4* Preluna Hotel & Spa - 124 Tower Road, Sliema SLM 1605, Malta.
Contact number: 00356 21334001
DAY 2: Valletta B/D Enjoy a half day walking tour of Malta’s fascinating capital Valletta. Visiting in 1830 a young Benjamin Disraeli declared Valletta “a city of palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen.” From the Barakka Gardens with its sweeping views of the Grand Harbour to St John’s Co-Cathedral blessed with an incredibly ornate interior and the grandiose Grand Master’s Palace displaying antique weaponry and suits of armour, this morning is a great introduction to the treasures that await you on this tour.
Revised itinerary
…We were waiting a long time ca.8am for a lift down to the first floor for breakfast, and it was annoying that several times a lift went past our third floor location without stopping. The tasteless puffed rice cereal was like expanded polystyrene to chew. I had rather fragmented bacon and just-about-acceptable sausages and baked beans. I sliced myself a chunk of brown bread and dipped it in oil. I selected “Americano” on the coffee machine — a reasonable drink: perhaps not as strong as I’d have preferred. Then after a quick return to the room we went down for the 9.15am meeting. The more detailed itinerary that we were given yesterday said: “09:15 — After breakfast please be in the TV lounge for your welcome meeting. Meeting will be given by our representative Jon. At this meeting kindly give Jon your departure details for us to make the necessary arrangements.” But there was no-one in the TV lounge. We did find them in the nearby lounge by the lobby. It became evident that we were the only ones to have been given the “Welcome to Malta” envelope with the “meet in the TV lounge” instructions. One lady told us that she’d been told “quarter to nine” so had been waiting half an hour. When this Jon did arrive,
ca.5 minutes later, he led us into the TV lounge.
He gave us a map of Malta marked with which locations were served by which buses, and ran through the itinerary. I was the only one who gave him the slip of paper I’d completed with the return flight details. Then we went back to the room for things we needed, and returned to the lobby where we were met by tour guide Cynthia and led to the minibus, which was like the one in which we travelled in Jordan, with double seats one side of the aisle and single ones the other. It was a bit cramped.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:02:20
Preluna Hotel, seen from the minibus
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:02:50
Aboard the minibus
We set out, initially northwards away from the Valletta direction, but after rounding the headland just there leftwards — and waiting to pass the site of an accident, where a policeman was marking the position of the corners of a stationary vehicle on the road with a spray-paint can — we turned off left. Cynthia asked us to tell her if she switched to speaking Maltese without realising it, for in ordinary conversation with Maltese people she would switch from Maltese to English and back again repeatedly. “What’s the term in linguistics for that?” I asked myself, and later looked it up: “code switching”. (“Switching” I understand, but why “code”?) Her accent was almost “RP”, but her dental fricatives /ð/ and /θ/ more often than not sounded like alveolar plosives /d/ and /t/, perhaps dental plosives; but the situation was often reversed in words like “garden”. So Jonathan’s name sounded as if it should be spelled “Jonatan”, and garden sounded as if it should be spelled “garthen”. We passed various harbours and marinas on the short journey to Valletta. I remember the towns of Pietà and Floriana being pointed out. On the roof of one building there was a long banner proclaiming “Jum l’Indipendenza” — the same word basically, I guessed, as the Hebrew “yom” (“day”). We went “clockwise” outside the bastions around Valletta — as we passed I noticed among other ships moored in the Grand Harbour a red tanker called “Karol Wojtyła” — before being dropped off at the bus station. Cynthia led us across the centuries-old, but never completed, trench by a bridge, through the modern City Gate, and into Freedom Square.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:49:26
The trench of Valletta and St. John’s Bastion
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:53:36 (movie screen-capture 1)
Looking back at the modern Fifth City Gate
She told us that Valletta was not built originally with any squares, but the buildings here were destroyed by bombs in World War II. (I’m sure she said that, but later we were in St. George’s Square, which gave no indication of being anything but original.) To our right was the new Parliament House, known locally as the “cheese grater”.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:53:36 (movie screen-capture 2)
The new Parliament House
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:54:24
Political slogans outside Parliament House
We turned right just beyond this, passing (to our left): the ruins of the Royal Opera House, which now had steel structures for the staging of open-air productions; St. Catherine’s Church; and the Auberge de Castille, one of the “auberges” built in Valletta for the “langues” of the knights of the Order of Saint John — this one for the Langue of Castile, León and Portugal. It’s now the Prime Minister’s office.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:58:50
Ruins of the Royal Opera House, bombed during World War II, and the new open-air theatre Pjazza Teatru Rjal
