Happy 150th Italy!! Spring Break (What everyone has been waiting for!) Part 1

Sicily and Malta.

After finishing a stressful week of Midterms, though a week earlier than many of my friend's breaks, it was finally time for a break from MCAS. For Spring Break I traveled to Crete and Athens, touring around Greece for the first time. But before everyone scattered to their various destinations, the group of us from Arcadia had one more field trip. This trip was the trip we were supposed to take to Tunisia, but because of the current political situation we ended up in the small island country of Malta instead.

Malta was a very interesting place with a very complicated history. You can find it just south of Sicily, partway between Sicily and Africa. As fitting for a small island (and recounted in all the various Malta movies we saw) "change to Malta has always come from the sea". Malta, first settled by prehistoric people from Sicily, had been occupied by the Ancient Greeks, Phoenicians (many fishing boats have the eye of Osiris, thought to trace back to the Phoenicians), Romans, Fatimids, Knights of St. John, and the French, but most recently by the British. Actually, English is Malta's second language, and English was everywhere. It was almost spooky to understand what people in the streets were saying again!

The shopping complex around our hotel.

On Friday after a long very early bus ride from Syracuse to Pozzallo, and we took a ferry from Pozzallo to Malta. Unfortunately, the sea was very rough and it was not an easy ferry ride for many! A bit late getting in, we dashed into our four star hotel (nestled inside a busy shopping complex in a very built up and touristy town), slung our luggage into the luggage room, and booked it to the sites.






 

The Tarxien temple.

 In Malta, there was a very impressive prehistoric period in which the inhabitants constructed massive temples and winding rock cut tombs.

More Tarxien Temple.

We explored the Tarxien Temple, which
was still very visible inside a large park. The megalithic temples are said to be the oldest freestanding structures in the world (older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge even!). Then we took a tour of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, an awesome labyrinth like structure carved completely out of the rock adorned with painted decoration. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed there.

Becky at the Tarxien Temple.

Quail, Horse, and Rabbit!

Later that night we dined at a nice restaurant and had a chance to try out some traditional Maltese dishes. I had fish stew and then quail, horse, and rabbit all in one dish! A large portion of Tiramisu for dessert was divine.

The next morning we got up and sampled the hotel breakfast - quite a spread. Because of the British influence, this included cereal, yogurt, bacon, eggs, toast, croissants with marmalade, but also stewed tomatoes and baked beans. We ate this well each day for breakfast until we left Malta Monday afternoon.

Can you see the British influence?

After this we took our bus to Valletta and explored the capital of Malta. This entire fortified city was built from scratch after the Great Siege by the Knights of St. John.

The ceiling.

Our first stop was St. John's Co-Cathedral, the crowning Baroque jewel of the city. It was breathtaking.

St. Jerome Writing, by Caravaggio.

There were different chapels decorated with styles and iconography from the different regions that the knights of the order came from.

The altar.

 Every inch of the church was lavishly decorated. The floor was covered by inlaid marble tombs and two paintings by Caravaggio, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist and St. Jerome Writing, were displayed in the oratory. I found spectacular Flemish tapestries and beautiful illuminated choir books in another room.

The view from the WWII Monument.

On the WWII Monument!

After this we looked out across the bay from the World War II Monument and then watched The Malta Experience, a video illustrating the history of Malta. We explored Valletta for a bit more, taking in spectacular views and architecture (one of my unfortunate group members got to know first hand the frigid water as well). Valletta was also in midst of Carnival and the streets were full of spectators, costumes, and floats.

The Sleeping Lady from the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum.

I explored the Archaeological Museum in Valletta and saw some awesome prehistoric artifacts from the local sites we had visited the previous day. Also on display were prints, posters, and paintings of Alphonse Mucha, one of my favorite Art Nouveau artists!

Maltese homes have spectacular door knockers.

For dinner we had received vouchers for a reduced meal at a local casino, so a friend and I took up that offer and had a very fancy meal and good dessert for a good price. However, like all fancy restaurants the portions were minuscule, so we opted for Indian food the next night. I won 10 euros using a slot machine voucher, which covered my part of dinner - you could say I ate for free! I found it interesting that there were two casinos within 5 minutes of each other here, vying for customers. St. Julian's, where we stayed, was situated near the capital of Malta and was very built up. They enjoyed a very different sort of tourism here than what I had gotten used to in Sicily.

The gate of Mdina.

Sunday, after another wonderful breakfast, we traveled to Mdina, the silent city. It was a breathtaking historic citadel with gorgeous views of the Maltese countryside.

The view from the walls.

 The city was occupied during the great siege, and was very well preserved but quiet as the grave. No one stayed there but shopkeepers and tourists (although we did hear bagpipes in the distance from the town below!). We watched another Malta movie here which was not as good as the first but provided a point for comparison.

A well-preserved Roman mosaic floor.

The cathedral here was closed, unfortunately, but we did have a chance to inspect a Roman townhouse with extant mosaics and a winding system of underground catacombs.

In St. John's Catacombs.

A Carnival float.

Later many people went back to explore St. Julian's further and I braved the bus system (with distinctive orange and yellow old-fashioned buses) to head back to Valletta once more. Carnival was still going in full force, so we had a hairy time navigating the bus system to get home again - involving bus-mobbing, number-switching, and extreme over-crowding.

Finally on Monday, while most of our group had to leave at 5 in the morning to take the ferry back home, I slept in and had one last nice breakfast in Malta. My two friends who were going with me on our Spring Break adventure and I idled around St. Julian's for a few hours, catching the internet at a McDonald's with free wifi. Then we braved the bus system once more and found the right bus to airport. We were still very early so we explored the airport for a bit and then I read every book I had bought in a bookstore in Valletta (the joy of English books!). Finally it was time to check in for our flight to Athens. We went up to the desk only to find that our flight had been delayed for two hours! That in itself would not have been a problem, but because of the delay we would miss our connecting flight to Crete. Tired from waiting and a bit unhappy because we did not know how this would affect our plans for the break, we headed over to the Air Malta desk to see what they could do...