Around Siggiewi

I saw the ad in the Times of Malta for a new series of cultural tours launched by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts.  I cut out the ad and it sat around on my kitchen table for a few days until I was going up to Valletta for the lunchtime concert at St Catherine's.  By then, it was past the Wednesday deadline for booking but I went down to the office in Republic street anyway to find out more about the programme.  When I walked in through the big doors that took up the whole street frontage of the converted townhouse of the office building, there was no-one at the reception desk so I wandered up the marble stairs and was greeted at the top of the stairs by a young man poking his head out of a door.  I explained why I was there.

"You're not too late," he exclaimed, "we've put on extra buses to cope with the demand and there are still a few places left on the last bus."  Another young man inside the office started telling me with enthusiasm that we were going to be shown around the inside of the PM's residence, "even the bedrooms!"

"I hope they won't still be in bed then," I muttered, wondering if I would regret putting my name down for what was starting to sound like a reality TV nightmare.  Anyway, I showed them my KartAnzjen that I have just received through the local council process using my Malta ID card and I got a reduced price.  Playing the old people's card here is magic and gets me 23 cent travel on any bus, anywhere.

So on Sunday, I got an early bus up to Valletta where I had to pick up the coach at the statue of Independence in Floriana.  When I arrived, there were six buses lined up and I was early enough to get on the first one.  Everyone else on the bus was Maltese and so the commentary was given in Malti.  Later, a friendly woman sitting next to me spoke to the guide about the fact that I couldn't speak Malti and she started to give two commentaries using both languages.  I continue to be humbled by this social skill that Maltese people have of slipping easily between the two languages.  But speaking Malti is still a symbol of Maltese pride and independence and it is the preferred language of everyday social interaction when everybody can speak it.  In my posts about the pre-history of Malta I talk about the continuing tension in choice of language between Malti, English and Italian.

First we visited Verdala palace.  There's a photo of the outside of the palace/castle heading up one of my earlier posts, and the photo that heads this one is of one of the amazing vaulted ceilings.  The ceilings and stairs were probably the most impressive aspect of this building that is now the residence of the PM and used for entertaining important visiting dignitaries.  Other rooms had very high ceilings with timber beams and the staircase was oval rather than circular and had lovely stone arches.

Next we went to two old churches in Siggiewi.  Providence church has a lovely domed ceiling and in the sacristy there is a red covered copy of a bible in Malti.  It is a small church and when we were all inside, it was a bit crowded so I didn't really take in much.  The other church we visited was medieval and has recently been restored with accolades from Din l-Art Helwa, a local NGO who are particularly concerned with Malta's heritage.  I loved the way it had been restored as a ruin rather than attempting to rebuild.  The ancient parish church had been pulled down to make way for a new church which was never built on this site.  Two interesting twisted Corinthian pillars have been reset on either side of an entrance into the old chapel where now stone carvings are on display.  To get to the site, we used a walkway through an old orange grove.

Our  final visit for the morning was to the Inquisitors Palace at Girgenti.  I have mentioned the Inquisitors palace at Birgu in a previous post.  The one at Girgenti was purely residential rather than also hosting the operations of the inquisition as it did in Birgu.  Nowadays it is the summer residence of the PM and I liked the use of the work of modern Maltese artists in the bedrooms.  For the most part, it is fairly austere as palaces go but the views down through the lovely valley are great.  When we came out of our tour into the garden, we were offered an enormous bread roll for lunch with a choice of 7-up or Coke which I devoured with relish as we walked back down the drive to our bus!

The idea behind this series of cultural tours is to enhance understanding of local culture and heritage.  It is particularly aimed at Malta residents rather than tourists and it gives access to sites that most tourists would not see.  The next tour in December is to Birgu with a trip across to Senglea in a traditional luzzu and I'm planning to book that before the deadline!

Because it's so small

One of the things I love about Malta is that it is small.  I don't need a car here because I can walk everywhere around the village.  Shopping is done every day so it's fresh and I can carry it easily by hand.  If I want to go further afield as I usually do several times a week, I can catch a bus to anywhere on the island.  If I take a book with me, or the Times of Malta that is saved for me most days by the local newsagent, then the unpredictable wait between buses is an opportunity.  So far, if I am pressured for time or I have to go home after the last bus leaves, I have been able to find someone with a car who is going in my direction.  It is a good system with the added satisfaction of reducing my footprint on the planet!

