We took the bus into Valletta this morning. We had to think about the last time we used public transit - we think it was in Fiji, when we took the bus from Savu Savu to the ferry to Taveuni.
Malta has a pretty decent bus system. They have a good website too, to help figure out what bus to catch. Also, they have free wifi on the bus!
We caught the bus about 100m down the street from our hotel. The bus terminal in Valletta is just outside the city walls. The entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, about 500 years old. It’s also a working city, with a population of about 5,000.
There was a cruise ship in port, and the streets in Valletta were bustling. We walked down the pedestrian Republic St, the main shopping street in Valletta. The volume of tourists wasn’t the shock to us that we had expected - the city is still amazing with the crowds.
We made our way towards St. John's Co-Cathedral, one of the main tourist attractions. I had bought tickets online a couple days ago. There was a long lineup (maybe fifteen minutes?) for those buying tickets onsite; whereas we just walked right in with our online tickets. I don’t know why more folks don’t buy their tickets online? Maybe they don’t know.
Anyways so we strolled right on in. It wasn’t too busy yet at 11am, we were able to get pics where we wanted without getting jostled about.
I also had to look up the definition of co-cathedral. So all my life I had thought a cathedral was an architectural term, meaning big church or something like that. In fact it’s a religious term, used for a church that is the seat of the bishop. A co-cathedral is when the bishop’s seat is shared amongst multiple locations, typically when an older cathedral is replaced with a newer one, but both still exist. Who knew?
St John’s is definitely worth the visit. According to Wikipedia, it’s one of the finest examples of high Baroque architecture in Europe. Amongst the artwork is Caravaggio’s masterpiece ‘The Martyrdom of St John the Baptist’, the only painting he signed.
It’s also possible to buy an additional ticket to climb the tower, but we couldn’t figure out the process.
After St John’s, we walked a little further down to the Grand Master's Palace and Palace Armoury, which is a combined ticket. There’s an elaborate security process after which we had to check our bags (as opposed to St John’s, where there was no security at all).
There’s a self-guided tour through the various rooms and things to see. It’s very extensive, it took us over 90 minutes to see it. The armoury in particular is amazing, and I’m not even into armoury.
It was mid afternoon and we were hungry. Made our way to the restaurants on the steps of St Lucia’s St, as recommended by our hotel. It was crazy busy at the restaurants closest to St Paul St. We stepped down to the restaurants near Triq Sant’ Orsia and were able to get seated at Koccio. We split the fish carpaccio, and then each had a sandwich. Heather had a meatball sandwich which was huge, and I had the mortadella with buffalo mozzarella. Both sandwiches were huge and tasty. Probably more than we wanted to eat but it was good.
After lunch we walked towards Upper Barrakka for the views over the harbour. We actually went to the Saluting Battery, just a level below. Once again we timed a visit perfectly. We got there around 3:55pm, just in time for the 4pm firing of the cannon.
We were feeling a bit drained after walking around in the sun all day, so sorted out how to catch the bus back to Mosta, and called it a day. With the big late afternoon lunch, we didn’t need dinner.
We only got through half of the things we wanted to see in Valletta, so decided to head back again tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment