Thursday, October 05, 2006

Catching up on a few centuries

The satisfaction with providing good service to our Valletta G-House guests is amplified when we get great feedback. Our guests also leave some very useful tips for future guests and I am eternally grateful for this since I could not possibly keep our Valletta information so up to date if it were not for this.

My November trip to Malta is one thing I am so much looking forward to. I am sure to bring to you more information, photos and first hand experiences from the islands. The excitement starts with the journey. Already at the airport, I look around at the other passengers to see if I can spot anyone I know back from the first 20 years of my life and have fun guessing who's local and who's visiting. Aboard the plane I pick up the in-flight magazine - it's one of the pleasures of flying (yes, I know - I'm easily amused). This November I'm going with Air Malta and I look forward to perusing their new glossy - Sky Life for the first time.

One thing that I intend to do while in Malta this November is to visit a few historic sites and museums with my parents. This is what I missed out on when I was growing up there - "that was for the tourist, you see". But with an island packed with such a fascinating history, this will be a perfect opportunity to catch up. The Canadian lifestyle magazine enRoute is right when it says:

"Old customs die hard in Malta, and some local traditions date back further here than anywhere else on earth. Before humankind had invented the wheel or built Stonehenge, people were engineering megalithic temples in Malta to worship their fertility goddess. Since then, the country's spot on the map, at a narrow point in the Mediterranean between Europe and Africa, guaranteed that every seagoing civilization in the region would eventually land here and leave its mark. (Malta is an archipelago made of one large island - Malta - and four small ones, including Gozo and Comino.)

The countryside is so rich with relics that it becomes second nature to look twice at every scattered stone in case it might be an overlooked archaeological treasure. Few other countries seem to have more history per square kilometre. There are saggy-breasted goddesses at the temple sites, Roman catacombs, Arabic poetry etched in stone, spectacular baroque churches, relics from the British military and, of course, 25 kilometres of fortifications. All this, in an area smaller than Montreal island. "

Read the rest on enRoute

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