Another good thing about smallness is that it is easier to see the complexity of the links between everything that makes up the whole.  I seem to have moved into a space where I am avidly gathering all the information I can find about Malta.  The word 'Melitensia' has started to come up.  It means things to do with Malta.  The local librarian used it the other evening to describe my area of interest.  When I went slightly wild at the book fair in Valletta a couple of weeks ago and bought too many books on Maltese history and culture, one of the book stall owners used the word to encourage me to go to browse his shop collection.  So now I can put that label on my current interests.  

I use that as an example of a broader picture that is emerging for me.  I think it is to do with the cliche about thinking global but acting local.  As I gather the small, fascinating facts about Malta from many different sources in the course of my everyday life, I also seem to be gaining more of a gut understanding about global issues.  Another example is the final session last night of the course I have been doing in Mosta, 'Wildlife and Habitats of the Maltese Islands'.  The session was about legislation and was somewhat inclined towards long lists of conventions, agreements and decisions that have relevance for EU and for Malta.  Some things I had heard of before but in an academic sort of way - Bonn, Berne, Rio, Ramsar.  I had also heard words like ratification bandied around but hadn't really understood the significance.  Last night when the lecturer mentioned in passing that Malta had been taken to the EU court because it had failed to make enough progress in dealing with the issue of the hunting of migratory birds, I could link that in my mind with the gunshot that has woken me most mornings for the first few months here, the little hunting bird tables around most of the fields when I am walking, the local librarian talking about how her husband gets very depressed if he can't hunt, the pressures on the landscape of a small, crowded island.

Today I am going for another Ramblers walk, this time around Zebbiegh and Mgarr visiting the ancient temples of Skorba.  I started this post thinking I would talk about the cultural tour I went on last Sunday around Siggiewi but I got side-tracked by smallness.  So Siggiewi will head up my next post and for this one, I'll find a photo and post so that I allow enough time for the bus to Mgarr. 

PS  The photo was taken when I was exploring around Senglea, one of the ancient cities around Grand Harbour

Dingli Cliffs and saline marshlands

This morning I got caught in a downpour as I went for my walk.  I set off to find the Marsaxlokk remnant wetland I heard about in the Wildlife and Habitats course that I am doing in Mosta.  It is in a corner at the opposite end of the bay from where my flat is and I wasn't aware of it until it was mentioned as one of the important remaining areas of saline marshland.  It is difficult to access as it is fenced off from the beach and also from the road but the fence is down in one spot and there is a clear path through, probably where fishermen have accessed the beach.  It is somewhat degraded with rubbish but it was good to see it in the rain and it still supports several species of dune plants.  

The downpour also helped me to understand some more about the rainfall patterns in Malta.   When it rains here, mostly in the winter months, the downpours are short and heavy and the run-off pours down the valleys to the sea bays.  Marsaxlokk is one of the seafront villages at the bottom of a valley and now that it has been built up, the rainwater pours down the roads and floods briefly on the front.  In some other areas such as Msida, this is a problem and often traffic is prevented from getting through for a few hours until the water clears.  It doesn't seem to be more than a temporary inconvenience in Marsaxlokk as the water pours across the front and into the sea without too many obstructions.  But I can see how in the past, the saline marshland would have been extensive and an important part of the ecology of the area.

This post is about walking around Dingli cliffs.  The picture at the top is of Verdala castle taken as we were walking towards Buskett gardens.  As I discovered on my cultural tour yesterday with the Department of Arts and Culture, Verdala was of course built by the knights as a residential fortification and is now the winter residence of the Prime Minister.  The knights also planted the forests around to support their hunting and although the British later removed a lot of the trees to make way for agriculture and the orchards that still cover much of the valley, this is still the most heavily wooded area of Malta.

