This was our second visit to Malta. Both have been by cruise ship. It is easy to imagine a holiday here of perhaps three or four days. It is a very beautiful island with friendly people. It is one of those places where it is lovely just to walk around. And today the sunshine was just perfect. The harbour in its own way is, I think, one of the most beautiful in the world.
Malta has some of the outward Mediterranean shabbiness we have seen in many places but somehow it carries it off and all its other facets charm.
I asked a taxi driver to take us to the airport just to look as the aviation person in me was feeling a bit suppressed after several days at sea. He was very helpful seeking out a couple of vantage points. He then returned us to the Triton fountain where we began our short city walk.
I bought two books, one on the almost forgotten Malta Railway - it closed in 1931 – and another on its buses. There is particular poignancy there as I have heard that Malta’s older buses, a great tourist attraction and attractive in their own right, are doomed. They are to be replaced by politically correct vehicles with low floors and suchlike.
It is said that perhaps one or two routes will be allowed to run the old vehicles much as the perfectly practical Routemaster was saved in London. Another suggestion, far from certain, is a museum. To be worthwhile it would need to be something like Crich with running vehicles.
It was a very nice day marred only by the continuing shadow of the CDC hanging over the buffet restaurant. I hope that sanity is restored when we leave for our sea day en-route to Barcelona.
Malta has some of the outward Mediterranean shabbiness we have seen in many places but somehow it carries it off and all its other facets charm.
I asked a taxi driver to take us to the airport just to look as the aviation person in me was feeling a bit suppressed after several days at sea. He was very helpful seeking out a couple of vantage points. He then returned us to the Triton fountain where we began our short city walk.
I bought two books, one on the almost forgotten Malta Railway - it closed in 1931 – and another on its buses. There is particular poignancy there as I have heard that Malta’s older buses, a great tourist attraction and attractive in their own right, are doomed. They are to be replaced by politically correct vehicles with low floors and suchlike.
It is said that perhaps one or two routes will be allowed to run the old vehicles much as the perfectly practical Routemaster was saved in London. Another suggestion, far from certain, is a museum. To be worthwhile it would need to be something like Crich with running vehicles.
It was a very nice day marred only by the continuing shadow of the CDC hanging over the buffet restaurant. I hope that sanity is restored when we leave for our sea day en-route to Barcelona.
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