First days in Malta!

Hi there! A lot has happened between my last post and now but let's focus on the now! The first days in Malta can be summarized by: Roman ruins, magicians and non-existent fish.

The travel to the island was a little hectic, while my flight from Montreal to Frankfurt was pre-boarding, Air Canada found out that there was a technical problem with the plane that couldn't wait (or have been discovered while the plane was sitting at the gate for the previous 5 hours) and we got delayed by 2.5 hours. And that meant that my supposite 3-hour layover in Frankfurt would now be 35 minutes long... But thank goodness for German efficiency and a Lufthansa boarding delay because I made my connection and met back up with Georgia in Malta!

Our first afternoon was a pretty tired, slow one where we met Abigail (my new landlady), walked around the neighbourhood a little bit and got traumatized by the different grocery store system than back home. We were in bed by a solid 8 PM but that meant we were ready for adventure on day 2.

Our first morning, we headed out to explore St. Paul's Bay and the neighbouring town, Xemxija, (which we still have no idea how to pronounce but we're going with the same pronunciation as "eczema"). We definitely got our steps in today. We walked along the promenade to the start of the Xemxija Heritage Trail, taking in the blue Mediterranean water and some of the cool architecture along the way.

The Heritage Trail was super cool and showcased some of Malta's rich history with stops like a Roman apiary, the oldest Carob tree on the island, burial caves, punic tombs, and Roman baths, all along a road built over 2000 years ago.

The first stop was "the Cave of the Gallery", a prehistoric tomb converted to a home and the newest feature on MTV Cribs.

Malta is apparently really well known for their honey. Like so well known that the country's name in Latin, "Melita" is from "Mel", honey in Latin. Beekeeping goes back to the days of the Phoenicians and there are still some aparies from the Roman times and we saw them on the trail. These apiaries are perfectly designed and carved into the south side of the rock to maximize the amount of light and warmth, the Romans really seemed to know what they were doing.

In contrast to the Roman apiary, there was a rustic apiary that was a cave converted into a beekeeping area. Other known uses of the cave were (in this order): for human burial, for human habitation, for honey production, for storage of livestock & farm supplies, and finally for air raid shelter in WWII. How versatile!

In front of this apiary (holy, how many times have I just typed apiary, I promise this is the last time), is the oldest Carob tree on the island. If you, like us, don't know what carob is, it's a type of tree that produces pea pods, like chocolate, and they can be processed to make syrups, liquor, cocoa powder alternatives, chips, thickener for ice cream, the list goes on. Anyways, this tree is over 1000 years old and is 7m in circumference. We paid our respect to the tree at happy hour (more on this later).

The Roman bath complex was the final stop of the trail and wrapped up this hike that had super cool history and views!

After resting our tired legs we headed back out for Happy Hour which is every day from 4-7 PM (but 8 PM when you're some of the only customers in the bar). Here we tried Carob liquor in a drink with cranberry juice and tequila, it was an interesting mix but it was pretty good!

We wrapped up the night finishing a project for Georgia's work and headed to bed!

The next morning was a rainy day but it started out with a splash. In contrast to the Roman's design, my apartment's design is a little funky! The first problem we encountered was that when you turn on the water heater, there is a valve that leaks, so yesterday I put a pot under it with the intention of texting my landlady about it today. But this morning, I flushed the toilet and it didn't stop running! (I'd like to point out that this is one of the funky European toilets that just has a panel on the wall, no tank behind it (it's IN the wall), just in case you thought I was actually incompetent, I wanted to clear that up). So, I called Abigail and she told me someone would be over in 5 minutes. 5 minutes later, an older British dude named Jon was at the door. He came in, assessed the situation and decided that the best plan was to turn off the water and call a plumber. 30 minutes later an older Maltese dude was at the door introducing himself as not a plumber but a magician. The magician was quite talented, when he turned the water back on, nothing happened, the water had disappeared!! So the magician called Jon back and when both of them were here, the water started running again and they managed to pull the panel off the wall and stop the constant flowing! In talking to them, we found out that the magician was not a magician, nor a plumber, but Abigail's dad, so while he didn't know how to pull a rabbit out of a hat or fix a flowing toilet, he did know the ins and outs of the apartment. So I asked him about the water heater and he told me that it's a pressure release valve and it's supposed to drip, so his solution for me... get a bigger pot.

If you couldn’t tell already, the design of the water system at the apartment is funky. The municipal water runs into the kitchen tap and then gets pumped up to the roof into a water tank. It stays there then runs in down a hose on the side of the apartment building into the water heater in the ensuite bathroom (the leaky one) and back to the kitchen sink or the bathroom taps. This is what the roof looks like. What a system.

After a morning fiasco, we decided to keep it going with the water theme and took a trip to the aquarium! It was super cool! They had an octopus, sea horses, jellyfish, baby sharks, zebra sharks, lots of Mediterranean fish, stick bugs and screens that told you what fish are in each tank but they were always wrong. The coolest fish on the screen was never in the tank!!

They had a really cool exhibit upstairs about the wrecks around Malta including WWII planes and ships, really old trade ships, anchors, ancient artifacts, etc. Unfortunately, they are all in >60m of water so diving them won't be possible but I'm hoping to dive when the weather gets warmer!

We spent Sunday exploring Rabat & Mdina, some more historical areas of Malta! We started at the Church of St Dominic & The Blessed Virgin, a beautiful building with a courtyard full of orange & lemon trees.

We walked through the streets of Rabat and made our way to the walled city of Mdina. It’s the old capital of Malta and called the “silent city”. We found it rather loud and busy, however, with Italian and Spanish tourists being dropped off by the coach bus load, but the city was stunning no less.

Mdina was full of winding, narrow streets, beautiful stone work and colourful doors.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is one of the beautiful baroque style buildings within Mdina’s walls. Mdina is thought to be the place that Paul the Apostle rested after being shipwrecked in 60AD pointing out that’s this city is very old. The city changed hands many times between then and now, meaning that the city had changed shape a lot too (including being fortified and having the massive wall built all around it after the fall of the Roman Empire).

After many photo ops and gift shop stops, we wandered out of the walled city and back into Rabat to see St Paul’s Catacombs.

These catacombs were a massive interconnected complex that were in use in the 4th century BC. By massive, I mean covering an area of 2000m^2! There are 30 hypogea, 20 of which that are open to the public so there was a ton of tunnels to explore.

The catacombs were equipped with these large tables and rock “couches” where the families and loved ones of the recently deceased would have a feast with the recently deceased. They would eat fish and bread with wine and milk and share with the dead by pouring the food and drink into tubes. I can only imagine how the catacombs would smell after this but I’m happy to report no smell lingered through all these centuries.

With the thought of feasts with the dead on our minds we walked back above ground to try some Maltese delicacies! We tried our first pastizzi at Google’s most recommended shop, Is Serkin. Pastizzi is kind of like a croissant stuffed with ricotta or curried peas or chicken, etc. then fried. It was crispy and savoury and greasy and all in all very good!!

The next delicacy was the Maltese national cocktail, a Maltese Falcon. It had prickly pear liquor and syrup and Kinnie, an orange bitters soda. It was pretty tasty (and quite sweet)!

So we’re 3/3 on Maltese delicacies but that ratio might change soon because the next one to try is rabbit…