Malta 2025 St. John's Co-Cathedral

Saint John's Co-Cathedral is a fabulous building, full of high baroque features! 

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See more photos in my Saint John's Co-Cathedral album.

Malta 2025 Mdina

The walled city of Mdina is a 40 minute bus* ride from Valletta, and less than 10 minutes walking from one end to the other - perfect!

Mdina was the capital of Malta until 1530, when Birgu became the capital. Valletta has been the capital since 1571.

We arrived about noon, wandered a bit, had lunch, wandered some more, then came home. It sounds tame, doesn't it? But! Everywhere you looked, there were amazing buildings, cute winding streets, and... celebratory cannons booming away!

Today is a public holiday in Malta, the Feast of Saint Joseph!**

Mdina Gate

Mdina Gate, leaving

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See more photos in the Mdina album.

*A word to the wise; bus riding is a young man's sport! While we started from the bus terminus, practically guaranteeing a seat, the return was a hot mess! We waited at the nearest stop (for what seemed ages), then decided it was worth it to move to a different stop (not really very far away). We queried the driver, who said that the stop we needed was across the street 🙄, where (naturally) there was a sizeable crowd. Anxiety ensued. I turned on data and downloaded Bolt (12€ to Valletta), but just then, our bus arrived! We had agreed to tap our (unlimited rides) card, check for seats, and get back off if there were none. Hey, whaddya know? There were two! Together! Not great seats, but seats!

** As we were leaving Valletta, we noticed that they were setting up for a parade (right past our apartment!); we saw the confetti when we came back...

PS - the neighboring town of Rabat is pronounced RA-bat. We had rabbit for lunch 😋☺️

Malta 2025 History and Gardens

We're staying inside the walls of Valletta, where everything is pretty close - we walked over to The Malta Experience to watch a 45-minute movie, covering the last 7,000 years of Maltese history! I had known that Malta was perfectly situated to be a huge power of the Mediterranean Sea, but this movie brought home to me just how many waves of settlers, colonists, and conquerors have made a life in Malta - it was a jolt to get all that in under an hour! We followed the movie with a short tour of the hospital, with its 500+ foot long ward - very advanced for medieval times.

We walked a bit around the headland, looking for an easy way down to the sea - no joy, but then we saw our bus! A quick hop on, and we had a ride to the Upper Barrakka elevator - which we took up! 🙂 

To the gardens

And views of the harbor 

We passed some time at a café until the 4pm reenactment - they fired one of the cannons...

After that, we caught the bus back to the apartment for a little rest before dinner at Legligin.

Dinner! Wow! It was fantastic! It was a tasting menu of Maltese specialties, along with paired wines (that was... A *lot*!).