The walk from the lovely village of Dingli to Busketto gardens and then along to the Dingli cliffs was another in the programme organised by Malta Ramblers Association but this time it was mid-week.  The meeting place was St Mary's parish church in Dingli village so I had to catch the 81 bus from Valletta and just got there on time.  There were fewer people than on the weekend walk through Wied Garnaw but still over 60 walkers set off with an enthusiastic German guide to lead us.  We walked out of the village past the mandatory village statue of a local celebrity - this time a beautifully worked bronze of a poet, Charles Ebejer, sitting reading in a chair.

We walked along country lanes past a well maintained and signed local park towards Busketto. The guide pointed out the ancient cart ruts that can be made out across a slight valley on the slope of a rocky cliff near to an old quarry.  There was some debate about going through the forest as this would add about half an hour onto the timing for the walk and the evenings are drawing in now but most people wanted to walk through and I was glad that we did.  The forest here is lovely with lots of native trees such as Holm Oaks and Mediterranean pine as well as groves of fruit trees such as oranges.

Our time in the forest meant that we were walking along the cliffs just before sunset.  The sea was flat calm and it was stunning.  Just enough cloud to redden the horizon and the dramatic fall of the cliff face.  We came to a small chapel on the edge of the cliff with about ten minutes before the sun disappeared and we all found rocks or the verandah of the chapel to sit and watch.  At this point, the cliff edge drops down to some terraced fields that are beautifully tended and I spotted on the rocks at the top some of the plants I have been learning about in the course I am doing.  It was a magic moment.

It was after 5.00pm when we got back to Dingli and I was now pushed for time to get to Mosta for 5.30 for the evening class on insects, arachnids and crustaceans.  So as the walking group was rounding things off, I asked if anyone was driving past Mosta and sure enough someone was going to visit their daughter who lived there.  I arrived at class just as everyone was going in to the lecture room and the exhilaration of the walk carried me through a rather dry couple of hours on insect classification!

Getting around

I've been traveling away from Oz for 6 months now and this is my 50th post!  There have been reports of destructive storms in Brisbane this week, but my friends there tell me that it isn't as bad as it might be painted in the international press.  My brother in England tells me that he's just finished the apple harvest before the frost arrives and his garden is inundated with field mice, moles and squirrels.  My other brother in Scotland tells me he is resigned to another windy and cold winter on his boat.  

Here in Malta, the nights are getting cold and I have bought myself fleecy pyjamas with Minnie Mouse all over them, and a duvet so I am snug.  Today is windy but the sunny days here are still warm and the change of season has greened up the fields and natural habitats so the whole island looks fresh and lovely.  I have lampuki (local fish) bones bubbling on the stove to make fish stock and mixed beans are soaking to make minestrone soup.  All is right with my world!

The photo above is the inside of a local bus taken yesterday on my way back from Paola where I had been to find out about my local medical centre.  Most of the buses here have little shrines and sayings or jokes written up near the driver's cabin with his red ticket machine.  But I loved this one with Mary in the middle and bobbing Hollywood starlets on either side!

In my next post I'll tell the story of a ramble around Dingli cliffs but for now, I want to add a postscript to my previous post about the pressures on the Maltese landscape.  When I walked over to the meeting place for the Wied Garnaw ramble, I walked up through the valley between Marsaxlokk and Birzebbugia.  The country lanes through here have become a regular route for my morning walks and after hearing about the conflicting uses of the countryside, I decided I would try and see if there was a circular route coming back down through the valley towards Birzebbugia.  I have already discovered the walking route along the cliff between Marsaxlokk and Birzebbugia to complete the circuit.  I walked up through the valley and found what looked like a country lane going in the right direction.  The road went through a tiny hamlet and down through rubble walls towards a vast scrapyard.  A truck passed me squashing me against the rubble wall and then stopped blocking off the road so that I had to again squeeze past it.  As I came out on the other side, there were car bodies and scrap iron spilling out of the surrounding fields and onto the country lane leaving only a narrow winding path through.  Three men were working on a car body at the side of the path and as I came up I asked politely if I could go through here.  One said 'yes', another said 'No'.  So I carried on walking through the jungle of scrap metal until I came out on the main road down into Birzebbugia.

