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.
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