Malta with Louis

Louis from Palo Alto, California travels the world and writes 'descriptive anecdotes' for his blog of the places he visits. In what is probably the longest travel post about Malta that I have seen, Louis kicks off his Malta piece by writing an overview of the history of the islands and the Knights. From TravelWithLouis:

With Malta’s history, it is no wonder that the cities of the islands are filled with a mixture of architecture from the nations of Europe and North Africa.We booked an American-sold tour of Malta and Sicily from a company called Academic Tours... Valletta is the capitol and largest city of Malta, but as might be expected at the tops hills of a submerged mountain, it sits on one arm of a fjord. Across the small bays on either side of this peninsula are other towns. In fact, the shoreline of the whole island consists of rocky beaches, promontories, and fjords with houses built on the steep sides of the hills or on hilltops.On the jutting ends of the land surrounding the two bays there are huge stone fortresses built by the Crusaders. At key points around the island there are tall stone watchtowers..

They are a very friendly people, but their families are very close-knit and private. Despite millennia of repeated invasions, they are still an island culture... As our plane arrived we could see a land of rolling hills. Our hotel was located in the city of Sliema, which is adjacent to Valletta on the other side of a fjord. A mile-long strip of hotels and shops, called “The Strand,” faces the harbor and the docks for ferries and small boats. Many of the boats in the harbor were the traditional Maltese “luzzu,” a brightly painted fishing boat, pointed at both ends and bearing carved and painted “eyes” on either side of the prow so that the boat can find its way home..

It is easy to see why the Romans named the Mare Mediterrania as they did. To them and to the Greeks and Phoenicians before them this water was “the sea in the middle of the Earth.” Malta and Sicily were on the path taken by Ulysses in his wanderings after the Trojan War. After a short walk through the garden, we strolled to St. John’s Co-Cathedral.Valletta was the first “planned city” in Europe. After the Great Siege of1565, when the Knights defended Malta from the Sulieman’s forces, they knew they would need a more defensible city and harbor. They chose the bare peninsula across the Grand Harbor and convinced the Vatican to send their architect Francesco Laparelli, to design the city. The result is that Valletta has strong walls and cliffs to defend it, straight streets along its length, and straight, narrow cross streets. The cross streets are steep … often having steps for part of their length..

The last stop on our tour for the day was the “Malta Experience,” a sound and vision show on a wide screen that explained the history of Malta from the Stone Age through to current times. During World War II, Malta was Britain’s base for shipyards, munitions storage, and hospitals. For several years the Axis bombers attempted to destroy the island’s ability to be used as a base. The pictures and sound effects of the bombings, and of the citizens hiding in caves and cellars made the German tourists seated in the row behind us wince and gasp audibly..

The fact that these temples are almost 6,000 years old … older than the Egyptian pyramids or England’s Stonehenge … left me unable to talk. I could only walk around, touch the walls and wonder what these buildings might have looked like when they were built; wonder what the builders might have looked like; wonder how the priests preserved the mysteries of their inner sanctums; wonder what strange gods they worshipped; what sacrifices they made.There is a cave on the coast of Gozo named “Calypso’s Cave.” Not only St. Paul, but also Ulysses was supposed to have been here...