I have thought about it a lot since.  There is clearly a need for scrap metal yards in Malta but it is tragic to see scarce agricultural land used for this purpose and spilling onto the public right of way.  When I talked with some of the participants in the Wildlife and Habitats course I am doing in Mosta, I discovered that one of the women lives in Birzebbugia (she now gives me a lift home which is a godsend!) and she told me that the Birzebbugia local council were taking the scrap yard people to court but it was very difficult since it was private land.  In such a small island where everybody knows everybody else and people have been traditionally self-sufficient, it is a hard task to change an established use.  I'm not about to join the letter-writing brigade but I would like to think of some way in which I might contribute to the resolution of this issue.

My next post is about the area around Dingli village where the local council appears to be doing well in managing the varied uses of the land in the area.

Back to earth

In my last posts about the pre-history of Malta and Gozo, I got a bit caught up in the academic side of things and the writing became long-winded as a result!  This post will be about getting back to normal and outlining my next series of posts.  The photo that heads the story is of some local council tree-planting that I noticed on the first of the walks that I have been on over the past few weeks.  The trees are locally endemic and the location is Wied Garnaw, a valley running down from Luqa past Tarxien to the coast at Marsascala.

Over the past few weeks I have been looking into the natural history of Malta.  I've joined the Malta Ramblers Association, contacted Geographic Malta, and have enrolled in an evening course being held in Mosta on the habitats and wildlife of Malta and Gozo.  The latter is organized by the Institute for Environmental Studies and I'll write about that after I've completed the course towards the end of next week.

Today's post is about Wied Garnaw where I first started to pick up on the pressures that the Maltese countryside is under.  My landlord put me in touch with the Malta Ramblers Association who lead short walks on Saturdays and Wednesdays at different locations around the island.  On their programme, they list meeting places and times and everyone turns up.  A few longer walks are restricted and have to be booked a week or so beforehand.  In December, there is a length of Malta walk that I would love to go on and I will try and get my email in as soon as the bookings open to get into the small group.  On the open walks, over 100 people usually turn up.

The meeting place for the Wied Garnaw walk was the parish church at Luqa.  Every small village has its parish church and it is a central meeting place for everyone.  I decided to walk over from Marsaxlokk through the fields to Zejtun and then on through Ghaxaq and Gudja.  It took me about an hour and a half but on the way I met a woman whom I had first talked with when we were both buying vegetables at the cart in Marsaxlokk soon after I came here two months ago.  At that time she told me how to cook stuffed aribaldi (round zuchinis), a dish that has become one of my staples.  This time, we chatted about Malta geographic, an organisation that I hadn't come across before, and mothers-in-law.

When I arrived at Luqa with about five minutes in hand, there were already well over 100 people waiting in small groups and chatting in Malti.  The walk had been programmed as 'Four Santa Marjas' as there are four churches in the area dedicated to Saint Mary but the planned leader couldn't make it and instead the walk was lead by a women from MEPA, the government's Environmental Planning section.  She advised us that we would be going on a circular walk through Wied Garnaw and she was going to focus the walk on the conflicts and tensions that are now emerging in the Maltese countryside.  She spoke in English once she identified that there were a handful of us who couldn't speak Malti.  I continue to feel humble and grateful for the ability of most Maltese people to switch easily between the two languages.  Wied in Malti means valley, and Garnaw has got something to do with flying creatures like birds.

We set off through back roads to Gudja where apparently there are bronze-age silos in somebody's private field.  This area it seems was part of the cotton belt in Malta until the Suez canal was opened and cheaper cotton from Egypt lead to decline here.  The whole valley is under siege from ribbon development of the villages along the sides.  This is expressed in a number of ways as people build workshops on prime agricultural land or extend their houses over the fields or even across the public right of way roads.  Several times as we tried to follow the planned circular route we were turned back by a farmer who had put a barrier across the lane.  After this had happened two or three times, the organiser from Malta Ramblers talked to us in Malti about writing letters to the Times of Malta to raise awareness of this issue and protest to save the valley.  I have noticed at least two letters printed so far.

Usually, the building that goes on is not in keeping with the rubble field walls that are so characteristic of the Maltese countryside.  At one point we walked past a massive high wall with strange little turrets that had recently been built and now proclaimed the proud name of Country Castle.  Towards the end of the valley we came upon the little chapel of Santa Lucia that was built in 12th century and was surrounded by fields but is now built out by houses.

