Malta and Gozo - My Trip and Future Plans

Malta is the European capital of Culture in 2018 and many areas are being refurbished with signs saying that the projects are jointly funded by local sponsors and the European Union. How do you get there from the UK?

Flying to Malta
Stansted airport has a short term car park beside the terminal or you can take a shuttle bus to the long-term car park. My family found you did less walking and dragging luggage by taking the shuttle bus, rather than walking to the far end of the short-term car park. Also the short term car park is so expensive that a few hours delay bumps up your parking charge which is by the hour.

Flight on Ryanair.
The flight of just over three hours went quickly. Seats, three across, were very squashed. More room sitting in the toilet! But we slept on the journey out. Great price flights for a last minute bargain break long weekend.

We had our own healthy salad. Cheese and biscuits, two small crackers and only one small morsel of cheese in foil seemed poor value . It would be cheaper to buy one of those circular boxes of processed cream cheese which gives you about six small portions. Also invest in a pack of crackers. Olives were good value, several for each of two of us.

Let's Go magazine has travel articles and food and drink and gift illustrations and prices. The small bottle of Prosecco at 6.50 Euros seemed fun. The gifts included lip balms tasting of Coca Cola, six of them for 13 Euros. The biggest delay was queuing to collect our hire car.

Malta - Introduction
Once we arrived it was delightfully easy. The two main languages are English and Maltese, which is an Arabic base with words from Italy and other countries. The religion is Roman Catholic, with many statues of madonnas and saints on the outsides of buildings and numerous churches and cathedrals and chapels. The only word I learned or needed was Triq which means street. Once you've worked out that San is saint, Triq San Anna is Saint Anne's Street. Foreign words are most the same, just spelled funny. The Maltese ones are all translated by your maps and guide books. A tourist office in the airport has lots of brochures. Hotels also have leaflets.

Population 400,000 approx.
Size - small, 316 square kilometres.
Weather: www.maltaweather.com

Saturday Flight Stansted-Malta on Ryanair
Hertz hire car from airport, an automatic which are apparently less in demand than manual cars. Very good value, about £10 a day, but more if you buy insurance.
Excelsior Grand Hotel Room overlooking front garden, lovely. (Sea view cost extra but you can see that from the hotel's rooms downstairs.)
Snack supper of cheese plate in bar with live music.

Photo by Angela Sharot from Valletta's Great Siege road looking over to the three cities which have two harbours between them, one for the cruise ships.

Sunday
First view of the yellow historic UNESCO heritage city by daylight. Walked around Grand Excelsior hotel, whose outdoor pool was shut, as was the tiny beach, the only one in Valletta and looked at the harbours opposite.
Breakfast in the hotel with great view of the harbours and cruise ships.

Walked along Great Siege Road, where a plaque tells you about the Great Siege of 1565, past impressive bastions, overlooking the three cities.
Saw statue of Vallette who defended the fortress and said the Turks would come back. He built a wall big enough to protect thousands of people. The city was named in his honour.
around Valletta.
We swam in the Excelsior Grand hotel indoor pool.
Dinner in Valletta at the Legligin (meaning glug-glug) restaurant.

Monday
MALTA - main island - Drove through St Julian's.
Over-developed skyscraper seaside.

GOZO - island of Calypso, where Ulysses delayed, according to Greek legend.
Ferry
to Gozo. Very simple. Just drive on. No ticket needed. Like driving into Wales over the Severn bridge, going there is free - you pay on the way back. Passed the midway island of Comino which has a blue bay, and side trips.

Gozo Sights:
1 Capital city Victoria, small, originally called Rabat but renamed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Everything was closed on an off-season lunchtime Monday last February.
2 Lunch at the wonderful elegant hotel Kempinski.
3 Drove to Azure window, a see-through arch out over the sea (a picture you see at the airport , the tourist office, restaurants and many places), and another arched cave in a cliff face above a blue pool, overlooked by the clifftop opposite where a cafe/lunch place offers a great view.
4 Craft village. Watch the crafts people at work.
5 Winery shop.
6 Ferry back - you pay on the way back - confusing slip roads, this one for the ferry, no that's for lorries, take the other one for cars, but, oops, the third one to buy tickets. The ferry heaved and rocked sideways a lot so I sat in the middle. Before we had time for a drink it was time to land. First I looked out of the window to see Comino as we passed, uninhabited except for a hotel and tourists there for the day, so no major building, then I looked around the handy shop. I bought two Guidebooks, one on Malta, one on Gozo.

Valletta, capital of Malta.
Monday night we drove back into narrow Strait Street to see Chris at the glut-glug restaurant.
Evening meal in Excelsior Grand hotel, which has buffet starters and desserts. You order your main course from the a la carte menu.

