Malta 20/09-27/09/2016

Three hours  from the UK and we finally touched down. For my dad's 70th birthday the family found ourselves holidaying in Malta. Myself, my brother and my mum and dad stayed there for a week in an apartment, and it was in the whole an enjoyable experience.

Malta is well worth a visit. A tiny set of islands situated between Sicily and Africa it has a rich history and great architecture to reflect that. Also by being a former colony most people spoke English as a first language. The hot meditteraen sun bore down strong for most of our time there so temperatures were constantly in the late 20s which was hot but not oppressive.
Geographically one of the stand out features of the Malta is how urbanised it is, especially in the east of the country where towns merge into one big metropolis.
We took a taxi from the airport to out flat and never once saw any countryside really, maybe the odd garden. It was only when we got over to the west part of the island did we see that the towns thinned out to reveal countryside. This was mainly barren and scrubby, with very little greenery. As a result there is very little agriculture eon Malta, mainly terraces on the hillside, with not many open fields.

Typical Maltese countryside

 



The capital is Valetta and we spent three days there. We stayed in Sliema just across the bay form Valetta, which is kind of like a suburb. Sliema and neighbouring St Julian are one of the main areas of nightlife in Malta and so a saunter beside the sea produced lots of bars and restaurants.
They had distinctive Maltese dishes such as rabbit, pizza, calamari and various fishes. There was only the one Maltese beer, called Cisk, which was a standard larger and not particularly memorable.

The apartment

 

The apartment itself had amazing views across out to sea. We could sit out on the balcony and watch life unfold beneath.
That's it for an introduction. What we actually did will be put up on future posts.