Malta is so small, that the conflicting uses of the countryside are clear.  Even the size of the group of ramblers walking down the lanes is illustrative of the heavy pressures on this fragile environment.  Hunting is another recreational activity that impacts in several ways.  Sheer numbers of hunters in such a small area obviously puts pressure on the wild life but also the landscape has been changed quite dramatically by hunters planting eucalyptus to attract birds.  Once established, these Australian natives adapt very well to the conditions and will in time push out the native carob trees.  In one area, the local council was planting Mediterranean pine to counter the plantations of eucalyptus in the area.  There are also horses agisted in the valley and although MEPA is aware of the degradation of the land caused by the introduction of horses, they have to make their decisions in terms of the lesser of evils - our leader talked about a choice between horses or warehouses.

Other problems that we encountered included the use of reservoir areas as dumping tips and the use of small pockets of countryside now surrounded by buildings for various anti-social, if not criminal, activities.  The small size of Malta somehow allows us to see more clearly the complexity of these issues.   The concerns are common throughout the developed world but when the issues occur in a larger scale context, it is more difficult to see the connections between all the diverse factors involved.

I left the rest of the group at Santa Lucia where they turned and walked back to Luqa.  At this point, we were close to Tarxien where I knew that my bus to Marsaxlokk goes through and I decided to go and find a bus stop.  I left my details with the organiser so that he could send me the application form to join the group and continue to receive details of their programme.  I'll write about the next walk I went on in another post.  

Tas-Silg

On the final day of my week of pre-history, we visited a working excavation at Tas-Silg.  The Italian connection is evident here also (see previous post) as the excavation has been undertaken by the Italian Archaeological Mission since 1963.  We were shown around the site by the head of the current team, Dr Giulia Recchia.  She explained the plans of the temples as they have been uncovered.  Originally, the Mission came to excavate the site of Punic and later classical temples that had been turned into a monastery in 4th century AD.  They were surprised to find the Neolithic site underneath.  The building had barely survived the later drastic alterations but sherds of pottery and the discovery of a standing 'fat lady' statue as found at Tarxien have encouraged the continuation of the excavation.  The statue had been defaced and buried. 

Tas-Silg is named after the nearby convent of the Madonna Tas-Silg (Our Lady of the Snows) and it is on a hilltop above Marsaxlokk so I was able to ride my bike over to the meeting place outside the church.  Since this was my local archaeological dig, I enquired about the possibility of volunteering some of my time to help with chores associated with an excavation.  Most of the workers were Masters or PhD archaeology students.  I had a positive response from both Heritage Malta who manage the site and from the head of the dig, but since the following week was to be the end of the work for this year, I decided to put that venture off until next time!  In the meantime I will content myself with reading up on the publication:

Alberto Cazzella and Giulia Recchia "New excavations at Tas-Silg and a comparison with the other megalithic sites in Malta" in Revisiting Anomalies.  Accordia Research papers, Vol 10, 2004-2006, pp61-70

Ancient links - Malta/Italy

When we made the train trip down through Italy to Malta that I describe in earlier posts, I began to get a sense of some of the ways in which Malta and Italy have been linked through time.  So I was very keen to attend the half-day seminar held on Gozo as part of the week long exploration of Malta's prehistory with visiting archaeologist, David Trump, because it was about the archaeological links between Malta and Sicily.  

The seminar was held at the Teatru Astra in Victoria, Gozo as you can see in the photo above.  Incidentally, the theatre is also the home of the local band and there is a statue of the band's founder in the foyer looking much like Banjo Patterson!  Malta is fond of its local community leaders and there are street statues of the men who shaped the small towns and villages everywhere.  Local bands are an important aspect of village life and they contribute enormously to the competitive nature of the parish fiestas.  In the room where the seminar was held there is also a huge cabinet, floor to ceiling, with a beautifully boxed collection of band music.