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:58:50 (detail 1)
Ruins of the Royal Opera House
Friday 18 September 2015 — 10:58:50 (detail 2)
New open-air theatre Pjazza Teatru Rjal
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:02:38 (movie screen-capture)
St. Catherine’s Church and (behind) the Auberge de Castille
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:04:56
St. Catherine’s Church (left) and the Auberge de Castille (right)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:05:20
Auberge de Castille
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:06:16
Auberge de Castille
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:06:00
Auberge de Castille
We also saw ahead the Stock Exchange. We walked to the left of this, and through the Upper Barrakka Gardens to the arcade beyond it overlooking the Saluting Battery of cannons and beyond that the panorama of the Grand Harbour. We were too early for the firing of the salute at 12 o’clock. The sign on the entrance was partly bilingual “Gnien Barrakka ta’ Fuq” — “Barrakka ta’ Fuq Garden” (singular) — and I thought that Maltese reminded me of “Klingonese”!
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:08:14
Monument to Ġorġ Borg Olivier, twice Prime Minister of Malta, in front of the Stock Exchange
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:08:14 (detail 1)
Monument to Ġorġ Borg Olivier
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:08:14 (detail 2)
Monument to Ġorġ Borg Olivier
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:08:24
Stock Exchange (right) and entrance to the Upper Barrakka Gardens (right)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:08:24 (detail 1)
Stock Exchange
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:08:24 (detail 2)
Entrance to the Upper Barrakka Gardens
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:09:00
Entrance to the Upper Barrakka Gardens
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:09:26
“Gnien Barrakka ta’ Fuq” — Upper Barrakka Garden (singular)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:10:46 (movie screen-capture 1)
Arcade at the far end of the garden
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:10:46 (movie screen-capture 2)
Arcade at the far end of the garden
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:10:46 (movie screen-capture 3)
Plaque commemorating Albert Einstein
A commemorative plaque showing Albert Einstein in profile reminded me of drawings I used to make of Roy Earnshaw, my Physics teacher at Fleetwood Grammar School, 1967–1968. Diddy Rotheram and I called him to as “Mu-note” or “Mu-nowt” /ˌmjuːˈnəʊt/ because that’s how he pronounced the Magnetic Constant µ₀, “Mu-nought” /ˌmjuːˈnɔːt/. Rotheram would urge me to draw a caricature of him, saying, “Do a ‘Mu-note’”. One of these, and a fragment of another, survives.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:11:30
Plaque commemorating Albert Einstein
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:11:30 (detail)
Plaque commemorating Albert Einstein
It reminded me of my Physics teacher at Fleetwood Grammar School, 1967–1968, Roy Earnshaw, B.Sc. (Liverpool)
It reminded me of my Physics teacher at Fleetwood Grammar School, 1967–1968, Roy Earnshaw, B.Sc. (Liverpool)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:13:34
Views across the Grand Harbour: №6 (China) Dock
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:13:34 (detail 1)
Drilling rigs
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:13:34 (detail 2)
Ship in dry dock
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:13:48
Views across the Grand Harbour: the seaward bastions of Senglea
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:14:02
Views across the Grand Harbour: Fort St. Angelo
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:16:16
Views across the Grand Harbour: Catamaran Jean de la Vallette
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:20:38
Saluting Battery
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:21:10
Views across the Grand Harbour: the Karol Wojtyła (all red) and another ship. Below: Our Lady of Liessa church.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:21:26
Close-up of the stern of the Karol Wojtyła
After a short free time to look around, we proceeded from there through the grid of streets to the high baroque St. John’s Co-Cathedral — “co-” because it shares one archbishop with the former capital Mdina.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:22:48
Copy of the statue Les Gavroches
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:22:48 (detail 1)
Antonio Sciortino Les Gavroches “the Urchins” (copy)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:22:48 (detail 2)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:23:14
Winston Churchill
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:23:14 (detail)
Winston Churchill
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:23:38
Memorial to John Bathurst Thomson M.D., a Regimental Surgeon of the Malta Garrison
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:23:38 (detail)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:24:28
Upper Barrakka Gardens
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:25:30
Upper Barrakka Gardens
From the Upper Barrakka Gardens we first turned right into St. Paul Street, then left into Melita Street.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:33:32
St. Paul Street, Valletta
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:34:36
