Valletta; Wednesday, 21 March, 2007

The first day of spring and the wintry weather of the previous day had most definitely gone. With an almost clear sky, but still quite a stiff breeze, I headed out from the hotel back down to the bus station in Sliema. This time it was to catch the bus to the former capital of Malta, Mdina. The fortified town was the capital up until the construction of Valletta was completed in the later part of the 16th century. Today it is still impressive, sitting on a cliff overlooking all the surrounding countryside. The main part of the town hasn't changed much since the 16th century, with the layout still matching that of the medieval city.

First stop was the Mdina experience, the same as the Malta experience and Gozo 360, it tells the (now quite familiar) history of the islands, with a focus on Mdina in particular. The ticket also included entry into two other attractions in the town, "Medieval Times" and "The Knights of Malta". Medieval times is a walk through tableaux of wax works depicting what life was like in the middle ages, with a small amount of explanatory text. The Knights of Malta is another walk through museum, but you have a multilingual commentary which you walk through with, similar to the great siege exhibition in Valletta.

After looking around the exhibitions I carried on having a wander around the town, before heading out of the gates into the suburb that built up around the fortified city, Rabat. Here is the Roman museum, it is built by, and over, the only remains of the Roman occupation of the island that have been found. The artefacts found on the site suggest that it may have been the residence of the Governor or a senior person due to the number of statues of the emperor and his family, but the museum signs admit that this is only conjecture.

From the roman museum it's a short walk to three further attractions, the grotto of St Paul, supposedly the cave that the saint had lived in for the three months he had stayed on Malta after being shipwrecked, the Catacombs of St Paul which are a large network of burial chambers carved out of the rock which you are guided around with an audio guide and the Catacombs of St Agatha, which have more decorations than the St Paul Catacombs, but no information.

I walked back to the bus station and realised I had enough time to get out to the temples at Tarxien before they closed, so I hopped onto a bus back to Valletta and another one back out the other side to Tarxien.

The temples here were discovered shortly after the nearby Hypogeum. It is a very large complex with several different temples, but very little information about what you are looking at.

After looking around the temples I headed back to Valletta to do some souvenir shopping before grabbing a bite to eat and heading back to the hotel to pack for the following morning.