I knew from traveling to Ggantija as described in my previous post that I couldn't make it to Gozo in time for the morning start unless I went over the previous day and stayed overnight.  So I booked at the Downtown hotel in Victoria and travelled over on Wednesday afternoon after going to my bobbin lace-making class in Marsaxlokk in the morning.  I arrived at the bus terminus in Victoria as it was getting dark (the clocks went back here a few weeks ago so the evening comes in quite early soon after 5.00pm)  The hotel is new and a little way back from the main street so difficult to find but it is cheap and adequate.  I checked in and wandered up to the main square to find something to eat.  I ended up sitting on the street (literally) facing the square and watched the evening life of Gozo play out as I ate my fish and chips with half a carafe of excellent Gozo red wine.  Two men carefully took down the four Maltese flags outside the Council offices, cars drew up outside shops as they closed for the night to pick up the women workers in the family, tourists reprimanded their children as they ate their dinner in the main square.

I was up early the following morning so that I could explore the Citadella in Victoria before the seminar started at 9.00.  The Citadella is the old fortified centre of the town built of course by the Knights and like many of the old fortifications recycled as a tourist venue with working craft shops, museum and heritage offices.  I got there before anything was open and it was great to wander along the battlements and streets when no-one else was there.  There are 360 degree views of Gozo and the buildings have been neatly restored.

At the seminar, David Trump spoke first drawing on his half century of research in Malta and Sicily particularly pre-historic pottery.   He demonstrated using slides projected onto an inadequate screen (window blinds that kept moving!) how there were similarities in design and decoration across the different pre-historic periods, clear evidence of the import of materials into Malta such as flint, ochre and polished stone axes, and also sudden changes in style that could be attributed to the arrival of a group of people or even a particular artist whose ideas superceded the traditional way of working.  It is difficult to determine which way the influence worked.  For example, the rock cut tombs dating from pre 4000BC show contact between Malta and Sicily and even up to the Orkney islands but we can't say if this was because of migration from one place to another or local response to a common need or the spread of ideas through trade.  

Some changes were sudden and might be attributed to invasion, but other changes were slow and are more likely to be the result of drift when slight differences creep in as the craft is passed down through the mother line.  Some changes may also be deliberate on the part of locals in that a community might wish to make something special and so they draw on the ideas and skills of an external craftsperson.

David Trump's presentation raised fascinating questions about the ways in which diverse cultures influence each other and change over time.  The second speaker was Dr Nick Vella from the University of Malta who focussed on a particular Italian archaeologist, Luigi Maria Ungolini who worked in Malta during 1920s and 30s.  Nick Vella has unearthed Ungolini's detailed notes and photos of his research on the excavations in Tarxien (he wasn't allowed to dig) in the archives of a folk museum outside Rome and he is currently working on the publication of a book using this material to support his contention that our ideas about the past change over time.  Since my visit to Ghar Dalem, the cave of bones that give evidence of the earliest phase of pre-history in Malta (see my previous post) I have noticed how the history of exploration of a site is often as interesting as the site itself. 

During the 20s and 30s there was tension in Malta between pro-Italian and the pro-English factions expressed, for example, in heated debate around language to be used in schools - English, Italian or Maltese.  Ungolini was sent to Malta by the fascist Italian government who were keen to support sympathisers in Malta through cultural exchange.  He arrived with a team including an artist who made elevations and drawings of the temples (exhibited in Rome in 1990s) and an architect who published a book after Ungolini died young in 1936.  Ungolini could mingle freely amongst the pro-Italian Maltese and gave lectures at the Casa del Facia in Valletta but his work was never published.

The Italian/English tension in Malta was of course played out horribly in the ferocious bombing of Valletta in World War 2.  After the war, the British sent an archaeologist, John Evans, to Malta and he published one of the first definitive works on the prehistoric antiquities of the Maltese Islands.  Nick Vella's book about Ungolini's work due for publication in 2009 promises to highlight the politics and tension that underlie our supposedly dispassionate research.  

As a concluding exclamation mark, Dr Nick Vella had to leave the seminar promptly in order to get back to the university and record his vote.  The academic staff at Malta University, one of the oldest universities in Europe, voted almost unanimously against the University's inadequate pay offer and that tension is continuing as the union pursues the negotiations that have been going on for four years.  Having experienced the same struggle in the context of Australian universities and witnessed it in other parts of the world I am left wondering about the direction of influence across cultures!

