Malta

            Hold on to your seats because this is going to be a long one. As I mentioned in my previous post, my friends and I took a week-long vacation in Malta, and it was everything I imagined and more. I’ll do my best to capture the magic of it, and with the help of lots and lots of pictures hopefully you can get a taste of Malta from wherever you are in the world right now.

Day 0

            We left Amman on Saturday morning after finishing our midterm exams two days prior. It was an uneventful flight, and we landed mid-afternoon to a warm, humid climate. We packed light, so we decided that our first item on the agenda should be to visit the capital city, Valletta, before heading to the Airbnb apartment we rented for the week to drop off our luggage. Not wanting to rent a car (for cost reasons and because they drive on the left side of the road), we bought weeklong bus passes, which turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. The bus system in Malta is extensive and well-organized, and it is generally no problem getting anywhere on the island with at most one transfer. Amman doesn’t even come close. We figured that if we took two bus rides per day it would be worth the cost, and we probably averaged 4 or 5 rides per day. Plus, it was a surprisingly good workout trying not to fall over on some of the roundabouts, which was fun.

            Once in Valletta, we walked around and got a sense of the city, which is surprisingly small for the Capital. It’s built on a small peninsula reaching out into the Mediterranean, and it is separated from the rest of the island by a moat and high walls. There are no buses in the capital (streets are too narrow), but it is easy to walk all of it. We ate at one of the many restaurants there, and of course we had to order pasta for our first meal. We were all so excited to eat seafood after living in the desert for 2 months that we ended up ordering muscle and clam pasta, shrimp pasta, and octopus pasta. Yum!

            Afterwards we got some amazing gelato at an Italian chain called Amorino and it was exquisite. We ended up making many more return trips throughout the week. While my friends Anya and Rosemary favor the fruitier sorbet flavors, I can never resist a good gelato. The pistachio, Amarena (cream and cherry), hazelnut, and coffee flavors were to die for. After that, we took our bus back to our apartment, checked in with our lovely host Salvatore, an Italian man who plays the guitar, and settled in for the night.

 Day 1

            Unbeknownst to us when we booked our tickets, the weather forecast during the week of our visit was to consist of thunderstorms nearly every day. Not ones to let some bad weather stop us, we bravely donned our raincoats and set out to explore regardless of the inclement weather. Our first destination was the town of Marsaxlokk (yes, that’s a real name), a fishing town on the Eastern side of the island known for its weekly Sunday fish market. As we found out, the fish market sells more than just fish, and we were able to browse for souvenirs, knockoff handbags, and various deserts as well. Half an hour after arriving it started raining and thundering in the distance but there wasn’t much else to go, so we walked on. We tried to visit a nearby cove called St. Peter’s pool but as we were walking up a small hill on the way there we saw a flash of lighting strike directly at the top of the hill and heard the thunder half a second later. While we are brave, we also value our lives, so we decided to back down and wait out the storm in the town.

            Not willing to risk more lightning, we returned to Valletta by bus, which of course caused it to clear up immediately. We never did get to see St. Peter’s pool, but that’s ok because we got to see so much more! We spent the afternoon wandering around Valletta with no real plan (we saw most of it in a couple hours, since, as stated before, it is not very large. The population in 2014 was just 6,444 people). My phone is now filled with more pictures of brightly painted doors and balconies than I could ever have use for, but it was fun to walk around with no plan and no agenda.

            My absolute favorite part of the city was the lower Barakka gardens overlooking the bay to the East. It’s a beautifully cultivated area of calm of the type that doesn’t exist in Amman. I’ve missed seeing so much green in such a concentrated space. Almost as nice were the upper Barakka gardens, which we visited next, but not quite. As I sat in these two gardens it sunk in that I was on vacation, and that I could relax. I didn’t have to worry about any upcoming deadlines or stress about classes or anything, I could just exist and take in my surroundings for a while. Beforehand I hadn’t felt entirely comfortable with the slower pace of our vacation, and a part of me still felt pressured to be productive and was somewhat guilty for taking time off. However, sitting in those gardens was the moment when I really committed to enjoying our trip and began living in the moment.

            Still a bit tired from our traveling, we returned to our apartment for a quick break before heading out for the evening. I convinced Anya and Rosemary that they needed to watch the TV series Killing Eve, which we happen to own on iTunes (thanks Mom and Dad!). We began watching that afternoon and by the end of the first episode they were hooked. Even with all of our touristing that week, we managed to finish the first season and then some by the end of the week. A successful conversion of two new fans! All of you reading should watch it too if you haven’t yet.

