but it is speculated that it was a communal center for social, religious, political and economic activities. 

During our evening stroll we visited the City Gate, which was reconstructed in the image of the original built in 1633. to defend the island against invaders. Malta has been conquered many times over the centuries but received it's independence from Great Britain in the mid 20th century.

Nightlife in Valletta is fun. Buildings and streets are illuminated and a stroll through the city is very interesting. The downside of Valletta is the fact that it is extremely crowded and traffic jams are not uncommon. Nonetheless, it's a fun city to visit.

Here’s the winner for the cutest and most random sight of the night A little girl wearing a multicolored unicorn bath robe was standing at the counter in this store as we passed by on the street. She was quite wonderful.