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Why visit Malta and the context of an important choice
I made the decision to visit Malta a few days before I left. It was 5 days in August 2013, solo and using public transportation.
The beginning of that summer was agony, marked by the end of a love affair for which I had given everything and suffered so much. The agony was not so much about the ending as it was about the half-hearted attempt to keep it going and that, as a friend who knows me well told me: you’re trying hard not to be yourself, you’re pretending and this thing doesn’t suit you, you’re hurting yourself like this.
Finally determined to get that weight off my shoulders, I chose to visit Malta to disconnect and fill the five skimpy vacation days I had asked for at the time for something I was supposed to do as a couple. It was not a stellar trip, I was not in top form and still with a lot of even existential thoughts. But it was the turning point trip and the beginning of a new era, among other things characterized by a lot of travel. From that time I stopped hesitating before booking a flight waiting for some female confirmation . From that time I began to be firm with the idea that: if someone wants to tag along, fine, in the meantime I’ll book!
Also because disinclined, I minded my own business a lot. But after a long period of fidelity and no acquaintances, a chat I had on the balcony of a bar with a little Dutch blonde was important. After half an hour her boyfriend arrived, but I was pleased to still be able to baste a chat in English. So, many of the interesting women in the world were becoming reachable to me again! I was ready to make like Totò and Peppino in the famous scene with the American women.
The tour of the island
I had chosen to be based in Sant Julian, right near the Paceville neighborhood. I had read that it was bustling and full of life, and I didn’t want to risk getting sad. I soon realized that it would have been an ideal solution for me 20 years earlier, while as an almost 40-year-old I found myself quite out of place with that masnada of drunken teenagers. This is the area where the kids who go to the island to do the classic study week for English do their binge drinking. Incidentally, I must say that I ate rather badly; so, the evenings were quite forgettable.
In the daytime, however, I did some nice tours, again by bus, and once by ferry, with a fairly hasty tour, I went to the two smaller islands: Gozo and Comino. It will be unbelievable to some, but I never bathed and devoted myself more to culture.
Valletta
In Valletta (the capital) I found splendid the small but very rich Cathedral of St. John the Baptist where there are two paintings by Caravaggio, but not only that. The Milanese painter lived in Malta where he found hospitality while fleeing a murder charge But even on the island he remained a brawler, and after a little more than a year following a brawl he was put in prison, from which he escaped, however, and the Knights of Malta (who had protected him) dishonorably expelled him from the order as a fetid and putrid member.
Of Valletta, I also liked Fort St. Elmo; the old hospital; and especially the Lascaris War Rooms: the rooms left untouched that were used by the British during World War II; from here Nazi-Fascist planes and ships bound for North Africa were intercepted.
Home set of travel The scent of the Mediterranean islands
Next stop Visit Crete in winter and Athens
Trips taken, travel stories divided by continent
Anecdotes, divided by type in travel narratives
Countries visited in my travel stories
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