Today we rented a scooter and headed into Valletta. Via a dinghy, it is probably only a 10 minute ride straight across the water, but via scooter it was a long drive all the way around the large harbor. The road system is confusing with unclear signs, and we made several wrong turns along the way. The fact that they drive on the left didn’t help, either. The drivers are pretty good here, though, which is a welcome relief from Italy.

Our first stop was The Malta Experience, which is a 45 minute movie about the history of Malta. We navigated our way through town to a small building on Valletta’s waterfront. We assumed this would be the entrance. Not even close. We followed a series of signs that directed us down a staircase along the face of the cliff to an opening in the retaining wall. Then through a long, gently sloping tunnel to a fairly large underground room that serves as a gift shop/ticket booth. The room lets into a hallway where we lined up. When the doors opened, we were ushered into a large underground theater. Wow, it was really cool to be in one of the secret tunnels and rooms that you always read about in fairy tales. They really do exist!

We found out that during World War II, a lot of people took shelter here, a safe haven from the constant bombing. At the time, the tunnel was lined on both sides with bunk beds and it was jam packed with people. It is hard to imagine. The movie was excellent, but the tickets were $15USD each and we thought it was a lot of money for a 45 minute movie. It is really a shame that the US currency is doing so poorly. It makes everything noticeably more expensive for us than it is for people using a stronger currency.

After the movie, we walked south down the street to the Siege Bell War Memorial. On the way, we passed the hospital the Knights Hospitalier ran. It is huge. The building seems to go on forever. At the bell tower, we were surprised to see it is a relatively new creation, erected in 1992. Next to it is a giant bronze statue of a wounded person lying down. The statue is raised, so you really can only see it from above. We actually had to walk up to the top of the bell tower to get a good look at it. From the bell tower there is also a phenomenal view of Grand Harbor.

We hopped back on the scooter and headed north to Fort St. Elmo. It is only open to the public a few days a month, and it looked like it was closed today. We then proceeded to drive around in circles for quite a while trying to find the archeological museum. The map we have doesn’t indicate which streets are one way and which are pedestrian only, and we had a hard time finding a through street for car traffic. In the process, we got to see a lot of Valletta. Most buildings look really good, with only a few in bad shape. Valletta was heavily damaged during World War II, and it seems most buildings needed quite a bit of reconstruction after the war ended. Hence, most of these old buildings have been fully remodeled relatively recently. We noticed that often times on streets with car traffic, there are garages where a shop would be in Greece.

Valletta definitely feels like Rhodes in a lot of ways, but bigger and more modern. Unlike Rhodes, it is a bustling city with heavy car traffic. It is also hilly, with picturesque views of the ocean from nearly every street. Like Rhodes the streets are long and straight and relatively wide. The streets form a nice grid, though, as we found out, many of the streets are so steep the “road” is a staircase. The buildings are mostly made from large limestone blocks and have a definite medieval feel to them. There are quite a few statues around. Quite a few buildings have fairly small statues mounted on the corners of the exterior.

We eventually found what we were looking for. We parked at St. James Cavalier. It is a tall, round building located very close to the city’s entrance gate. The Knights created it to be a raised platform for guns. They could face the guns out and pick off invaders coming up the hill into the city, or turn them to face into the city to pick off anyone who managed to sneak inside. The British used the building as an officers’ mess hall, as well as for water and food storage. Now it is the Center for Creativity, which has a museum of some sort and an artsy movie theater. We walked in to take a peek at the building, but didn’t actually go into the museum. They have remodeled the interior to blend ancient and contemporary, and it is makes for an interesting effect.

As we headed for the archeology center, we passed some of the housing for the knights. The ones in Rhodes were all very similar from the exterior, somewhat on the austere side. These buildings are more imposing and decorative and fairly different from one another. Here is one example. Unfortunately, they aren’t open to the public.

We finally made it to the archeological museum. The entrance way is grand, with high fancy painted ceilings. All the upstairs displays were closed, which was disappointing. The downstairs display was good, but small, and not worth the money for the size. We’re sure that if the upstairs was open it would be a worthwhile entrance fee. The exhibit was on the earliest civilization in Malta. It is believed that Malta didn’t have enough natural resources to sustain hunters/gatherers, so Malta was populated later than other close by lands. Once the agrarian revolution took place, Malta was populated by farmers that brought crops and domesticated animals with them. The remains of a few neolithic villages have been found, as well as artifacts found in caves that they probably lived in. As the people evolved, they built extraordinary rock cut burial tombs and temples. The exhibit had the usual pieces of pottery and rudimentary tools made of fragments of shell and bone, and artwork that you find in all such museums. Most of their artwork has a lot of swirl figures incorporated into it. What was of most interest to us was how they portrayed people in sculpture. The human figurines were all fat people with huge thighs, and the women had big boobs. This is a pretty typical piece, although the poor guy lost his head.

To be continued”¦