Bill and Lynne Grand Tour

We have follwed the Knights of the Order of St. John from Rhodes to Malta. When Suleiman the Magnificent threw them out of Rhodes, they ended up in Malta (the Spanish king leased it to them for two falcons per year) and the Hospitallers built the same fortifications, inns and hospitals. We have felt quite at home.


Valetta


Malta harbor

Our hotel overlooks Marsamxett Harbor looking across to Valetta, the capital. We took a fabulous harbor cruise that chugs around each of the nine creeks of Marsamxett and the Grand Harbor so could see the fortifications, buildings and major ship building from the water. Valetta was laid out by an engineer when the knights decided to build a new capital after they held out against Suleiman in the Great Siege. All the streets are straight so as to catch every breeze from the water and it is a delight to walk in the shade of the limestone buildings with a cool breeze in your face. The balconies are unique and a definite part of Maltese life. 99% of the islands is Catholic and feast days for the 365 churches form a great part of the summer season. The streets are decorated, flags flown and when the statue of their particular saint is paraded, they stand on their balconies tossing confetti and ticker tape.


Azure window

We took a sedate fishing boat ride to see the Blue Grotto and then next day, a less- sedate ride to see the Azure Window. We left from a calm inland sea, sailed through a narrow passage and were suddenly in the not-so-calm Mediterranean. The waves looked awfully big, but the fisherman steering the boat kept pointing out rocks shaped like crocodiles or men's faces. As the Maryland priest touring with us that day said, "H...., I had no time to look at rocks, I was too busy holding on to the boat." We found the life jackets in a locker after we were back on dry land.

Malta has some really ancient Neolithic temples: 3800 BC - we laugh at Stonehenge at 1900 BC. For a small island, there is a range of history through the millenia and even though Valetta, particularly, was heavily bombed during the Second World War, they have rebuilt in the old style. King George awarded the George Cross to the whole island for their bravery in holding out during WWW II. The local limestone is readily available so almost all the buildings are built out of it. Mdina, the old capital is called the silent city as the streets are deserted, most of the noble inhabitants have other homes in Italy or Valetta and they have wisely kept the souvenier sellers outside the walls.

Everyone speaks English as well as Maltese, which is a Semitic language with much Italian and English thrown in. At least the Roman alphabet is used and we could tell where we were. One of our tours was with a Dutch group so I got a kick out of understanding what was being said. The Maltese guide spoke it with as much of an English acent as I have speaking Afrikaans so it all sounded perfectly normal to me. The Dutch themselves were amused but knew what she was talking about.

LS

The Russian Church
We set off by bus in the dark from Athens and had our first stop a couple of hours later and thought it all very civilized as we had time for a drink and loo stop but things went downhill from then on. When we did stop to drop off or collect other passengers the stop was either too short or you had to go through full security with bag searches and x-rays, except between the Greek and Athens borders where a long stop was made at the duty free shop (no loos there though - this was shopping time). All the Bulgarians were loaded with liquor which they managed to consume quite quickly so after that there were frantic calls to the driver for him to pause in the middle of nowhere for some happy guy to disappear behind a bush. The road became progressively worse as we neared Sofia and the last 20 km was so bad that some major part under the bus broke with impressive bangs and bashes. The bus continued at 5 kph and we limped into the city until it finally died at a busy traffic circle. As we speak no Bulgarian, we were never sure what was happening but were lucky enough to discover that one of the passengers worked at the US Embassy and spoke very good English, found us an ATM and a cab and headed us in the direction of our hotel.

Sofia is an incredible mixture of the drabness of blocks and blocks of depressing communist-style apartments and the most upmarket shopping mall - TZUM, brand new bus station, many lavish churches and cathedrals and a very modern market complete with fast food. We found a self-serve restaurant in the basement serving Bulgarian food and with tables among Roman ruins. There are more McDonalds and KFCs per block than I have seen in any major city in the world. The infrastructure is minimal - wonderful green spaces, but with knee-high grass and, of course, the potholes in the streets. The EU already has road-construction projects going so everyone hopes that when Bulgaria joins the European Union in 2007, things will be better.


Roman ruins

During the Turkish occupation, no Christian churches were allowed to be built above ground so we enjoyed the subways which have been built to get pedestrians across busy thoroughfares. There is often a little mediaeval church or 15th century ruin in the center. Farther out on the outskirts however, none of the lights is working so we could never see what was being preserved under the streets. Parking is at a premium so the Sofians have solved it by parking on the sidewalks which means pedestrians have to walk in the street which can be very hazardous to your health as most of the drivers claim definite right-of-way.

At noon one day the sirens went off for a full minute and everyone froze on the spot, cars stopped and there was no other sound to be heard. Luckily, we were already sitting down in the shade in the square so did not embarrass ourselves as it was obviously a very special time. When the sirens stopped, everyone continued on as if nothing had happened. It was rather like the childhood game of statues, we used to play and even seeing it on the local news that night, did not clarify the occasion.

They were holding a childrens festival outside the National Theater in the park we walked through each time we left the hotel. It was fun to see kids from post- toddler to late teens doing their folk dances or playing in the latest heavy metal bands and singing in English. MTV is doing more for the global village than anything else we have seen. Bulgaria is trying to encourage tourists and the kids are leading the way. We found almost every teenager serving in the restaurants or selling at the stalls could speak enough for us to manage. The Bulgarian alphabet is different even from the Greek, with which we had become quite familiar. Finding the correct streets was a challenge as so many of the letters have no relationship to our alphabet. It takes time to translate P to R, N to I, X to H etc etc. We spent a lot of time on street corners gazing at the street names.


Bulgarian road sign

We ended up staying in Sofia and not taking any of the tours outside the city as planned, feeling a little insecure about whether the buses would make it in time for us to get back to Athens to catch our flight and tour in Malta. No hardship however as there were fascinating walks through the major buildings and statues and decorations on every important place.