St. Paul Street, Valletta
When we got to Merchants Street, Cynthia pointed out the Palazzo Parisio to the left, where Napoleon stayed for six days in June 1798 during the French occupation.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:38:08
Palazzo Parisio
I think we turned right, though, along Merchants Street, then left into Triq San Ġwann (St John Street). The façade of St. John’s Co-Cathedral was almost all covered with scaffolding, but plastic sheets had been placed in front of this with a depiction of what the cathedral looked like without it.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:43:44
St. John’s Co-Cathedral façade
We went in by an entrance on the far side, around to the right in Republic Street.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:50:44
Entering St. John’s Co-Cathedral
About buildings in Malta, Cynthia repeatedly advised us, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”; and this was certainly apt for the fairly plain exterior and extremely ornate interior of St. John’s.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:57:02
St. John’s Co-Cathedral
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:57:28
St. John’s Co-Cathedral
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:57:38
St. John’s Co-Cathedral
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:58:12
St. John’s Co-Cathedral
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:59:30
St. John’s Co-Cathedral
Friday 18 September 2015 — 11:59:50
St. John’s Co-Cathedral
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:09:56
St. John’s Co-Cathedral
There were eight side chapels, each dedicated to the patron saint of one the eight “langues” of the Knights. As we were going from the rear right of the nave into a side-room called the Oratory, we looked through a portal into the Chapel of Castile, León, and Portugal. There was a similar portal on the opposite wall, and so on, giving a view through all four chapels on that side. Cynthia pointed out the monuments in this chapel of grandmasters Fra Antonio Manoel de Vilhena and of Fra Manuel Pinto da Fonseca.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:15:10
Tomb of António Manoel de Vilhena (1663–1736), Grand Master, 1722–1736
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:16:00
View through all the right side-chapels
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:16:42
Mosaic portrait on the tomb of Manuel Pinto da Fonseca (1681–1773), Grand Master, 1741–1773
We went into the Oratory, where at the far end we saw a large canvas by Caravaggio,
The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, painted in 1608, the only work of his to be signed (in “blood”). At the opposite end was his
St. Jerome writing (making the Vulgate translation?). The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, was painted before he was imprisoned in Fort St. Angelo but escaped and went to Sicily. We saw his painting of
The Burial of St. Lucy, also 1608, there on 9
June 2015. We weren’t allowed to take photos in the Oratory, but we bought postcards on the way out.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (detail)
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, St. Jerome writing
From there we went via a narrow alley Triq it-Teżorerija (Treasury Street) to the portico of the National Library, then left through Republic Square (or Queen’s Square, because there’s a statue of “Jones’s Grandma” or Queen Victoria in the middle), and right into wide St. George’s Square.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:33:50
Triq it-Teżorerija
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:37:34
Looking back along Triq it-Teżorerija from the portico of the National Library
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:39:08
Republic Square
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:39:08 (detail 1)
Statue of Queen Victoria
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:39:08 (detail 2)
Statue of Queen Victoria
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:40:42 (movie screen-capture 2)
St. George’s Square and Grand Master’s Palace (right)
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:41:28
St. George’s Square
Cynthia had expressed some doubt about whether we’d be able to visit the Grand Master’s Palace, or to what extent we would be admitted, for it houses the office of the President of Malta and the Palace State Rooms are sometimes used for official business; but in fact it was open to us. We entered through the first of two balconied entrances, passing through the building into Prince Alfred’s Courtyard, then up a modern glass-and-metal stairwell in one corner to the top floor.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:42:50
Within the entrance of the Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:42:58
Passing through the Grand Master’s Palace…
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:44:20
…to Prince Alfred’s Courtyard
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:48:58
Up a modern staircase to the top floor
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:50:48
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:51:14
Grand Master’s Palace
One of the rooms we visited was the Tapestry Chamber, kept in near darkness to prevent deterioration of the tapestries purchased by Grand Master Ramon Perellos y Roccaful in 1708 from the Gobelin factory in Paris. Photography wasn’t allowed in there, so the images below were lifted from the internet.
