Time to start experiencing Malta

Now that we have moved into our new ‘home’, which incidentally is across the dock from George, the Royal Malta Yacht Club’s commodore who never knows who we are, we now have time to look around. The weather is much cooler now which is more conducive to doing just that. Malta is an extremely hot place in the summer months and its difficult to get motivated to do anything except lie down in the boat with a couple of fans blowing full force onto you, afraid to move because as soon as you do the sweat starts flowing.

We’ve been welcomed into a community of Europeans who have made Malta their homes in the winter, coming back to their spots in the marina and then take off traveling around the Med in the summer. They have lots to tell us about Greece, Turkey, Croatia and Italy. Sicily of course is only about 50 miles from here, so we look forward to taking some trips there during the winter months. Though the winds can get really nasty there is also mild weather and some people still cruise the med then. But they prefer to make Malta their home base, and I’m sure some of them plan to retire to the land one day, when they no longer want to live aboard. The British have been retiring to Malta for many years. When I am talking with these people about Malta I feel envious that they know Malta much better than I do. We will do our best to remedy that while here.

Tonight we are going to the Manoel Theatre to watch the Royal Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. This theatre dates back to the 1732, was built by Grand Master Manoel de Vilhena ‘for the honest recreation of the people’. It was restored in 1969 and is believed to be the second oldest theatre in use in Europe. We went on a short tour of the theatre when we first arrived here. It really is gorgeous, not very big, 3 tiers of boxes (we’ve booked a box for 4 people at 80 Euros). Every box has an original painting on the front wall of the box. The artist who was commissioned to paint these was from Italy, so every country scene that he has painted are places that he remembered in Italy. That strikes me a funny. I suppose he was homesick and it must have taken a few years to finish all of that work.

Two days ago we went to Marsaxlokk which is a really lovely fishing village. It houses hundreds of beautiful colourful fishing boats in the main harbour, and then just around the corner is the free port – maybe I should say the FREE PORT, because its huge. Now we know where all of those ships were going that we saw on the way here. There is actually a constant, never ending line of ships coming into this port. Around the port is a fuel storage installation. As I write this I realize that is why Malta was so protected by the British and so sort after by the Germans during WWII, it’s the refueling station halfway across the Med. So some of those ships are bringing fuel and some a re refueling. From my brother Peter’s villa in High Ridge which overlooks the southern part of Malta we could see an infinitessimal string of lights heading out to sea – these ships, and when we were flying back into Malta at night I could see this same string of lights from the plane. Marsaxlokk is famous for its Sunday fish market – which we haven’t been to yet, but will. They have a daily market also which is purely touristic stuff, much of it made in Taiwan or somewhere other than Malta. We did actually succumb to buying a tile with the famous good luck EYE painted on it. Most of the fishing boats have these eyes painted on either side of the bow. This makes perfect sense to me that the boats should be able to see where they are going. This eye now looks back at me from above the galley sink - got to have a nautical souvenir of Malta.
We also found a fabulous old fort which only opens to the public on Saturdays, wo we couldn't go inside and actually know nothing about it, except that is looks like it dates back to the Grand Masters, like Fort Manoel and was re-used during WWII, the new heavy gun slits replacing the ancient ones give that away.


Yesterday was a lovely ‘hot’ day with cloudless sky, the type of day to do a load of laundry and hang it up to dry. As we are at the end of our dock we have become part of the scenery that the harbour tour boats remark on as they go by. There are lots of them. So now the Canadian boat has been added to their patter – ‘As you will see from the Canadian flag on this boat, Msida Marina is international, attracting boats from all over the world, and here you will see one of those poor sailors hanging out their washing because they can’t afford to pay the launderette prices’. The last bit wasn’t true, but the first bit was.

Today it is pouring rain and will be for a couple of days. The weather reporting here is very accurate, when they say it will rain it rains a lot, and if they say it won’t rain it doesn’t. We like that – no weather surprises.