Our wonderful hosts-cum- tour guides, Rick and Tasha picked us up late morning and took us over to the older part of Malta, Mdina and Rabat. Mdina is a fortified city, completely surrounded by walls and was the capital of Malta up until the medieval period. It was replaced as the capital by Birgu in 1530 when the Order of St. John appeared on the scene. Outside its wall is the city of Rabat. Mdina is also known as the Silent City and has, like the whole of Malta, a plethora of grand churches within its walls.
After touring Mdina a stop to pick up some pastizzi, fluffy pastry formed into specific shapes and filled with ricotta, peas or chicken. They are quite delicious, but very messy to eat. Right beside the pastizzieria was a gelato shop, so we just HAD to pick up some of that as well. The apple pie one was amazing!
And just because we needed more food, off we went to the south coast to a place called Dive In, a popular restaurant that sits up on the cliff above a popular swimming site where you can dive from the rocks into a natural pool. After that, over to the Blue Grotto, a complex of sea caves on the south-eastern coast. Unfortunately it was a very windy, choppy day, so you couldn’t really get the beautiful azure colour of the water for which the area is named.
Back in the cars headed for Marsaxlokk (pronounced Mar-sa-schlock), a small picturesque fishing village on the south eastern coast. It is the largest fishing village on Malta, and also home to Malta’s power station. Its harbour is filled with colourful fishing boats, all with the iconic eye at the front to ward off evil spirits. The greater part of the fish sold on the island are caught by fishermen from this village. It is a delightful place to visit!
At this point it was getting late in the day, and Rick had to catch a flight to London, so we returned to the apartment. Since Tasha had kindly stocked up on pastizzi for us, we opted to stay in and enjoy this traditional food for dinner, washed down by the bottle of German riesling we had brought with us from our boat-bike tour. A walk around the harbour for the three more ambulatory members of the crew and we called it a day!