Malta trip #15 – Malta by Foot

 

 

I knew from my research beforehand that Malta has a couple of food items that it’s known for. On our last day, we wanted to cover that as well. In the morning we had breakfast at a place called “Manuela’s”. It was listed on Google Maps as the best place in Malta for Pastizzi. 

 

That hard to pronounce word is the name of a savoury pastry that Malta is known for. By the way, you say pass-tee-zee. It was quite good.

After we came back from the Saluting Battery, we were hungry again. This time we just walked around until we found a bakery shop. I wanted to have a Qassattat this time and I also wanted to try Malta’s famous Kinnie. Kinnie is a bitter soda. I think Roberta also opted for a Qassattat but I wouldn’t swear to it. This was one of the very few places in Malta where we had to pay by cash. This was also the only place in 5 days when we had a racist experience.

It was not a big deal and I didn’t even want to mention it but then I thought what’s the point of writing about my experiences if I am not open and honest about all of them. What happened was that Roberta was short some cash and asked me for a €0.50 change. Now if you are bean-counter type you would ask how did I have change when I had just donated my leftover change at the Saluting Battery? Well, I had just paid for my food at the same shop and he had given me change back.

 

Out of this, I gave Roberta some coins which I was sure amounted to 50 euro cents. But either from my hand to hers, or hers to the shopkeeper’s, we gave him too much. He returned the extra but at the same time made a comment to his friend in a Shakespearean aside “These English cannot count.”

Now, the funny thing here is that I am a naturalised citizen. I was born in India and even though I have a British passport now and live in England, I can’t claim to be English. But his tone was such that it pissed me off. He could have said the same thing in a way and that included us and we could all have laughed at it. But he chose to say it to his friend, loud enough that we could hear him and with that contempt in his voice that was more offensive than the words.

I would have liked to retort but the first comment that came in my head was so bad that it would have started an international incident. I refrained. Roberta didn’t hear his comment, lucky her.

His crime was compounded by the fact that his Qassattat was abysmal. The one that Sam had bought us after the Segway tour was very lightly and fluffy, filled with ricotta cheese but in a way that it was blended in the flour. Here it was very dry and lumpy with the ricotta visible in a big lump in one side. I think I did not finish it.

 

 

Kinnie was a similar story though not through any fault of our racist shopkeeper. It was just a bitter soda and I didn’t like it. Its initial taste was like an Indian soft drink Thums Up which I used to love, but the aftertaste was quite bitter. I did not even finish half of that bottle.

 

Then we walked around aimlessly which is the great joy of walking in a foreign city. While we were walking through the market, we stepped into a tourist trap (souvenir shop) and to my surprise and delight, they had the same soldier figurines that I had seen the day before, except they had them much cheaper. On Sunday, I had found them for €9.99 while the exact same figures here were going for €4.50. They are called tourist traps for a reason.

 

Obviously, I bought my favourite figure right away and also bought a fridge magnet, another soldier figure. This made me very happy. I have told you how little it takes to make me happy. See photos.

 

We had nothing specific to do so we just walked around until it was time to call the taxi. As I have mentioned before Roberta and I both like to get to the airport early to avoid stress. We took a taxi and got to the airport about 1500 for our flight which was at 1655.

 

Because this was our last stop before jumping the puddle to UK, I took advantage by ordering my last Latte Macchiato in Malta at the airport Costa. It sucked.

If you see security screening staff at an airport smiling and being all cheerful, just migrate to that country. I had noticed this when arriving in Malta also and again I saw the same thing. The staff was cheerful and chatty. I have not seen that often. Or may be ever. What’s in the Malta air?

 

Speaking of Malta air, we were flying back from Malta Air on the return journey. The flight was uneventful which is how you want your flights to be, except that wearing a face mask for three hours straight sucks. Neither of us ate anything in the flight so our masks stayed on the whole time. And a good thing it was, too. Watch this space.

Malta Trip #14 – Day 5 - The Reluctant Retreat or “Fire one!”

  

One of the reasons I had been ok with having only 5 days in Malta and had actually preferred it was that most places I get bored in 3-4 days. Malta proved to be a happy exception. Or sad, depending on how you look at it. The fact is that even though we had been living here for 5 days, we were not bored with it. Even with all the walking and being tired I was really enjoying Malta. It had a chill vibe that makes you feel relaxed and happy. I am sure some of it was the great weather but otherwise also, I felt quite happy there.

