Mosta, Malta

We headed back into Valletta this morning. Now that we knew the drill for catching the bus it was pretty easy. Traffic was non-existent on a Sunday morning, it took us less than 25 minutes to get to Valletta.

There was a parade or procession in progress. It entered the city gates and went down the main street. That’s the only way into Valletta, so we had to cut through the parade a couple times to get into the city.

There were hardly any tourists in Valletta today. On Sundays, the cathedral is closed to visitors, which is one of the main draws. Also there were no cruise ships in port today. Saturday and Monday there were over 3,000 passengers in port, most of them visiting Valletta.

Fort St Elmo and the National War Museum (a joint ticket) are at the opposite end of the city from the bus terminal, about a 20 minute walk. We bought our tickets and checked out the gift shop. Heather saw they actually had mini door knockers, one of the souvenirs I was looking for for the key shelf. Cool!

First we explored the Fort, taking our tourist-less pics in case more tourists showed up later (spoiler, they didn’t). There’s really good views of the surrounding area, including looking back at the city, and of the three cities across the harbour.

Then we retraced our steps and went through the War History museum. The museum is laid out in seven rooms throughout the Fort. It’s really well done. I was ignorant about the history of Malta until this trip. Over the centuries, Malta has been ruled by the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and the Knights of St. John. More recently it was part of the British Empire (thus the left side drive) and gained independence in 1964. Malta had huge strategic importance in WWII (in fact, it’s been of strategic importance throughout history).

Anyways it took us a while to get through all that history. It’s neat that on this trip we’ve seen the story of the same civilizations but from different contexts.

We then walked over to the ferry terminal to get to the three cities across the harbour. The ferry was about to leave and in the confusion I accidentally bought tickets to Gozo. Fortunately we realized the mistake before we boarded; so it just cost us some money but not time.

We found the line for the gondolas to get across the harbour, and in a couple minutes we were on our way.

The gondola ride (3 EUR each) was really relaxing. The harbour is really protected and the water was super smooth. It’s a motorized ride except for the docking where they use oars.

The gondola lands in Vittoriosa. We walked 20 minutes around the marina to Senglea, where the better restaurants were waterside.

We actually sat inside cause it was only 20C and chilly in the wind. We still had a beautiful view of Vittoriosa though. We made this our big meal of the day, splitting an appetizer, pasta and main. It was really good.

We then explored up and down the streets of both Senglea and Vittoriosa. We really enjoyed this - there were hardly any other tourists here today.

Finally around 5pm we caught another relaxing gondola ride back to Valletta, and then a bus back to Mosta. We were both glad we decided to spend another day in Valletta and surrounds, it was a super enjoyable day. We could definitely see why Malta is such an attraction for folks.