            Our cravings for seafood hadn’t been satisfied yet, so we took the bus to the nearby town of Bugibba (again, a real name for a real place) for some sushi and a bottle of wine (white, obviously, red is nasty). That was followed by a precariously stacked cone of gelato (almond this time) and another episode of Killing Eve before calling it a day.

Day 2

            The next day we took a trip to Gozo, the second of the three main islands of Malta. The only way onto the island is by ferry, which runs every 45 minutes from the easternmost point of the main island. Coincidentally, we happened to get there two minutes before it departed.

            We arrived, trekked up a hill to get a better view of a nearby cathedral and the surrounding ocean, then hopped on a bus to the main city in the center of the island, Victoria (also called Rabat, not to be confused with the Rabat on the main island of Malta or the Rabat in Morocco). Located in the center is a fortified citadel, originally built by the Romans, but since modified by the successive inhabitants of the island.

            But first, lunch! In order to save some money, we decided to start packing lunches with us on our day trips. We decided on sandwiches (with French bread! Very hard to find in Amman) of turkey, salami, cheddar, tomatoes, and capers. We ended up eating these sandwiches for lunch every day, they were so good. I miss them.

            As for the citadel, we got a chance to walk around the old streets and stand on top of the city’s walls while looking out over the island. From its walls you can see the ocean on all four sides, which was a great reminder of how small the island really is. Within its walls are an old courthouse, a prison and, at the center of it all, a cathedral. We got to walk around the inside of the cathedral, although unfortunately the dome was under conservation efforts at the moment and we did not get the full effect. I love visiting cathedrals because of the sumptuousness of their interiors, there is something interesting to look at everywhere your eyes go. But beyond the decorations I also just love sitting in cathedrals and enjoying the feel of the space, which is so very different from any other building. Something about the height of the ceilings and the abundance of hard surfaces that refuse to damper any noise leads to a unique sense of space in cathedrals that enhances the feeling of sacredness. While I loved this church, I actually found it to be the least impressive of the four cathedrals we visited throughout our trip.

            And now for something completely different, our next stop was a Neolithic site called Ggantija, the oldest archeological site on Malta and considered to be the second oldest temple site ever discovered. Malta was one of the earliest inhabited sites in all of Europe and it hosted Neolithic civilizations over 5000 years ago. The Ggantija temples consist of stone walls shaped into vaguely clover shaped rooms, several of which house small stone altars. Walking through the ancient walls in the rain I liked to imagine it must have felt to live there all of those thousands of years ago. The inhabitants must not have known anything about the world besides the extent of their island, surrounded by the seemingly infinite unknown expanse of the ocean. This temple was thus the heart of their universe and the center of their lives, a small haven of safety and comfort within the emptiness of the world. While we were by no means isolated from the world on our visit, with the constant possibility of communicating with others off the island in an instant, even so I felt a little separated from the craziness of life. It was nice.

            While trying to get to a pizza restaurant we’d heard about for dinner we had a slight bus mishap and had to hop off the bus before we got too off course from our destination. By chance we happened to walk out to a brilliant sunset over a verdant valley, so we paused half a moment to take it in before hurrying on foot to our destination before it got too dark. Turns out it wasn’t so much of a pizza restaurant as a kitchen filled with Maltese grandmothers with a door facing the street in a quiet residential neighborhood. We ordered two pizzas and a ftira, which is like a pizza covered with dough on top and filled with potatoes and other toppings. Wow, was it delicious! Cheesy and warm and very very tasty. 10/10 would eat again. And with that pizza and a long return trip (bus then ferry then bus again), thus ended our second full day in Malta.

Day 3

            The following wasn’t quite clear enough to justify a beach trip, so decided to keep biding our time and head to the southern half of the island to visit the walled city of Mdina. A quick side note on the Maltese language: it is a wonderful and terrible hybrid of Arabic descent with lots of Italian loanwords and written using the Latin instead of the Arabic alphabet. To my friends and I, it looked like someone did a poor job transliterating Arabic, which, by the way, was not meant to be spelled using the Latin alphabet and which makes for a very awkward and clunky spelling system. We had a fun time trying to read the signs in Maltese, which was challenging but we could usually make sense of its vocabulary and grammar if there was an English translation beside it, which there usually was. For example, the city we visited, Mdina, actually just means “city” in Arabic.