 

Today, after five days I realised that all the time I had been in Malta I had not seen a single beggar, homeless person or any kind of scammers. In the great city of Paris, scammers abound by the thousands. New Delhi is amazing, but you better hold on to your wallet in the crowded areas. New York is fantastic but you will see homeless people and be careful that you don’t get mugged. This was the first time I had not seen anything disturbing like that in a city. I don’t know what the reason is but it was refreshing.

 

On the last day we also had the second “greatest thing in Malta”.

 

Following my Maltese practice of getting up early, I was out of be
d before sunrise but didn’t try to capture it today. The sky was a bit cloudy this morning. This is how obsessed I have become with photography that I didn’t try to sit there and enjoy the sunrise just for myself. Granted the weather was not as nice as yesterday morning but still, I didn’t even try. The upshot of that was that I was showered, packed and ready before time. But the problem with being punctual is that you have to wait for others. 

 

 

It was raining lightly when we checked out of the hotel and stepped out. The whole time we were there we only saw light rain like that and that also didn’t last for long. We ne
ver saw long, sustained or heavy rain though one taxi driver did tell us that recently it rained for three straight days. I was tempted to tell him “Dude, we are from England!”

 

 

We took a taxi to Valetta where we were planning to see a couple of sights starting from the Lower Barakka Gardens. Here I realised that I was on the same spot where I had taken photos of the Great Siege Bell the day before. I was just across the road from there today. The bell looks even better from there and I took more photos and videos.

 

You might have already guessed that where there are lower gardens, there must be upper gardens as well. Yes, there are. There are Upper Barakka Gardens where the “greatest thing” was. Time to reveal that secret. The Upper Barakka Gardens are home to “The Saluting Battery”. They are a military unit that maintains several monuments in Malta including a bunch of cannons at the Upper Barakka Gardens. The most exciting part of this is that they fire one of these cannon everyday! Well, not everyday, only from Monday to Saturday which is why we were here on our last day even though this was the top item on my list of things to see. 

The cannon they fire is called the noonday gun which marks the time (Noon) and there is one at 1600 as well. Since, this is the military and the cannon literally marks the time, we didn’t want to be late for it. We were in fact half an hour early, but it was a good thing because we got a good spot to watch it from on the balcony. The funny thing here is that I was all ready to shell out €3 for the ticket but it turned out that the ticket is only if you want to watch it from the same floor and get a tour of the guns. Watching from the balcony was free, and for my money (or not) that was the better spot if you wanted to take photos.

 

Roberta found us a great spot at the railing which gave us the perfect shooting angle. This was the big moment, something that I had been anticipating days before we started on the trip, so I didn’t want to miss anything. I have this tiny tripod which comes with a phone holder. I set it up on the floor with my phone camera shooting between the trellis. I took a test video while they were doing a presentation, and then checked the camera and angle several times. Myself I placed to shoot from above the railing with the Panasonic GH5 pointing down to the guns.

 

Then we waited. I pressed record on the phone camera about five minutes in advance just so I would not forget. And then I checked again that it was recording because recently I had missed once. On the GH5, I set the camera to Burst mode so that I would be able to take a lot of photos quickly at the firing time. Even then I set the camera pointed at the action, set my arm on the balcony so I could click without looking, but kept my eyes free to look at the action. This is how excited I was about this. And then I missed it.

I was hoping that they would do a ten-second countdown like they do for rocket launches but I didn’t know if they would. So, I was constantly looking at the cannon below where a soldier had loaded it, checking my watch, then looking down again...

“Guard! Fire!” A loud voice said and BOOM!

 

By the time I pressed the shutter on my camera, the shot was out of there like....well, like it was shot out of a cannon. There was only smoke remaining. But, wait, didn’t I have my phone set up to record already? Yes, I did, and that was the saving grace. Roberta had had the same results as mine, getting only the smoke. But the good thing was that I had seen it, big flame, the huge cloud of smoke and that explosion....ooh, goosebumps! I have not celebrated Diwali for many years now but when we were young, I used to love firecrackers. Maybe that’s why I like redheads? Just kidding. But this was the biggest, baddest firecracker I had seen in my life where I also knew that I was safe, so I enjoyed it a lot.

The first thing I did after my heartbeat normalised a little was to check the video on the phone. It was there and it was great. I will try and share the video here in some format that works otherwise the photos will have to do.

