Swiss bunny, some more swiss bunnies, some nonswiss bunnies and I were ready to pop into… Wait. what?
Malta goes pop? Well clearly someone has been reading my blog! (Yay!)
That was our plane.
Now I can’t tell you what Spongepop (sounds much better than spongebob honestly) is doing on top of the plane, but I can tell you a bit about Malta. Malta is a little island right below Sicily, like a little mole in the Mediterranean sea. Hence, the name, Mole-ta. But this tiny island is packed in layers of history and stories of war, sieges, and war.
Here is a crash course on its history (my understanding):
A long time ago… (like 1000 A.D.) some rich kids from noble families in Europe are looking for something to do with their lives. They are like, hey lets make a cult and call ourselves, “the knights of St. John”. Their job, they decide, is to provide medical services to the pilgrims visiting the Holy land, Jerusalem.
But they are soon chased out of there, just like everyone else has been and will be. After being chased out of Cyprus, and then Rhodes by the Turks, King Charles I of Spain takes mercy and gives them Malta.
(was actually 1300-1500 something)
But the Turks are not done with them yet. They attack Malta in 1565 but this time, the knights hold the seige. 
There is instant stardom and hence, money. The grandmaster, Mr. Vallette at the time, decides to spend the money well, and builds a walled city.
Now how is the city called? Valetta. How is narcissism spelt, VALLETTa.
The walled city looks like this:
Lesson of the story- You don’t mess with Napoleon.
So, England shows mercy again. They first take in Malta as a ward and then treat it as a colony (how convenient). They put their red telephone boxes everywhere and everyone is still very happy.
Here is more of Valetta. It is still pretty grand and absolutely gorgeous.
Valetta is now the capital of Malta and was declared the cultural city of Europe for 2018 or something. This is their modern parliament, which was also cool.
The view from the balcony where Winston Churchill’s statue is kept is breathtaking.
If you have only one day to spend in Malta, come here.
Ned Stark was assassinated right there in the left corner which means Jaime (Lannister) was here!
If you have some more time, go visit the co-cathedral of St. John and look at the painting by Caravaggio. It is a quite a sight.
And go walk around in the mainhall. It’s all golden.
View from the balcony looks like this:
And now that you have seen it, there is need to queue and go to the balcony.
And oh, the audioguide is boooring!
Besides the above, we did a free walking tour with Jennifer from Colour my Travels (reviewed it on Tripadvisor). After some more walking around, taking pictures, and having a coffee at caffe Cordina (apparently pretty famous), we took a traditional ferry (i.e. a small decorated motor boat) to the three cities, had a walk around and reached this very stylish restaurant, called Tal Petut, through a maze of narrow alleys. These white bunnies, they walk a lot.
Pic of their tasting menu (pic above is just one course). A bit pricey but the experience was worth it.
Summer is festival time in Malta, and while we were there (Aug 4-6), it was the feast of St. Dominic’s. There was a marching band, and locals on the streets. It was all pretty jolly.
At night, there were even fireworks. Flying carrots.
We watched the fireworks from Mdina, the old capital of Malta, which is where you should go if you have a second day in Malta.
Mdina is this ubercool city within walls (they do great walls in Malta :)) with a feel of Game of thrones and Lord of the rings. It was pretty even in the rain.
Then we went to Marsaxlokk fish market, where I bought a hat. No, that’s not a kind of fish. This “fish” market was huge tourist trap and one could buy almost everything else on the planet here besides fish! But there were some fishing boats alright.
Then we walked to St. Peter’s pool in scorching sun but the walk was worth it!
Walk to St. Peter’s in 39 dg C:
Glory:
In the water, I saw so many jelly fish and plastic which looked like jelly fish.
The Bay next to St. Peter’s (pic below) was even prettier but inaccessible other than by water!
Diving in Malta: The first couple of days we were there, we did our Advanced Adventurer diving certification. It was all hunky and Dory (:P) until it was time for a night dive. Six skilled divers and I went with torches in the black water. Underwater, one is weightless. So, all the orientation that one gets from the seabed and the surrounding fish, etc. is lost during a night dive. The sea bed sometimes curved upwards, sometimes sideways for me. There was an octopus that everyone else was getting hyper excited about but I was too disoriented and seasick (yes, *in* the sea) to care.
On hindsight the octopus was indeed very pretty.
<insert pic of octopus>
On Swiss bunny’s birthday we went for our first deep dive. There was a nice wreck down at 30 m. We were having fun playing with the torchlight and the fish that were attracted by the torchlight, until our instructor asked us how much air we had left. Great. I was already short of air. Our dive instructor’s eyes went biiig. He quickly swam to me and gave me his octopus (spare breathing tube) to share and I pretty much came up to 10 m on his air. All these exercises done calmly during the open water course, were afterall a real world thing!
We also did some fun dives in the caves of Santa Maria (which you can not really see while snorkeling there, so go diving!) and a shipwreck called P31, which was swarming with divers. But it was nothing compared to USAT Liberty in Bali.
The other bunnies in the meanwhile went on an organised day trip around Gozo where Danerys gave the slavers her dragon, remember? Anyway, the bunnies were apparently just driven around, like goats in a van (or is that just an Indian thing?). And oh the Azure window, this super cool rock formation you see on every ad for Malta, collapsed on March 8, 2017.
Lesson of the story- don’t go on an organized one day trip to Gozo.
Here are a few pictures from them.
The Blue lagoon, they said, was very nice but super packed.
Some other impressions: Like Malta, the Maltese are hot (headed). Like, we saw a couple yelling theirs heads out at each other when the girl stopped the car and let pedestrians pass. And oh, they drive crazy. English side but Sicilian style.
At the bus stops, you don’t just politely stand and wait for the bus to stop. You jump infront of the bus and wave wildly. If the bus stops, bravo! But by the time, we mastered this skill, it was almost time to go.
All in all, like Napolean might have said, Malta was indeed, pas mal ta, pff.
bunnygoespoppoppop 