Camden Kiwi goes to Malta

CamdenLady is a columnist/pundit living in the London Borough of Camden. She blogs about life, public transport, green issues, books, ideas and "anything else that springs to mind". She visited Malta for the weekend and writes that her lasting impressions of Malta are of "excellent food, welcoming people, solid rock built forts, churchs and neolithic ruins, and terrible roads". From Camden Lady:

My favourite client decided I needed to do a site visit to Malta, and as a Kiwi suffering badly from mid-winter sun deprivation, who was I to say no? I stayed on over the weekend, to have a bit of a look around at one of the very few European Mediterranean countries I’ve not been to. It’s always interesting to visit places which attract huge numbers of tourists in the summer during January when its cold and wet, and the tourists few and far between. Malta is an interesting place for a city break though, and by no means reliant on its beaches for its attractions.

Valletta must be the smallest capital city in the world, in one of the smallest sovereign nations. The walled city itself is tiny, and full of well-organised streets on a grid rather than the maze similar towns tend to be, and wandering around it in a morning is quite easy. There are plenty of distractions though, particularly the wonderfully Hapsburg Cafe Cordina, with a fabulous range of cakes and pastries, excellent coffees and an elaborately painted ceiling. Avoid the Knights Hospitallier exhibition though, especially in January when there are no other tourists around and its rather creepy down in the tunnels below the old hospital, with dim lighting and graphic diaoramas of the results of late medieval warfare...