Ananda's Malta diary

Ananda from India is based at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and blogs here with 'descriptions of travels in different parts of the world'. This diary is from a visit to Malta a couple of weeks ago:

Malta Day 1: Malta is a tiny island but very congested. The first thing to realize about driving in Malta is that distances between “towns” is miniscule so before you know it you have gone through 5 towns. Also, the road signs are horrendous. The arrows often do not make sense. We were thoroughly lost several times, and eventually got to the Westin Dragonara in Placeville... Had a great and relaxed sleep with the sound of the ocean in the background...

Malta Day 2: After lunch we walked back to the car and drove over to the Dingli cliffs. These are sheer cliffs that dropdown into the ocean. It was a hot-day. So spent just a little bit of time there and then decided to drive to the Blue Grotto, we were now in the heart of Malta and it was a strange rocky and desolate area. We were again miserably lost as we drove down narrow, steep gravel roads, using a few visible landmarks as compass directions. Not a soul around to ask questions. We eventually used the landmark of the cross of St. Joseph as a marker to finally wind our way down to the point where the boats for the Blue Grotto leaves...

Malta Day 3: Interestingly, in Malta we saw a large number of cars imported from India. There were Tata Indica, Maruti Van, Maruti 800 and other cars usually seen on Indian roads. We walked down the main street in Valetta and visited the Cathedral and the museum. Mikku had a bad fall outside the Cathedral. We then roamed around the back streets of Valetta stopping at souvenir shops and places. Had coffee and cake at a Café and eventually took a horse carriage ride (15 Maltese) around the entire city...

Malta Day 4: We had kept this day aside to be a beach day. It turned out that this was a national holiday, which meant that the beaches would be crowded. Anyway, after the usual coffee, Internet and pipe we got ready to get to the best sandy beach at Mellieha Bay. As expected, the beach was fully crowded. Based on information from a person at the hotel found our way to Anchor Bay. This too was crowded but it was more inviting. Bebo got a chance to romp in the waters of the Mediterranean as we sipped a drink. European beaches are usually far more crowded than in America and they are not as sandy. There was little surf too since these were all Bays and not facing the open ocean...

Malta Day 5: This was our last day in Malta. We packed and loaded the car in the morning and checked out around 11:00 am. Drove towards the old town of Vitoriosa and this was a great experience since we had some unstructured time. Drove down narrow lanes, by the Grand Harbor and eventually found ourselves at a fort. This was the first time I drove inside a fort along incredibly narrow and steep cobblestone paths but eventually reached a point with incredible views of the Harbor, Valetta and the surrounding areas. Then had lunch at a local pub where the food was good and cheap. Since we still had some time we decided to explore the less touristy side of Malta and ended up driving through sleepy small villages and also saw an ancient temple site from the outside....