 

 

I was so happy after that that I went down to their gift shop to see what I could find. They had some nice things and I bought a tiny model plane as a keyring. It’s a little Hurricane. I also had a little Euro change left in my wallet which I dropped in their donation box. The Saluting Battery is a non-profit and works only on donations.

When we left there, I was quite happy. Malta rocks!

Next chapter: Our failed culinary experiments and the retreat from Malta.

Malta trip #13 – Malta Nightlife

Dinner time was again challenging, especially as I was bored with Italian. After a lot of browsing, physical and digital, we agreed on an Indian restaurant for tonight. It was a little distance away from the clubbing precinct and was called “Emperor of India”. It was quite popular and we actually had to wait for a table which I hate doing. I would rather go and eat in some other place if one is busy. To me, waiting for a table is a very bourgeois thing to do. I think it comes from my Indian upbringing where you can get great food even in a cheap, roadside restaurant (they are called dhaba’s and even in them some are better than others.)

Our wait was only about 10 minutes though, and we had something to keep us busy. Tell you later about that. When we got our table, I thought I recognised the couple at the next table. I asked them if they were staying in Corinthia. They were. They asked if we were as well and that told me that they were not the people from the swimming pool which I had earlier thought them to be. It was only coincidence that they were staying at Corinthia.

 

They were from Germany, the lady spoke a little more English than the gentleman. I see non-native people and I immediately assume they speak English. So stupid. The gent was from Garmisch in Germany which excited me because I have been there. I opened my blog on my phone and showed him the blog header image. 

 

“This was taken at Garmisch.” I told him.

 

He nodded and let it go. Two days later when I opened my blog I saw that I had changed the blog header image a while back. In my excitement I had not noticed it in the restaurant but the Garmisch image that I kept on my blog for about 15 years had been replaced by a more recent photo from Rohtang Pass in the Himalayas. The German tourist was just too polite to say “Are you shitting me, bro? This ain’t no Garmisch!”

 

Anyway, the food was good as we had hoped. The restaurant owner was also a great character. On the way back, we had to walk through the clubbing area so we decided to stop at one place to have a drink. The amusing thing there was that one of the bouncers at the door asked us for our “Proof of Vaccination”. He had to repeat it four times before I got it even though his pronunciation was perfect because I had never been asked this at a club in my life and I am too old to be id’ed. In some malls, we had had occasion that someone pointed something at us. After my first shocked step-back, I realised it was a thermometer. But this was the first time after the airport that anyone asked for our PoV.

 

Both of us opened the NHS app on our phones to show the NHS Pass as proof of vaccination but the signal wasn’t good and the app just kept showing the spinner. After a while he just said thank you and let us in. We do have trustworthy faces, Roberta and I.

 

As for the drink inside the less said the better. The drinks were not great and the party was kind of DOA. The drinks were not overpriced if you assume that they would have alcohol. We finished the drinks and came back to the hotel. Admittedly, it was Sunday night but in a tourist place like Malta I had expected it to have more of a buzz.

 

Our main topic of conversation this evening was the arrangements for return travel. We had our flights booked but there were other arrangement that needed to be made in view of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The UK government had set requirements that everybody coming in had to take a Covid-19 test within 0-2 days of arrival. The way they were enforcing that was to make all passengers book a test online with a test provider company, get a booking reference and enter that booking reference in a “Passenger Locator Form”. Remember, we had to fill a similar form for travelling to Malta? It was the same going back with his additional wrinkle. I sorted out my test booking and form at night, Roberta did hers the next morning in the taxi. I chose to have my test kit sent to my home.

 

Apropos nothing, one thing I hate is the hotel hand wash soap. This was a 5-star hotel but this practice never changes. They always give you this round bar (circle?) of soap which you put in a soap dish and use it every time you need to wash your hands. It always smells horrible, always makes your skin dry and the worst thing is that it gets disgustingly wet and melty. Why can’t they put a small bottle of liquid handwash there? This time with the pandemic still a concern, the hotel toiletries included two tiny bottles of sanitizer. I am sure they can do the same for liquid handwash in a way that’s cost-effective, if they want. I was carrying my own sanitizer and sanitising wipes but I still swiped those tiny bottles because they were perfect for bringing through airport security.

 

The next day we were planning to check-out and see the city before going to the airport so I made sure to put all my devices on charge before going to bed. I also made sure all my media was backed up including this morning’s great sunrise photos. Then I went to bed to dream of Covid-19 tests. Just kidding, my dreams are more cinematic.