Mdina: ancient and golden

A couple of things have surprised us as we learn more about Malta. Given that for so long Great Britain had ruled this strategic little island that has been on every sea route in the Mediterranean since shipping started, I had expected English to be the dominant language. It doesn't appear to be. In fact, at times, we are not easily understood--and that is surprising. Nor do we always understand, in turn. The locals speak fast and rather furiously, and it sounds unusual to my ear: not at all pretty or gentle. The language likely wears layers of mixed spoken words from every culture that has ever ruled the place, but it is surprising that so much of it sounds Arabic, like the Muezzin call, from when the Arab rule here finished some 900 years ago, or thereabouts. So, that was another eye-opener. 

The other is the extraordinary rudeness of many of the Maltese bus drivers we have seen operating. Very few of them are even pleasant to the local folk who use their bus regularly. And it is not just a cultural thing you need to get used to, like the sound Italians make when they are chatting to each other vociferously: they sound angry, when they are not; they just speak quickly and excitedly to each other in a way that to our ears sounds as if they are fighting. Maltese bus drivers seem endemically rude. And it is a real rudeness. They slam the bus doors in the face of people trying to get in. They tell others to get off without explanation and refuse to drive with them in. They rarely say please, thank you, or even respond. They are deaf to people needing timetable or route advice. They shortchange tourists. They lie. And that's just some of what we've observed in three or four relatively short bus trips. In any other country there would be many complaints about such behaviour and they likely would be fired. Probably en masse if an inspector saw what we have seen. But, chatting to others about it, it seems that finding enough employees in this tiny island of Malta to do such jobs may be the problem. But they really do need to lift their game as this is not a small problem: rudeness seems to be deeply ingrained in the bus driver culture here, and it presents a terrible image to first time visitors, let alone the weary locals who have to put up with it daily. 

But, today, we used buses to cross the island to visit Mdina: the ancient walled city that once was the capital of Malta. One bus, virtually outside our door, took us to an interchange somewhere over near the back of Valetta and there we caught a bus to take us deeper into the island, north and west. Both trips probably took all of 50 minutes, passing through outer suburbs noteworthy for either a Spanish architectural influence in their square blocky flat-roofed exteriors, or the more decorative, curlicued, Arabic effects. Suburbs gave way to countryside: low set in a green clad basin pocked with olive trees and grape vines, and there are chestnut trees everywhere. Some roads are bordered in dense rows of thick barriers of prickly pear, and we ofttimes imagined we were driving through a Spanish film set. 

St Paul, once the zealous persecutor of Jesus, became, on the road to Damascus, a converted zealot, instead. He was shipwrecked along the coast here around 60AD or thereabouts, enroute to Rome, where he was to be tried as a political rebel, for fomenting fervour among the populace, no doubt. Around a camp fire locals saw him bitten by a poisonous serpent, but when he failed to fall ill as a result they looked on him in awe, as if he were a protected species, almost a god. He took refuge not far from Mdina and there healed the local politician, the pagan chief official of the Romans, who happened to be ruling Malta at the time. Publius, too, fell under Paul's spell and soon became a convert. And, thus, St Paul bought Christianity to Malta.

So the Mdina we could see when we arrived was a tiny town of Christian churches and convents that once held thousand of religious converts in thrall. 

Today it is something of a pilgrimage place, and, as such, is of immense interest to tourists. Even now, in the off season, the tiny walled city is thick with bus loads and boat loads of visitors walking the little lanes, flocking the piazzas, and clip-clopping in horse drawn carriages as of old. 

It reminds me of places like Saint Malo. Or some of the most beautiful listed villages in France, that no longer have the populations they once had, but have been renovated and polished to perfection in order to attract tourists. Mdina has a census population of 300 residents, but that is probably in the height of summer. As with the dead villages in France, Germany and other parts of the world, most folk likely turn up for the season. Now, in off-season January, there are only one or two tourist shops, a half a dozen restaurants or pizzerias, and a few event venues that have sprung up to catch the tourist dollars. Galleries and craft shops have not bothered. Some operators even now go to the trouble of wearing ancient costumes as the inhabitants once did. 

Despite all of that, Mdina is extraordinarily beautiful. What once was an Arabic citadel and stronghold now has its moat filled in and is covered with trees and gardens: toothless these days, in the face of the tourist masses wearing its cobbles thin. 

When the Kights Hospitallers came to the island early in the 1500s, they moved their new capital further south and started building Valetta. Mdina was left to the religious and the old nobility, yet even after earthquakes damaged many of its beautiful structures money has been found to rebuild it to its former glory. 