Tuesday
Winery tour. Wines include Franc named after founder.
Back to our hotel for our luggage where I bought from the hotel shop the magnetic notepad holder we'd had in the bedroom.
Drove to the Three Cities.
Mdina, hilltop 'silent city, used to be the capital until Valletta was built. Outside the walls is a cafe with view over the plain.
Mosta Dome Rotunda interior with magnificent exterior, interior, and replica of the bomb which nearly destroyed it in WWII (see separate post). Cake shop.

Rabat - another tiny town where you drive into the tiny central square, look for a parking place take the road out and in twenty minutes, unless you've stopped at the main attraction, connected here with St Paul, you've driven around the place three times. 

For us the main attraction is the small Parruccan confectionary kiosk, Publius Cutajar Parruccan Confectionary where a jolly man beckons you to the kiosk and offers you a free taste of something, nuts and sugar, okay.  If you don't immediately buy he offers you another . Then another, answers all your questions, his late father started the business. He lets you try the home made traditional confectionary he makes, including macaroons with Gozitan bitter almonds, Maltese honey rings, nougat, dried figs and orange marmalade in fruit tarts. Some of them are quite dry but my family loved them. The owner is smiling and chatty. 

Bought red and white bottles of Maltese wine from duty free shop:
The Winery on the Waterfront
Paola
Malta
www.delicata.com

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My next trip:
WHAT to see in Malta
Valletta
Malta 5D show with shaking seats, water spray and scents.
Mdina Dungeons Museum. Looks gruesome. www.dungeonsmalta.com 10 am-4pm
St Paul's Catacombs, Rabat.
Marine world Malta national Aquarium complex in Qawra, has La Nave Bistrot and cafe del Mar.
Siggiewi - limestone heritage, in a quarry, diorama museum and 30 ft waterfall.

WHAT to see on GOZO
Megalithic monument - two Gjantija Temples, buy ticket.
Windmill.

COMINO
Blue Bay.
Second optional excursion to a cave.

TOUR OPTIONS
Hire a car from the airport.
Get collected by your hotel's car and then travel by chauffeur driven car tours; hotel Transport office direct line(00356) 2319 2229. or within the hotel extension 2229..
Take local buses.
Open top bus hop on hop off (see Tripadvisor).
Captain Morgan Cruises. www.captainmorgan.com.mt
Jeep Safari.
Underwater Safari.
Dragonara Casino. wptdeepstacks.com
dragonaracasino.com

EVENTS
Malta Wine Festivals are held every year
....................................
Aug 6-9 2015, 7 pm to midnight
Upper Barrakka Gardens, Valletta
Buy a souvenir glass and wristband and get tastings.
Maltese grapes are Girgentina and Gezlewza.
details from delicate.com/nadur-gozo-2015
Local specialities likely to be available include fried rabbit.
www.visitmalta.com
Marsovin summer wine festival.

Malta is only 93 km South of Sicily and tours go to Sicily.
Media photos from viewingmalta.com

A Grand Hotel - Grand Food to go - or is take away a no-no?

We loved the Excelsior Grand Hotel in Valletta, Malta. It has great views and great food.

Just so you know I tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I'll tell you the minus points, as politely as I can.

What's it not got?
Hard to get food to take away.

In my experience you will have to order breakfast and dinner in the bedroom if you want to eat the minimum and save the leftovers for later, or graze (eat small amounts every two hours instead of every four).

In the evening I had to leave behind my crumble from the buffet. I was saving it until last. My family threw a fit at the amount I was eating, or proposing to eat.

I conceded that I would have it wrapped up and have it for a midnight snack, or later, then share it. However this was not to be. It was only with rest difficulty that we got the leftover meat to go.

We had trouble persuading them that we were staying in the hotel, that we had ordered our main course from the a la carte menu and were therefore entitled to save the leftover meats - which they eventually allowed us to wrap in silver foil.

I know lots of buffets make a fuss. But every restaurant and every hotel in the USA offers to wrap up food to go.

As for the argument 'but we don't know what you will do with it', neither do all the pizza parlours, hamburger joints, Costa Coffee Bars, Marks and Spencers and Waitrose food to go sections, salad bars in Morrisons.

If they want you to take less food, make the potions smaller, spoon size, instead of huge slices nobody could finish. Let everybody try one of each. They will come back. Next time they will take only the item they liked.

I once asked a hotelier in Spain how they made a profit on buffets. He said that if people are staying for a week, the first day they pile their plates high with everything, next day take what they want, by the end of the trip are bored and over-fed and eat minimal amounts. The big eaters are balanced by the girls who eat only a lettuce leaf. What you lose on the food, you gain on not paying waiting staff.

Do they want you to be complaining for days and years afterward? Or praising their food, re-living it, sharing it, sending others to try it.

