Creative retreat

La Delirante is a Salvadoran who has been living in Malta for two years and considers her blog as a 'creative retreat'. In this post she discusses last month's Lejl Mdawwal in Valletta:

Last night we enjoyed the second edition of "Lejl Imdawwal" also known as "Notte bianca". Valletta is brought to life at night once a year: Most of the shops are open, there are many activities such as parades, concerts, fireworks and theatrical presentations, the Prime Minister's office is also open to the public. Valletta, despite being a capital city, is usually dead at night. Most of the shops are closed by 7 and though there are some restaurants there, I think there are more in the Sliema and Paceville areas for instance.

The attendance to the event last year was unexpectedly high and the restaurants couldn't cope with the demand. This year was much better in that respect as well as the amount of entertainment activities. The weather was perfect and in general we had a lot of fun.

The only downside to all the fun was the fact that amidst thousands and thousands of people you could barely walk and breathe in order to get from one place to the other. This also meant that you couldn't really enjoy the activities unless you were there perhaps at 4 pm in the queue. For instance, we wanted to go to the Flamenco performance but when we finally got to the venue where it was going to take place, we were immediately discouraged when we saw the hundreds of people trying to get in...I suppose the solution would be a repetition of the same performance at different times.

Notte Bianca pics from Maressa