Horse racing Maltese style
Lori Hein is the author of "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America." - reviews and excerpts at www.LoriHein.com - She is a freelance writer and newspaper correspondent. Her photography credits include a national travel magazine cover. She's a marathoner, world traveller and former corporate exec and lives in the Boston area. During a visit in Malta she took her daughter Dana to the horse races in Marsa. From Lori's travel blog Ribbons of Highway:
We watched the Breeder's Cup on TV this weekend. For Dana, my 12-year-old, the horse races ranked up there with Halloween trick or treating as the highlight of her weekend. As we watched, I thought of the sun-splashed Sunday on the island of Malta when I brought her to the national race track in Marsa. Sulky racing is big in Malta, and the track is the place to be on Sunday after church.
We paid the four dollar entrance fee and joined the crowd cheering the silk-clad drivers and their equine partners. Between races, the men in the crowd would disappear into the cool tunnel behind the grandstand where a line of betting windows had been cut into a wall. They laid down wagers on trotters like D'Artagnan, Pay Night and other local favorites. Everyone was laughing and enjoying the Sunday afternoon scene -- the spectators, the bettors, the men booking the bets. They joked and talked and smiled. Comfortable amounts of money were on the line. Amounts that could be shrugged off if lost.
Outside the racecourse, grooms and sulky drivers led shiny-coated trotters, some harnessed to their carts, through Marsa's dusty, narrow streets. The sun turned the silk on the drivers' uniforms into electric blues and reds and yellows and bathed the pastel stucco of Marsa's old buildings in brilliant, ochre light. I watched the people. Dana watched the horses. It wasn't the Breeder's Cup. It was better. A day at the races, Maltese style.
Pictures from Malta: The streets of Marsa-Malta on Race Day; Sulky racing in Malta; Marsa sunsplashed walls; Smiling spectators.
About Ribbons of Highway, the book.
Crowded streets- Another Malta photo from the Logical Photo Blog in Florida.
posted by Robert Micallef at 3/01/2005 09:47:00 PM
Rob,
it has to be a tourist to find beauty where the locals might not find it!
These pics also make an expat like me nostalgic of home....and that's saying something, when considering that, in reality, Marsa is a pretty crap place!!
Bir-rispett kollu, obviously, as I know you've got some connections there.
The frank Sliema boy
Until the tourism boom of the sixties, as a people we hardly bothered with our own heritage, folk, traditions etc.. Tourism was a useful trigger helping us to discover and interpret our identity. As you point out, to this day , a visitor´s eye is often more respectful.
With some imagination and political will, neglected places like Marsa could be transformed into something completely different. When I see what Ireland and Scandinavia have done to their old port towns, my imagination goes wild.
Dublin´s Temple Bar was more derelict than today´s Marsa ( my father´s home town - I am actually from Hamrun!!) before it became the vibrant place it is today.
Hello Robert,
Thank you for sharing my blog post and photos of Marsa with your readers. As I mentioned in my email to you, I found Malta to be a photographer's paradise, and I came home with hundreds of rich images of slices of life and colorful, sun-splashed sites around Gozo and Malta. I will share some of these in future posts at my blog, http://RibbonsofHighway.blogspot.com.
As a tourist destination, Malta has the whole package -- sun, sea, history, architecture, good food, kind people. Every day, we explored some new corner of your country. We watched families buy yellow and peach and green parakeets at the City Gate market in Valletta; picnicked in the sun atop the citadel in Gozo's Rabat and took in the panorama that included green fields, Xewkija's massive church dome and laundry flapping from lines strung across the rooftop terraces of sugar-cube towns; wandered among the silent standing stones of archaeological wonders like Gigantija, Hagar Qim and Mjandra; watched Marsaxlokk's fishermen paint their boats and spread their nets along the harborfront promenade to dry.
Such a beautiful, ancient place.
All the best,
Lori Hein
www.LoriHein.com
world travel blog, http://RibbonsofHighway.blogspot.com
Thank you for the kind words Lori.
I look forward forward to sharing more of your posts with my readers.
And I will continue to read your facinating travel blog on a regular basis.
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