It is surrounded by thick golden stone walls and bastions that look down over green valleys lush with olives, tomatoes and chestnuts. Its lanes are narrow, winding and tight, reminiscent of an Arabic souk: utterly charming with their gorgeous projecting balconies and decorative street lights.

Tucked between building are exquisite little palazzos: with their stone gardens and gorgeous stairwells. Even little external air vents are beautifully, thoughtfully, decorated.

We ate pizza and chatted about Malta with guests around us in the forecourt of a castello of sorts. Wondering about times past when it was fully alive as the busy and industrious capital.

St Paul, it is believed,  brought Christianity to Malta

Mdina's main cathedral is named after Saint Paul

Pilgrims still flock to Malta today

Tour operators dress in local historic garb to tout their wares

Arab citadel of Mdina with its moat now filled and covered with trees  and plantings

Green valleys lush with olives, tomatoes and chestnuts

Winding lanes as in an Arab souk

Narrow, cloistered and mysterious 

Elegant homes

One of the many ancient arches in Mdina

Projecting balconies and decorative street lamps

Palazzos and their gardens with fountains and plantings

Even the external staircases are beauful 

Crafted decorated air vents

We ate pizza in a castello piazza

Stunning bronze door handle on a distinctive wooden door

Protectors of pilgrims, healers of the sick

The view from our balcony was hard to leave when we woke up. We could have spent the day just there and not felt it wasted. 

A welcome walk the owner had left for us, though, took us around the rocky point to our left overlooked by luxury high rises, where we found a French cafe which yielded superb espresso and wicked pain au chocolate for breakfast. We will return.

Sliema is a more modern part of Valetta, and new high end apartments are being constructed here with the verve of Trajan's times. A smart shopping centre services them all and here we did our essential shopping before settling down to a delicious lunch of Maltese rustic breads, charcuterie, delicious sundried tomatoes and home grown olives and local cheeses, gbejna: true Mediterranean fare.

A few steps right from our apartment we found a 1.50€ ferry option across to Valetta, thinking we might do an orientation walk, but talking to a local couple enroute we took their advice and headed off for a multi-media historical overview of the city, called 'The Malta Experience". So, once we landed we then hopped on a small red shuttle that took us to the tip of the island, built as the Fort of St Elmo in the sixteenth century by the island rulers, the Knights Hospitallers, to defend their island, as Malta was on every sailing map at the time for every pirate ship and profiteer -- and every potential invader. 

Here, we paid our fee and entered a theatre for a visual history show of Malta which told us that the first known settlers to the island were random boat people, who very likely came via Sicily, wandering south looking for opportunities, in neolithic times. We will have to explore the remnants of their stone temples and ruins another day as they look so amazingly intact, despite being erected some seven thousand years ago. Today, though, we are fast-forwarding a few island invasions -- by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, Arabs, French and British -- and going back to a time when Malta came to be ruled by the Knights Hospitallers. Who were responsible for building most of the structures, harbours and fortifications we can see from our apartment balcony.

As Muslims travel to Mecca to pay their respects, Christians long ago travelled to Jerusalem, the Holy Land. There many good Samaritans volunteered their services to care for sick and injured pilgrims. These volunteers, over time, became extremely skilful in all areas of medicine and surgery, and were noted for their amazing surgery speed and recovery rates after the removal of damaged limbs and organs. They created their own cures, many relying on honey, turpentine, and the benefits of citrus to repair and salve and purify chopped limbs. They attracted more volunteers and expanded their service to protect pilgrims enroute to the Holy Land. So they became skilled in defence as well as medicine. But, once Jerusalem was conquered by Islamic forces, the Knights Hospitallers, as they were called, were forced to move on to Rhodes. But, from here, too, they were eventually ousted, but found shelter finally in Malta, when Charles 1 of Spain gave them this tiny island to administer. 

Here they planned to stay, so set about building themselves a protected city, with walls of stone, forts of stone, palaces of stone, and hospitals of stone, digging themselves in. They were not planning to be ousted from here. The stone literally came from the fabric of the island we were told. 

After the media history in the theatre a group of us went with one of the guides to visit the wards of the famous holy infirmary that they built in 1574, Sacra Infermeria, which treated all sexes, all race, all religions: no one was turned away. Though the rich entered through the front door. The poor, who did not have to be wooed for charitable donations, came the back way, through tunnels and staircases from beneath the building. 

These were excavated during construction as the limestone for the infirmary came from the ground beneath its very foundation. It was dug out, and used in slabs above. So, the basements of much of the infirmary are cavernous holes once filled with the gritty limestone that now weighs the island down and sits high on its skin. 