Ggantija, Xaghra Circle and Ta' Kola windmill

This series is about my week of archaeological exploration of the ancient temple sites of Malta and Gozo with visiting expert, David Trump.  I'm on Gozo for this post to visit Ggantija temple and Xaghra Circle.  Ghantija is noteable for the height of the walls that were still standing when the site was first excavated in 1826.  The walls remain undamaged through several excavations to the present day when some parts are propped up with scaffolding to make sure they don't fall down.  The photo that heads this post is of one of the unpropped walls and you can see the massive slabs at the base of the wall.  The name probably derives from the great height of the walls and the size of the slabs as the early researchers hypothesized that the temple must have been constructed by a race of giants.

Ggantija is in fact two temples constructed side by side with the first dated around 3500BC.  It has a pattern of 5 apses connected by a central corridor.  This pattern is common to most of the temples in Malta and Gozo but the number of apses varies.  Temples also vary in relation to the decoration found on altars and slabs but the relief spirals found at Ggantija are common.  The second temple was added about the same time as the Tarxien temple around 3000BC (see my previous post).

Both Ggantija and Xaghra Circle are located at the town of Xaghra  on Gozo and there are other pre-historic sites scattered around the area, some still unexplored.  We walked over to Xaghra Circle sited in a direct line from Ghantija although we had to detour around a house and down the road. On the way we passed a cave called Ghar ta' Ghejzu where sherds of broken pottery offering bowls were found suggesting that this was a dump for broken sacred vessels to prevent them being used in everyday life.

Like many of the other pre-historic sites, Xhaghra circle has a fascinating history of discovery as well as the wonder of the ancient construction.  At the time when it was first excavated by Otto Bayer in 1826, two watercolours were painted by Brochtorff and these remain the only documentation of the information gathered in that dig because sadly Bayer did not record his work and the digging was destructive of the original lay-out.  The site was reidentified in 1964 by Joseph Attard Tabone and then re-excavated in 1987-94 by Drs Stoddart and Malone.  More than a century and a half of research has yielded a lot of information from the site.  Around 4000BC, there was a village yielding pottery and a rock-cut tomb but no buildings.  In the Tarxien phase, another tomb shaft was sunk leading into a series of natural caves which were enlarged.  The site was mainly used for burial and so far the bones of 800 individuals have been found here.  Today, the site is just a large hole in the ground and there is continuing debate about how best to explore further as well as preserve what has already been discovered.

I also used this visit to Xaghra to work out travel from Marsaxlokk to Gozo.  I had to go up to Valletta on the bus from Marsaxlokk and then catch another bus to go the length of Malta to Cirkewwa where the ferry leaves to go to Gozo.   The bus arrived just in time to get a ticket and walk onto the boat.  The crossing is much shorter than the bus journey and passes the small island of Comino before docking at Mgarr.  I hadn't researched how to get from the ferry to Ggantija so when I got off the ferry I was besieged by aggressive taxi drivers.  At first I walked resolutely to the bus thinking I would go up to the main town of Victoria and then get another bus to Ggantija but a particularly assertive old taxi man said he would take me to Victoria for 2 euros "same as the bus".  I made the mistake of wavering and so he took me to Ggantija for 8 euros.  There was another tussle when we got there as he grilled me about who was conducting the tour and why couldn't he come back and get me afterwards so I didn't escape under E10.  Later I found that the bus fare to Victoria is 47 cents and you can then walk to Xaghra.

However, the taxi ride meant that I was early for the meeting time and so I wandered off to explore Xaghra and found the Ta' Kola windmill where there is a fascinating exhibition called Trimed.  As a member of Heritage Malta, I was able to access the windmill and the exhibition free of charge and also received the excellent publication that goes with the exhibition.  Trimed is partly funded by EU and celebrates the Mediterranean triad of bread, oil and wine.  The exhibition is about the production of these three staples in six different Mediterranean islands: Corsica, Sicily, Naxos, Majorca, Malta and Cyprus.  I loved the clarity of the exhibits and also the windmill museum.  So the assertive taxi driver landed me on my feet!

Tarxien Temples

The photo shows a small part of the Tarxien temple complex that is made up of four temple units and a square court.  Like Kordin 3 that I described in the previous post, the site has been built up all around so it has lost some of the drama of the temples sited on the south western cliffs.  The most dramatic archaological finds were unearthed here and now grace the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta but replicas remain on site and some restoration work has been carried out so visitors can gain some impression of what the temple might have looked like.

