Martin Belam's Malta

Martin Belam who blogs at currybetdotnet is "a new media geek at the BBC writing about search, the web, the media, politics, transport, the BBC, Walthamstow, football, music, and other stuff...". He spent a week in Malta with his wife and friends a couple of months ago. He has just blogged about his first days in Malta:

Malta Day 1: Valletta's bus station is a massive roundabout, the centre-piece of which is the impressive Triton Fountain. It's always disappointing though to see old buildings scarred by racist and fascist graffiti, which was the case with the stairwells that you climbed to get up to the higher level of the city...Our favourite sight in Valletta? A poster advertising a 'Rabbit, Cat and Bonsai show' which has to be one of the oddest combinations imaginable. How do you come up with a show like that - "Hmmm, we've got rabbits. And we've got cats. What we are really missing to make this a marketing coup is to add tiny trees"?...

Malta Day 2: Here we visited St Agatha's Catacombs. These rock-cut tombs feature frescos from the 12th to the 15th century, although they have had their faces rubbed off by later Turkish invaders to the island. There is also an amazing surviving rock-cut painted Christian Altar from the 4th century. I did find it strange that in several places the bones of those buried there were simply left exposed as a tourist attraction...The courtyard with the entrance was also adjacent to a school, so we also had the fun of being abused through the window by some young Maltese kids - good to see juvenile delinquency alive and well - and they weren't even wearing hooded tops so we could easily identify them...

The restaurant had artwork on display for sale, much of which depicted semi-naked women with 80's hair-do's done in a vibrant colour style aping charcoals. One in particular spawned the comment "She's got Tina Turner eyes" which became a catch-phrase for the rest of the holiday, and is now firmly on my list of titles for future m-orchestra tracks. They also had a really strange muzak selection in the background, which featured bland cover versions of a selection of dance and house tracks reproduced badly on cheap(er) keyboards, and an astonishing rendition of "Girlfriend In A Coma". Why on earth would you pick "Girlfriend In A Coma" as a track to make into a muzak version?...

Malta Day 3: At one point the bus got completely stuck going forwards and had to execute an insanely difficult reversing manoeuvre. Vittoriosa, although we didn't get to stop off in it, looked an interesting, if sad place. It was the site of Malta's dockyards, but many of the buildings and warehouses by the shipyard seemed desolated and beaten-up. It suggested that at one time it had been magnificant, but the disrepair was tragic to see...

Malta Day 4: A trip to Gozo