Grand Master’s Palace: Tapestry Chamber
Grand Master’s Palace: Tapestry Chamber
Friday 18 September 2015 — 12:58:38
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:00:36
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:01:26
António Manoel de Vilhena
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:01:26 (edited)
António Manoel de Vilhena (1663–1736), 66th Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta, 1722–1736
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:02:54
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:02:54 (edited)
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:04:40
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:06:08
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:06:28
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:06:36
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:07:16
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:07:50
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:08:34
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:08:58
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:10:02
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:10:32
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:11:54
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:12:08
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:12:48
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:13:32
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:17:06
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:18:04
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:19:18
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:19:36
Bust of Grand Master Jean de la Vallette, after whom Valletta is named
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:20:34
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:21:22
Grand Master’s Palace
We went down and out from the palace state rooms by way of a wide spiral staircase.
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:24:50 (movie screen-capture 1)
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:24:50 (movie screen-capture 2)
Grand Master’s Palace
Friday 18 September 2015 — 13:26:12
Leaving the Grand Master’s Palace
We scrambled aboard the minibus when the driver managed to pull in and stop just up the street from where we were. After returning to the hotel room to recover we went out again, across the road to
Mason’s Café, where I ordered spaghetti Bolognese (larger than I expected; it only looked “snack-size” on the menu illustration) and a Maltese-brewed
Cisk-brand beer from a can. Everything on the can was in English with no Maltese. The same was true on
Janet’s Diet Coke bottle, manufactured under licence in Malta. Afterwards Janet
went off to find a hairdresser’s we passed yesterday and to get some more water from
Scott’s, and I returned to the room to update this record (only a small fraction of what I added after we came home),
etc. Jon’s map had marked on it “St. Paul’s Bay”, so I looked it up on the internet. As I thought it might be, it’s the traditional location where Paul was shipwrecked. We went for dinner
ca.6.15pm. I had a slice of lamb carved by the chef, among other things, and apple crumble and custard to follow. We went for a walk, as night fell, south along the seafront, as far as a colonnade below the promenade where this turns left (east). We went down steps and walked along the colonnade, which had graffiti-style artworks on its inner wall. We passed lots of groups of young people, for it seemed to be a teenage hangout. It smelled somewhat of stale piss. We turned back, because the steps were the only way in and out, unless one wanted to scramble over the rocky remains of what looked like old fortifications and try to find a way up to the promenade farther north in the dark. We were out 1½ hours or more. Back in the room, I researched boat trips to St. Paul’s Island, and found one such going from the jetty in Buġibba, a district of St. Paul’s Bay town. The №12 bus, passing the hotel, goes as far as Buġibba where it loops round
(i.e. one would get off at a bus stop near the jetty and back on at the same stop, not at a stop across the road) and returns.… We went to bed
ca.10.30pm.