            Even if you don’t know anything about Mdina, you might have seen parts of it before: it was featured as one of the filming sites of the TV series Game of Thrones, specifically used for certain scenes that take place in King’s Landing. Unlike King’s it is actually pretty small, and you can walk all of it in less than an hour. In the center was, big surprise, a cathedral! And what a cathedral it was.

            We first entered the adjacent museum that held some religious and historical artifacts as well as a respectable collection of Christian art and a special exhibit on Dürer. As much as I love Islamic art, there’s something really special and unique about the Christian approach to art, particularly during the Baroque period. It’s just so dramatic and intensely theatrical, they take all emotions and pump them to the max. Also, they really did love their dark backgrounds didn’t they, you can barely make out what’s happening in some of them, especially Caravaggio.

            I find it really interesting how much focus there was on the corporeal body throughout the Baroque period, especially in that most of the subjects were saints or other religious figures. They display their divinity in their pose, expression, and the symbols surrounding them but at the same time there is so much attention to their bodies and to anatomical naturalism, a legacy of the Renaissance. We tend to consider the divine and the corporeal to be distinct and often opposing aspects of humanity, but here they are brought together as one. After all, humans were created by God, not just their minds but their bodies too, so why shouldn’t they be depicted as beautiful and divine? Why do we as a society attach so much shame to our bodies instead of accepting them and loving them as they are? Even outside a religious context, our bodies are part of us but weren’t created by us (well kind of but we didn’t have creative control over the finished product), but they come with life as a package deal when we’re born and thus are one of the most special things we have. Treasure them!

            In addition to the museum, the cathedral was splendid and even fancier than the previous cathedral we visited in Gozo. All of the cathedrals we visited in Malta had these wonderfully intricate floor tiles, each one unique, decorated with colored marble. Each was about the length of a person, and most had some sort of writing in Latin labeling it. Well, it turns out that these were dedicated to the dead, and many of them actually contain their grave underneath. A little spooky, but also very cool. It also explains why there were so many skeletons on them.

            We followed the museum with lunch and more gelato then left Medina to visit St. Paul’s Catacombs in the surrounding town of Rabat. These are a series of upwards of 20 catacombs all built in the same area, many of which are open to the public to descend and take a look around. All of the bodies and artifacts have been removed, of course, but you walk around and make out where some of the bodies would have lied. These catacombs were built during the Roman occupation of Malta, and different catacombs show evidence of Pagan, Christian, and Jewish faith. I enjoyed seeing the catacombs, but it definitely put some stress on my back from the insufficiently tall ceilings. One a somewhat related note, did you know that during the Roman era people used to hire professional mourners to walk in the processions of the deceased and grieve loudly and publicly? Maybe if I can’t find a job in physics that can be my plan B.

            Following that we took a bus to Dingli, a town on the south side of the island known for its beautiful cliffs overlooking the ocean. The tops of the cliffs were made up of a porous rock covered in tiny, delicate flowers growing from the cracks. Below the cliffs was a lush overhang of land that gave way to the sea itself, and over it all was the sun. Luckily the sky above the setting sun was clear, despite the fact that the sky behind us was covered in clouds. Following the sunset, we returned to Rabat for dinner (I had a platter of traditional Maltese foods, including cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, broad beans, and toast) and then called it a day.

Day 4

            Wednesday was our first day of truly sunny weather, with no threat of rain in sight. We breakfasted on pastizzi, one of the traditional foods of Malta and one of the things I’ll miss most about our trip. Pastizzi are pastries made from a flaky dough similar to phyllo that encapsulates a variety of fillings, ranging from chicken to ham and cheese to spinach to Nutella. They are truly incredible and delicious and very cheap compared to most food on the island and they are sold all over the place, there were four pastizzerias just in the main square of Mosta where we were staying.

            We rode the bus down to the south side of the island to go explore the Blue Grotto, a series of caves in the cliffs facing the ocean known for the brilliant clear blue of its waters. You can buy tickets for a boat ride through the caves, which I was very excited for until we actually got into the boat and I forgot how much boats rock in the open ocean. Thankfully I didn’t get too motion sick, and the caves themselves were incredible. Our guide, who only spoke limited English, was very intent on giving us the best experience possible. He kept tapping us and pointing towards the cliffs and saying “Look at the colors!” and “Put your hand in the water!” and other suggestions for us. It was the perfect day for it too, with sunny skies and 70 degree weather and the water splashing in our face.

