Malta is like Spain... except their English is better.
My travel buddy (Fishy) and I are almost done with our Malta trip.
We arrived Thursday afternoon, around 1pm or so, and our CS (couch surfing) host, Cecilio, met us at the airport. He's an Andaluz who's been living in Malta for about the last year or so. He's been a great, friendly host, plus we get to keep practicing our Spanish- er, our Andaluz! After taking us back to his place to drop off our luggage, he took us to Rabat and Mdina, which was the former capital of Malta. Very small, quaint areas. Then we went to Valletta. The whole time we were going between these cities, we took these funny-looking buses that only cost about 50 cents to go from one city to the next.
We also got to experience these delicious 1-euro meat pies (kind of like empanadas) for dinner before taking the bus back to Saint Paul's Bay, where we're staying.
On Friday, Fishy and I were free to explore a bit. First we grabbed breakfast at a cafe- finally, a full English breakfast with eggs! Yum! Then we went into Valletta and walked around there some more, then we took the ferry across to Sliema. More modern than Valletta, not so tranquil. We walked along the coast up to St Julians, where we found a Ben & Jerry's.
Today we did a tour of Gozo, which is very beautiful. We saw the Azure window, the fungus rock (yes you heard right), and the fisher's port at Xlendi, which is by far the most beautiful coast I've seen here. We rode in a bus full of GUIRIS... all older British people! But still, for 11 euros, it was a good way to see the island of Gozo which is not as "well communicated" as Malta. (by the way, "well communicated" is a direct translation from Spanish, but I'm not sure how else to say it in English!)
We've enjoyed Malta. Colder than I expected for being so far south in the Mediterranean, but still pretty cool to check out. Here are a few other random observations Fishy and I have made-
1. In Malta, ice-cream is not food. The buses say "No food, drink, or ice-cream."
2. Malta is just like Spain- so NOW I understand why I've met so many Spaniards who have been to/are going to go to Malta despite their aversion to travel! The architecture, the narrow streets, the beach, the climate... even the tiles on the side walk are JUST LIKE what I've seen in Cordoba!!!
3. We hear a lot of Maltese being spoken in the streets. Everyone knows English, though contrary to what I had previously imagined (my guess was that they'd speak very British English), they speak English with a Maltese accent- the best thing I can compare it to is a Caribbean accent of some kind. Maltese the language sounds like some kind of odd mix of Arabic and Italian, if you can imagine that.
Well, that's all for now. Tomorrow we might go to Marsaxlokk and the Tarxien temples during the day. Our flight to Athens is tomorrow night... but not until 12:45 AM. Yes, what a lovely hour. I'll let you know in my next blog entry if we made it safely to our hostel at 4am in Athens!
We arrived Thursday afternoon, around 1pm or so, and our CS (couch surfing) host, Cecilio, met us at the airport. He's an Andaluz who's been living in Malta for about the last year or so. He's been a great, friendly host, plus we get to keep practicing our Spanish- er, our Andaluz! After taking us back to his place to drop off our luggage, he took us to Rabat and Mdina, which was the former capital of Malta. Very small, quaint areas. Then we went to Valletta. The whole time we were going between these cities, we took these funny-looking buses that only cost about 50 cents to go from one city to the next.
We also got to experience these delicious 1-euro meat pies (kind of like empanadas) for dinner before taking the bus back to Saint Paul's Bay, where we're staying.
On Friday, Fishy and I were free to explore a bit. First we grabbed breakfast at a cafe- finally, a full English breakfast with eggs! Yum! Then we went into Valletta and walked around there some more, then we took the ferry across to Sliema. More modern than Valletta, not so tranquil. We walked along the coast up to St Julians, where we found a Ben & Jerry's.
Today we did a tour of Gozo, which is very beautiful. We saw the Azure window, the fungus rock (yes you heard right), and the fisher's port at Xlendi, which is by far the most beautiful coast I've seen here. We rode in a bus full of GUIRIS... all older British people! But still, for 11 euros, it was a good way to see the island of Gozo which is not as "well communicated" as Malta. (by the way, "well communicated" is a direct translation from Spanish, but I'm not sure how else to say it in English!)
We've enjoyed Malta. Colder than I expected for being so far south in the Mediterranean, but still pretty cool to check out. Here are a few other random observations Fishy and I have made-
1. In Malta, ice-cream is not food. The buses say "No food, drink, or ice-cream."
2. Malta is just like Spain- so NOW I understand why I've met so many Spaniards who have been to/are going to go to Malta despite their aversion to travel! The architecture, the narrow streets, the beach, the climate... even the tiles on the side walk are JUST LIKE what I've seen in Cordoba!!!
3. We hear a lot of Maltese being spoken in the streets. Everyone knows English, though contrary to what I had previously imagined (my guess was that they'd speak very British English), they speak English with a Maltese accent- the best thing I can compare it to is a Caribbean accent of some kind. Maltese the language sounds like some kind of odd mix of Arabic and Italian, if you can imagine that.
Well, that's all for now. Tomorrow we might go to Marsaxlokk and the Tarxien temples during the day. Our flight to Athens is tomorrow night... but not until 12:45 AM. Yes, what a lovely hour. I'll let you know in my next blog entry if we made it safely to our hostel at 4am in Athens!