The Hilton's Super Wrap-up Service
My anniversary dinner at the Souffle restaurant in the Hilton in London years ago served a huge steak, too much to eat, plus large desserts. Not only were they willing and able to wrap up our food, they did so with style. The chef turned the silver foil into a bird, with a swan neck, head and twisted beak, and elongated forked tail, so that we felt not like criminals, but honoured guests with a prize.

Leftovers wrapped up by grand hotels. Charging high prices. Wanting repeat business from customers. And goodwill and good reviews. It can be done on Malta, too. The Kempinsky hotel on Gozo gladly gave us a container for our leftovers.

I still dream of the dessert I never ate at the Excelsior Grand Hotel.

For the Phoenicia Hotel in Valletta see my next post.

Rabbit and wine and a multi-course meal at Legligin Restaurant, Valletta, Malta

Legligin means glug-glug. (That should stay as g l u g but either my typo or spell check keeps changing it to glut, which is rather amusing as you might say this is a restaurant for gluttons or gourmets. I think it must be a typo because my headline turned multi-course meal into multi-curse meal, which was definitely not what I had intended.)  

You will get lots of chances to choose to drink interesting wine to accompany your a multi-course meal at Legligin. As the outside shows you, it's on one of the steep pedestrian or almost pedestrian only narrow sloping streets on Valletta, the capital of Malta. The yellow limestone walls are typical of the entire island.

We scanned through numerous sets of restaurant reviews and found one of the most useful was from England's Daily Telegraph. About a dozen restaurants sounded interesting, offering local food from a proper chef, interesting local wines - and this one was both in Valletta and open on Sunday night.

Here I am with genial owner Chris. Notice the horizontal bottle holes in the wall. This restaurant has great character.

The tasting menu costs EUROS 23.50. Lots of little dishes.

Plus the cost of any drinks you order. They have interesting local wines you won't see anywhere else.

PLUS 5 EUROS for the three truffles - highly recommended.

Legligin Wine Bar and Bistro

119 St Lucia Street, Valletts, Malta

Tel:+356 21221699 =356 79932985

E-mail: legligin@hotmail.com

Angela Lansbury BA Hons, travel writer.

Photograph by Angela Lansbury. Copyright 2015.

Taking a Trip To Malta - Travel, Airport, Airline and Package Options, Passenger Rights

We travelled to Malta booking Ryanair from Stansted, very pleased with the low cost of our Ryanair flight, and the price of rooms at the Excelsior Grand Hotel, a top class hotel with an indoor pool in the capital, Valletta.

However, views differ. Our neighbours who have a timeshare and have often flown to Malta told us they now preferred to pay just a little extra and go on Air Malta. Our friends said they preferred Air Malta which provided wider seats, from another nearer airport.

But with a timeshare, their accommodation cost was already taken care of. They were just looking at the cost and convenience of flights. Their timeshare was in an all-jumping resort complex, far away from other places, except for a taxi ride to a small town with an authentic rabbit stew restaurant. We were quite satisfied with Ryanair.

What other options are there? What if you want a complete package, trips to pre-historic monuments, underground caves, museums, numerous cities, all organised for you?

I have a travel brochure from the UK's Sunday Times. (I mention UK because Singapore also has a Sunday Times.)

The travel brochure title is European and Worldwide Escorted Tours. Having just returned from Malta, I was interested to see what was included. Prices for 8 days from £819 per person (sharing) at Golden Tulip hotel Vivaldi in St Julians, more for another hotel. The cheaper hotel has a restaurant and two pools. You can fly on Air Malta from Heathrow or Gatwick.

St Julians is a waterfront resort. If you are taken around it doesn't matter where you are because the island is only about half an hour 's drive across. (Although this extending to an hour's drive in peak hours depending on traffic and road works diversions, especially with detours on narrow lanes blocked by coaches, delivery vehicles, cranes outside building works, you name it.)

We chose to stay in the capital, within walking distance of the centre which we walked around on Sunday. We could not take more than four days and flew with Ryanair from Stansted and stayed in Valletta the capital, a city holiday rather than a resort-based holiday. The advantage of the escorted tour is that you see much more, as well as having company.
timyriviera.co.uk

Air Passenger Rights
ec.europa.eu/passenger-rights

Angela Lansbury BA Hons, travel writer and photographer.

Planning Your Trip To Malta - weather, wine festivals and events

The capital city of Valletta is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Wikipedia has interesting information.
Benjamin Disraeli, future British Prime Minister, visited the city in 1830, he described it as "a city of palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen," and remarked that "Valletta equals in its noble architecture, if it does not excel, any capital in Europe," and in other letters called it "comparable to Venice ..."

When to go? Malta has warm wet winters and hot dry summers. February temperature was 13 degrees Centigrade;  55 F.

A local person told me August is too hot and rowed with families with children but other months are good. You might want to time your visit to coincide with the February carnival or later in the year catch the wine festival. In February some of the restaurants were closed on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday so you need to plan ahead.

