Malta for Christmas

The big Christmas trip of 2006 took us to Malta. We spent about 5 days there between the 21st and 26th. While I had certainly heard of Malta before, I didn't know where it was or what there was to do there, but it fit our criteria of places to visit while we are here. Places we wouldn't be able to visit easily once we are back in Seattle. Malta is a tiny island south of Scicily in the Mediterranean. It is at the same latitude as Northern Africa. To get there we flew to Rome, for an eight hour layover, then on to Malta the next day. The weather in Malta was nice, about 60 degrees each day. Not hot, but certainly comfortable.

We stayed in a hotel in the city of St. Julians a small area on the outskirts of Valetta, the capitol. The entire island was small and could be crossed in 30 minutes or so. Malta is beautiful with lots of buildings and fortresses that date back to the 1300's. There were actually some ruins on the island that predate the pyramids in egypt by 1000 years. Wandering around, the architecture, was amazing and we did lots of wandering.

As for culture and the people, the island was interesting because the two languages are Malti, a derivation of Arabic and English. As a former english colony, everyone spoke english and there were lots of brits throughout the island. Disappointing, to say the least.

We have been avid fans of the Lonely Planet tour guide series and now have an impressive bookshelf full in London, but we were not in sync with the writer of the Malta/Goza version. The restaurant and hotel recommendations were generally not very good.

The benefit of staying in a largely English town though was that there was a good movie theater. As everyone knows, we love movies, so we hit the 16 screen multiplex pretty hard. I think we saw five movies in four days including: Holidays, Prestige, Deja Vu, Deck the Halls and Night at the Museum. We would have watched more, but the line on Christmas night was too long...for our third movie of the day.

The other highlight of the trip was walking through an old area of town and seeing a stage set-up in the middle of a square (really just a big intersection), where lots of kids dressed in Christmas costumes would get up and sing. Most would sing one Christmas song and one contemporary cheesy ballad. We enjoyed sitting at a table, drinking a couple of beers and getting in the Christmas spirit.

We also figured we should go to Christmas Eve Mass since we were in such a predominantly catholic country and we had passed so many beautiful churches. So we asked around and the hotel receptionist told us to go to a church a couple of blocks away because they would have a good "Christmas" mass, though it would be in Malti. We had dinner at another mediocre restaurant and made our way to the church. Of all the beautiful churches of Malta, we went to the 1963 version of ugly. It started out well with a live reenactment of the birth of Jesus that was quite festive so we had hope. Then once the sermon by the alter boy and girl was over, it all went downhill. Even though the service was in Malti, we remembered clearly why we don't go to mass. Oh well, we tried.

All in all, a disappointment, but better than sitting at home. Plus, I think we needed the disappointment and time to relax before heading to Italy for part two of the trip.

I hope everyone had a great holiday break.

Ted