We visited the men's ward: a long rectangular space that was built to hold hundreds of single beds separated from each other by flushing vented toilets, all partitioned off for added privacy by woven tapestries and fabric bed drapes. Ensuited hospital beds some six hundred years ago! How far, now, are we from that. Moreover, they ate from silver salvers -- to reduce infection, and their treatment hall had an outlook on to a sweet-smelling citrus garden where they could no doubt wander, and take their visitors for a stroll. 

On the floor below was the poor ward, with its vaulted ceilings ornately decorated in curlicued frescoes, hand-painted.

Here, the in-patients were more likely three to a large bed, each bed in a numbered space, the remnants of number 114 bed still visible here on the gorgeous handprinted wall marker. 

Today, the poor ward is used for functions. Most recently, an Indian Prince flew 900 guests from India to Malta for his wedding, booking out an entire hotel, close by, along with the complete building that the Kights had once used as their hospital for his reception. 

Evening was closing in as we walked back to the ferry around the fortified walls and beneath the galleried windows of the beautiful buildings lining the waterfront. There are glimpse of long stairwells climbing hills to spires and towers in the inner heart of the city. So much still to see, and always too little time.

We head home on our ferry and have a quick aperitif and some garlic mushrooms on our balcony before making dinner and heading to bed. 

Our legs are tired after two big walking days. We need healing sleep. And had a knight in shining armour been close by we might each have begged a massage.

A lone boatman 

A different view from the boat enroute to Valetta 

We entered, as the poor likely did, through a tunnel created during the limestone excavation
and the infirmary build

Men's ward with its timbered ceiling and ensured facilities,
albeit undecorated today

Hand painted ceiling in poor ward

Pilgrim bed space 114, still visible after 600 years

The 'poor ward' in the infirmary in Malta

Evening in Malta enroute to the ferry to Sliema

Route of Malta trip, 2018

 

In slow transit, again

We are enroute, again; overnighting in Incheon, again; staying at the Grand Hyatt, again. In transit to Italy this year, but taking a couple of days to get there, enjoying the travel. 

This trip to South Korea the outside temperature is -7°C. The hotel grounds are twinkling with hundreds of hanging white electric snowflakes, and tall Christmas trees laden with yellow lights and lit presents making it look like a fairyland. Inside looking out, it is warm and warming. 

Korean Air has fast become our current favourite airline. Again, we sing its praises. We are able to leave home at a reasonable hour, enjoy a nine hour flight with so much legroom that others can cross without us needing to move; lovely old-fashioned service and a glossy granite, glass and marble transit hotel with charred seafood for dinner and fresh pain au chocolate for breakfast enroute, along with a comfy bed and soft pillows to fall into at a regular time, with no sleep disturbance at all. All part of the airfare. What more could one ask for in transit? We love it. And find ourselves planning our travel so that we can come this route each time now, just for the sheer comfort of it. 

So much money some countries have to spend on such frills and fancifulness, when so many others have so little. It does make one mindful of that: but be appreciative, at the same time. 

Our Rome leg was a little delayed and a little bumpy early on, but the Korean crew were so hospitable that the air crowding over China that caused the delay, and the bumps, dissolved to a minor irritant and the flight was pleasant, albeit long, at eleven and a half hours, filled with frequent food and drink breaks. 

Immigration and customs were friendly and fast, but we had no luck outside finding our airport shuttle with ease, but, as is the way in Italy, a stereotypical Italian entrepreneur soon pulled up, took us under his wing, and quickly popped us into his tour group van for taxi rates topped off with liberal doses of charm, smiles and guile. We were dropped off first at our Rome beachside hotel, about 15 minutes drive from the airport, and as it was so dark with no real view of the sea at this hour, we had only to trolley our bags across the road to the hotel entrance where reception, despite the late hour, was still kindly waiting for us. 

Only to advise us that our detailed plans for tomorrow to visit the vast archaeological site of Ostia Antica, just 10 minutes away was not going to happen. The site is closed Mondays now. So, too tired to make alternative plans for the day, we took ourselves off to bed and slept soundly in the lovely cool of the 10°C evening with the heating off, a light blanket on at times, and the smell of sea salt in the air. Our hotel faces the sea though it is too dark to appreciate that when we arrive. 

We have a full day before we fly off to Malta now to fill. 

A change of plans may happen in dreams, we hope. 

We are so disappointed still when we wake up about not seeing the ruins of Rome's ancient seaport, Ostia Antica, that we are playing with different options of when we might return to Rome this trip to spend a day, or so, there. So that may yet happen. 

