A gradual transition back to Europe

For Dave, who is touring Italy and Tunisia, landing in Malta is a 'gradual transition back to Europe'. Before moving on to Sicily from Tunisia, he stops for two days to explore Malta:

The place we’re staying, the Asti Guest House on St. Ursula Street 18, is a delightful little B&B run by an old lady and her sister. The house has been in the family for generations. The lady’s husband, who died a few years ago, had been an electrician who liked collecting crystal from broken chandeliers; he assembled a massive beautiful chandelier out of them which hangs from the stone arches in the breakfast room..

The guidebook recommended a restaurant in Marsascala which turned out to have a stupid menu; the next one we stumbled on was a wonderful little place called Tal-Familja which basically made us a Maltese tasting menu with fish soup, pumpkin soup, octopus stew, fried cheese, and lampuki, their favorite fish which is in season only in September and October. The wine was also quite good, and they were very nice, popular with locals and tourists alike..

Monday we set out to explore Valletta, the capital city where we’re staying. We went to the Museum of Archaeology, where the best artifacts from the prehistoric sites around the island are collected. In addition to spiral designs on rocks much like at Bend of the Boyne in Ireland, there are many representations of animals and humans. There was even a tiny model of a temple. Then we went to St. John’s Co-Cathedral, a large church which, though rather plain on the outside, had every square inch of floor, wall, and ceiling decorated on the inside. It was also packed with people. The floor was essentially a mortuary in which the person buried beneath each 1 x 3 meter plot had an inlaid stone picture in which he was illustrated as a skeleton in some context..

In the afternoon we set back out to see some of the prehistoric places which had been closed late on Sunday. There was a cave called Ghar Dalam in which many, many bones from European hippopotami, elephants, deer, and other animals had been found: these were exhibited in the “old museum” sorted by bone type — all the molars here, all the toe bones there, etc. A “new museum” room was a little more explanatory, showing where everything fit in in the timeine of the Earth. The Hagar Qim and Mnadrja temple sites were similar to the Tarxien temple we saw on Sunday, but on closer inspection revealed even more in common with the Boyne site, including alignment with the sun (it would shine in particular places on equinoxes and solstices), and corbelled roofs (slabs gradually inset over each other)...