            After the boat trip we bought a few souvenirs and ate lunch overlooking the sea. We returned to Valletta just for some gelato (coffee and hazelnut, it was incredible) before returning to our apartment on the longest bus ride of my life (thanks, rush hour). In fact, that bus experience scarred us so much that we decided it wasn’t worth it to leave Mosta again that day and decided to just search for a restaurant within walking distance from our apartment.

            The restaurant that we found was around the corner from, one that we passed every day, and it turned out to be one of my favorite dining experiences I’ve ever had. Partly because the food was delicious, but mostly because of the atmosphere of the place. It was a very small restaurant, only one room with four tables, that served traditional Maltese food of great quality. Even better, they were having a Halloween special (why are they celebrating Halloween in Malta? I have no clue) featuring dishes such as “Hocus Pocus Rabbit and Pumpkin Risotto” and “Trick or Treat Yo’Self”. I ended up ordering a set menu of (a) calamari, (b) rabbit ravioli, and (c) imqarets, a traditional Maltese dessert that I would describe as a cross between a beignet and a fig newton. As for the rabbit, it’s also a traditional Maltese food, which was quite tasty and had a similar texture to pulled pork. We ordered a bottle of sparkling rosé to accompany it, which was very sweet and easy to drink. It was the kind of slow, unhurried meal with friends that I never used to understand when I was younger but now I get the appeal of. The atmosphere was relaxed and comfortable and we just sat and enjoyed the food and have deep conversation about life and what we want from it and such. At the end, much to our surprise, our waitress offered each of us a complementary shot included with our meal, either Baileys or Limoncello. We all chose limoncello without knowing much about it, and my life was changed. It tasted exactly like a lemon tart in liquid form! I didn’t even know they could do that. Wow, incredible.

Day 5

            A miracle occurred and we managed to snag a second day of sunny, cloudless sky. Time for the beach! It’s hard to believe I made it to day 5 on an island in the Mediterranean without once stepping foot in the Mediterranean ocean, but we set out to rectify this immediately. We returned to the ferry station, but this time took the much smaller ferry to Comino, the smallest and central of the three main islands. Even now, during the off season, Comino was packed with tourists looking to swim in the famous blue lagoon, a cove known for its clear blue water. There was barely any beach, only a thin strip of sand crammed with as many tourists as could physically fit on it. We settled down on an unclaimed rocky patch and got ready for some swimming.

            The water was cold, but refreshingly so, not freeze-your-socks-off Pacific Ocean cold. It felt so fresh and clean that I was genuinely surprised by how salty it was, although of course it was ocean water all the same. We took turns swimming to the other side of the lagoon, which took me some effort but I made it! Looks like my swimming lessons have finally paid off. On the other side of the lagoon I swam through a natural archway in the rock to the other side facing the open ocean, and wow, what a view! It’s one thing to enter the caves by boat, but swimming through them is next-level cool. I wish I could’ve taken pictures of this part, but like Wadi Mujib, bringing my phone along with me on this adventure would’ve resulted in its quick death.

            After our swim we trekked over to a somewhat less crowded beach on the island for an extra special Halloween picnic, complete with a bag of Kit-Kats. Who needs trick-or-treating when you’ve got the Maltese beach? Actually though, we did see some little kids trick or treating with their parents once we got back to Mosta that evening. Apparently, Halloween is a much more international holiday than I once thought.

            Swimming was lots of fun but it left us so tired from being in the sun all day that we couldn’t manage much else when we got back. Also, I think we were all starting to reach a point where we needed a bit of break, from each other and from the trip. Being a tourist is great and all but it is tiring after a while, and while Anya and Rosemary are two of my best friends in the world, it’s hard to spend an entire week with anyone without getting a little worn out. We were, after all, spending all day together every day then returning to the apartment where we all shared the same room. We finished the day with cheap Chinese food and that’s that.