We decide, in lieu, to walk Trajan's Rome. It is winter and we are in shirt sleeves, though the locals do have jackets, and some have scarves. 

We have done this before during a longer stay, but I don't think one can ever get enough time to really appreciate how extraordinary the Romans were. Particularly under Trajan. 

After a brilliant breakfast of delicious ham, eggs, croissant and many cups of the most delicious coffee we found our way to the local station with the help of a friend of the folk in the hotel who had first seen us at breakfast, but later found us on a corner not far from the hotel wondering in which direction to go. He spoke no English, but knew where we might be going and led us but a hundred metres or so to an assuming portico which turned out to be the railway station entrance. The trains are fast and frequent and we changed once to get into the heart of Rome, Termini Station. 

A few hundred metres walk and we were right in the thick of Trajan's Rome. Trajan's Market towers over the vast Roman forum, while further down the hill to the east is the vast Colosseum. Most of it built, as far as the eye can see, around 2000 years ago. And much of it rich booty from Emperor Trajan's victories abroad. 

A skilful soldier and brave administrator he grew the Roman Empire eastwards bringing modern day Romania into the fold. The taxes he extracted from his new citizens paid for much of the construction in this heart of ancient Rome. 

The construction for much of his rule must have been constant. The entire area would have been buzzing with slaves and hired labourers skilled in all areas of engineering, construction and architecture, with their wheel barrows, carts, load bearing animals, ropes, pulleys, clanging and shouting. 

Most of it would then have been occupied by a vast team of administrators and consultants who worked out of offices in the building that is now called 'Trajan's market' that climbs Quirinal Hill in a massive multi-function, multi-level, multi-story sea of small red brick. The mass of building, as large as a mountain itself, doubled as a centre of government and justice decision-making, surrounded by a huge shopping mall. Public servants had to the money to shop well even 2000 years ago.

And the streets and alcoves would have been filled with traders selling everything from exotic rugs from the east to ubiquitous fast food for the thronging hoards, locals and tourists who found Rome irresistible, even then. Much as today, in truth.

We walked down to the Forum, which is something like a massive public park and palace of justice. It is a vast pillared and porticoed public space surrounding smaller parks, gardens, statues, and open areas in the heart of the city that would have been crowded with robed lawyers, judges, accused and accusers together with locals socialising, or moving to and from work, home, gym and play. 

Trajan's column spires up as a focal point at one end of the Forum, in pure white Carrara marble its diameter 4 metres across, its perimeter an ornamented sculptured spiral tale of Trajan's victories and achievements. His image in bronze, once topped the tall pillar. His ashes lay in state beneath his column when he died from a heart attack returning from one of his victories. He was just 64, and deeply mourned. He was one of the good emperors. His building legacy has given us so much joy.

We took a late afternoon train back to collect our luggage at the hotel, but had time to take a walk along the beautiful Lido before taking the hotel shuttle to the airport for our evening flight, an hour trip to Malta, which was smooth, fast, and comfortable and where, amazingly, in the short hour, we were served a local fast food snack that the Maltese love: tuna ftiri made from dense, tough, crusty bread or roll slathered with what tastes like fish paste, but is more mashed tuna mixed into a tapenade with olives, capers, garlic, seasoning and oil. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. I would probably not go running for more: tho' I love most of those flavours: just not enamoured with tuna. 

Malta's weather is perfect for us. Even though the hour is late, it is winter, and the evenings are supposed to be cool to cold we are comfortable, again, in just our shirt sleeves. Days around 17°C are the ideal for us while travelling. 

We were collected at the airport by a sign-bearing transfer chauffeur organised by the absent home exchange owner whose beautiful Sliema apartment we are staying in, overlooking the stunning city of Valetta.

We packed Miss Bec off to bed and sat long and lazily staring in wonderment across at the lovely lit ancient structures of the city of Valetta, built by the Kights of the Hospitalers. Local limestone on top of limestone. 

Which we will learn more about tomorrow, we hope.

Our sojourn has begun.

Pope John Paul 11 statue at Termini station, Rome

Winter wonderland at our Incheon hotel

Traditional Korean dancers in Incheon Airport

Sculptured detail on the front door of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri

Fountain of the Naids, Plaza della Republica, Rome

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Extraordinary busker trick a la René Magritte

Colosseum 

Amazing to think that Trajan's Market is 2,000 years old

Trajan's column rising up on one side of the Forum

Ostia Lido, opposite our hotel  

Beautiful Valetta: the view from our balcony