Wine Festivals
Aug 9-12 wine festival in Baraka gardens in the capital, Valletta, on the main island of Malta.
Other wine festivals elsewhere.

A very detailed list of events is on the visitmalta site.
http://www.visitmalta.com/en/event
http://www.whatson.com.mt/en/events/events/10633/delicata-classic-wine-festival-2015.htm

Tourist Information Offices
Malta International Airport Arrivals Lounge
Tel:23696073/4
The arrivals and departure lounges merge into one.
More tourist Information offices in the capital, Valletta, Valletta Waterfront, Mdina, and Victoria on Gozo.

www.maltaand gozo.com
www.visitMALTA.com
www.britishresidentsinmalta.org

Chinese New Year Decorations in Malta's Grand Hotel Excelsior

I must admit to be rather partial to the Grand Hotel, Excelsior, where I stayed. I also liked the neighbouring Phoenicia Hotel in Malta's capital city, Valletta, and the Kempinsky on Malta's second largest island, Gozo. But the Grand Hotel outdid everybody else with its lively decorations in red, the traditional Chinese lucky colour and Chinese New Year colour.

The hotel had a Chinese New Year dinner and a webpage explaining the significance of the new year of the ram.

http://www.excelsior.com.mt/blog/01/2015/chinese-new-year-2015/

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer, photographer, author and speaker.

Above photos are by Angela Lansbury, copyright Angela Lansbury 2015.

More about the Grand hotel and its harbour views and food in my next posts.

Why Go To Malta? Everything (but sandy beaches are on the outskirts).

Looking for a break in spring or autumn, somewhere sunny and south - I wanted somewhere I had not visited before and picked Malta - what a marvellous choice.

Geography
Where? Mediterranean islands. The three main islands are Malta, Gozo, and a little stippling stone between them with one hotel, Comino. The largest island is Malta.
Gozo is 14 km long and 7 km wide. You can see two or three sites in a half day trip going across on the ferry with or without your car.
How long? The flight is only about three hours.

Weather
Warm? A quick check on the weather showed 13 degrees C, around the fifties, much warmer than the UK and most of Western Europe. Malta is south of Sicily, north of Libya and the North coast of Africa, which makes it the ideal warm place for an off-season break; its location as a stepping stone between Africa and Europe means that traders and raiders have filled the place with culture and history. Let's start with language and place names.

Language
Language-wise Malta is ideal. Everybody in shops, museums, transport, passers-by in the street, speaks English, mostly better and easier to understand than people in London. Plus the delights of finding that many of the words and people are from other countries and you are constantly learning about other cultures, since your new smiling friend is keen to chat and tell you how they are half Maltese, half something else - one was Welsh-Romany, some lived in the UK, studied in the USA or were brought up in Australia.
Maps and signs are in two languages at least, English and Maltese. It's quite easy to read and understand the Maltese which is written in our letters with a few little squiggles. For example, mappa is map.

The local language is written in our alphabet although words sound familiar, since the origins or base are Arabic/Aramaic/Semitic/Hebrew, but they have thrown in lots of Italian from nearby Sicily, English, having gained independence from England in the older generation's lifetime, September 1964, and since Maltese is not a worldwide language many schools use English as the language base, and speak a second or third language which is either English, Italian, French, Spanish or German.

Street names are simple. Walking around the pedestrianised narrow streets in the capital Valetta, and many of the other towns, streets are mostly Trik, meaning track or street. You can see that the local religion is Roman Catholic because of the madonnas and saints on every street, many niches, street corners where tiny statues with a book in their hand beckon you as if to guide you to a parking place, whilst signs all around warn of permitted hours or parking zones.

The cities are a visual delight, every hill has a domed church, a walled fortress, a city wall, undulating streets like San Francisco, a photographer's delight, and houses of yellow sandstone, with projecting glassed balconies, where Romeo and Juliet could tryst, reminding me of photos of Yemen, water everywhere, sailboats and cruise liners, marinas, harbours.










British and Multi-cultural
You'll also find Costa coffee bars with wifi, Marks and Spencers unaccountably near orange and lemon trees and a statue of queen Victoria outside the church. Palm trees and olive trees and fir trees, and folded umbrella shape trees. If you want local Malta, many restaurants offer rabbit stew, like a chicken casserole, and Maltese sweets featuring whole and ground almonds clusters, biscuits and cakes and all kinds of nuts, figs and fruitcakes.

Bargain Breaks
Off-season bargains include hotels such as the Excelsior and Phoenicia in the centre of Valetta.

More Info
More information from the Malta tourist board (office on the arrivals side of the only airport, open late at night - I found it hidden beside another tourist office which was shut. Pick up the brochures and look for discounts on restaurants and tours and other offers on the hop on hop off buses and museums and tours.