Day 6

            We decided to spend our last full day in Malta by touring the Mosta Rotunda, the giant cathedral that’s been a five minute walk from us and where we’ve waited for the bus every single day but yet somehow hadn’t gotten around to visiting yet. The Mosta Rotunda, officially called the Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady, is a Roman Catholic church styled upon the likes of the Pantheon in Rome and which constituted the third largest unsupported dome in existence at the time of its construction. Like the Pantheon, it has an oculus at the zenith of its dome, which rather counterintuitively strengthens the dome compared to a complete with no hole in the ceiling. It turns out the in a complete freestanding dome all sides lean in to the middle and create a point of high stress which is prone to collapse, but if there is an oculus in the middle you essentially remove that point of stress and the weight distributes more evenly across the dome’s surface. I find it kind of unbelievable that removing support from a structure can increase its stability, but physics is wild like that sometimes.

            Unlike the Pantheon in Rome, the Mosta Rotunda is decorated with a geometric pattern spiraling out from the oculus at the center of the dome, which I actually find to be more effective than the plain ceiling of the Pantheon. It creates a sense of movement and outward expansion, and even in my photos of the dome I almost feel like the picture is moving as I look at it. The dome suffered some damage during World War II, which is unsurprising as Malta was one of the most heavily bombed areas during the war as it was an important military base for the British. A bomb fell through the ceiling while the church was full of people praying, but it never exploded and all deaths were averted and the church remained intact. This, of course, was considered to be a miracle from God who protected the faithful and the church itself from destruction.

            After the Mosta Rotunda we headed back to Valletta to visit the last church on our list: St. John’s Co-Cathedral. This was by far the busiest of all of the churches, and we had to wait in line for half an hour before we could enter. Despite the very plain, unassuming exterior to the church, the inside was entirely and completely covered in gold flourishes everywhere the eye could see. The church was built by the famous Knights of Malta after they fought off the Ottoman from their attempts at conquering the island, which was, at that time, one of the major strongholds of Christianity. Despite being originally built in the Mannerist style, the Maltese felt pressured to modernize the interior to match the luscious Baroque style that had become popular in the Vatican, hence the contrasting styles between the interior and exterior of the building.

            Like the other churches, St. John’s Co-Cathedral has a beautiful beautiful beautiful floor made up of intricately designed graves. Above it is a barrel-vaulted ceiling covered with fresco paintings as per usual, but what makes the cathedral special in my opinion are the chapels on the side. Each chapel on the side is dedicated to a different country that made up the knights of Malta, from Germany to Aragon to Provence to France to Italy and many more. Each one is decorated in a style befitting the represented country and using many of its symbols, which makes for a delightful variation in the décor. Additionally, visitors are allowed to climb the stairs up to the balcony in the back that overlooks the church, which provide an excellent view of the entire cathedral. Everywhere you look is beauty in every possible detail, and it becomes even more beautiful when you stand back and take it all in as one. In my opinion, this is possibly my favorite cathedral I’ve had the chance to visit because it was not just excessively grand and opulent, but it felt like a unified concept as well in the use of the gold literally everywhere. Or maybe I just like shiny things, and this church was exceptionally shiny.

            After lunch and a brief downpour that left us drenched ,we bought our last gelato of the week. Well, I actually opted for a cinnamon orange hot chocolate, which was rich and delicious and about as thick as melted gelato. We bought some final souvenirs, including a Maltese grammar book for Rosemary (who is a linguistics major) and returned to the apartment for a rest. We finished the evening with one last trip to Valletta for dinner and drinks and finished off the first season of Killing Eve, the perfect ending to an unbelievable week.

Epilogue

            I think it’s fitting to call this an epilogue as I practically just wrote you guys a novel on my trip. We had a very early flight (left for the airport at 5am) and made it back to Amman safely, with some amazing views of Malta and what I think was Crete along the way. If we were at all worried that Malta was too small of an island to occupy a full week of tourism, we were definitely proven wrong. I experienced so much last week and made memories that I hope will last a lifetime. To be completely honest I returned to Amman a little apprehensive about continuing with my studies, but also feeling ready to be productive again. I’ve been writing this over the course of the week and right now it is very late on Thursday night (Friday morning) and I will not be telling about how my week back went because I want to sleep and I have big plans for the coming weekend, but spoiler alert: everything turned out well. You’ll have to wait until my next post to hear more! If all goes well, it should be pretty soon.

            Thank you to everyone who made it this far! It means a lot to me that you are reading my blogs, I love hearing that my friends and family are enjoying what I write because I really enjoying writing it and sharing my experiences. Alright, I’d better catch what few hours of sleep I can before my next adventure starts tomorrow, goodnight everyone!