Cameron Barrett's Malta trip report

In January of 1999 Cameron Barrett wrote an essay called Anatomy of a Weblog, defining the concept and pioneering a new form of the personal Web site - the weblog or blog. In June, 2003 he launched WatchBlog, a collaborative blog about the 2004 U.S. election. A few months before, Cameron travelled to Southern Siberia followed by a trip to Malta. In Malta he learnt how to drive on the left side of the road, watched movies with intermissions and got lost on the way to the catacombs:

The second most annoying thing about the movie theatres in Malta is that they all have intermissions. Yeah, it was quite a shock. I don't think I've seen an actual intermission period at a movie in the U.S. since I saw E.T. In 1982 in Cody, Wyoming when I was 12 years old. The good thing about the intermissions was it gave everyone a chance to use the restrooms and buy more popcorn, which I suspect is the real reason why such an old practice is still in effect.

The best part of the trip to Malta was the visit to the Hypogeum, an underground stone temple built by humans in 5000 B.C. To 2500 B.C., making it the oldest human-built structure on the planet. Discovered in 1903, while digging a well for a new house in what is now the town of Paola, the Hypogeum has turned out to be one of the most important prehistoric archeological discoveries ever.

The hardest thing to get used to on Malta is the fact that 90% of the businesses are closed between 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM every day, and most are closed on Sundays. Walk around the shopping hubs of the cities of Sliema and Valletta at 3:00 PM in the afternoon, and all you see are dozens of other displaced tourists wandering around aimlessly waiting for the shops to re-open. For a tourism-based economy like Malta's, this defies logic, yet only a few shop owners have bucked tradition and stayed open through the afternoon.

Read the full trip report.