Many of the slabs found here by a Maltese archaeologist, Sir Temi Zammitt, who excavated the site from 1915, were decorated with swirls and dots carved into the softer limestone blocks.  This was also where the huge statue of the goddess was found, or at least the lower half of her since the top half had long ago been sacrificed to farmers' ploughs and temple desecration.  A decorated sacrificial altar was also located with a small cupboard cut in at the base containing a sacrificial knife.  

The Tarxien temple site yielded a great deal of information that enabled archaeologists to build a time frame of the pre-history of Malta and Gozo.  The four temples had been added or altered at various phases and sherds of pottery and later metal enabled dating from the temple period through to the bronze and iron age and much later still the Punic/Roman phase.  Previously, the Maltese temples had been attributed to about 1000BC.  Now archaeologists started to talk in terms of earlier sites from 5000BC.  In a previous post, I talked about the bones of Ghar Dalem and this site has given its name to the first period of neolithic pre-history.  Tarxien enters the picture before 3000BC.

From this first day of visits to the temples at Kordin 3 and Tarxien I also started to understand a little more about the construction of the roofs of the temples.  It seems there are two theories about how the buildings were covered and both methods may have co-existed on different sites depending on the type of limestone used in the construction of the walls.  One method was the stone built vault used when the more easily shaped softer limestone was used.  The other was rafters with brushwood and clay used with harder rubble walls.  Small, beehive shaped, rubble roofed buildings can still be seen in some of the fields in Malta and of course the softer limestone is still used extensively in house building and shapes the nature of the Maltese landscape.  There is a tourist venue called the Limestone Experience where the story of Malta's cultural association with limestone is told and I have promised myself a visit there soon.

My next post will be about my visit to the Ggantija temples on Gozo.

Malta's pre-history

I spent a week delving into the pre-history of Malta and Gozo with the help of a visiting British archaeologist, David Trump, who has written one of the definitive books in this area - "Malta: Pre-history and Temples."  He has been researching in Malta since the 1950s and continues to return each year and lead a series of site visits and seminars.  The week long programme was part of a longer cultural festival in October/November organised by the Festival Mediterranea and based at Teatru Astra in Victoria in Gozo.

When I phoned to book, the four Hypogeum visits were already booked out.  For conservation purposes, numbers visiting this underground burial place at Tarxien are restricted, so I will have to visit another time when I have worked out how to book on the website.  So on the first day of the week, I fronted up to a meeting place to visit Kordin temple and then Tarxien.  I worked out where to get off the bus to Valletta from Marsaxlokk and drew on my experience from walking to the three cities from Valletta in order to find the church opposite the Mosque and next to the Trade School.  The side gate to the Trade School, where students were coming and going to cross the very busy street, has posters advertising guitar lessons and music gigs.  The round-about is signed to Fgura, Paola, Kordin, 3 cities and Valletta.  As people started to arrive for the tour, they were as unsure as I was about the location of the temple which was unsigned but I had spotted an iron gate at one side of the church carpark that seemed to have a tumble of old stones inside.  Many of the temples are located in densely built-up areas and Kordin 3 is not generally open for the public.

When the great man arrived there was a lot of organising of tickets and general milling around before we were lead over to the iron gates.  The temple site is surrounded by a high wall to protect it from the encroaching buildings but no restoration has been underaken here.  The most interesting find apart from incredible dating at 5000 BC (pre-pyramids in Egypt) is the unique slab that heads up this post.  Opinions vary as to what this might have been used for, but David Trump's interpretation, demonstrated vigorously on his knees, was that several of the village women would use it to grind corn together perhaps for ritual purposes or perhaps for family use.  The temples were Goddess temples and perhaps fertility and growing things were privileged in their practices.  The gender of the special people who were leaders in these practices is still not known but almost certainly the huge statues of fat women unearthed at Tarxien temples close to Kordin were of the deity worshipped.  As can be seen in the photo, it had rained the previous night and the trough of the harder coralline globigerina limestone that must have been brought to the site from a kilometre away was full of water.

The main building material used in Kordin 3 and other temple sites is the softer Upper Coralline sandstone that is easier to work but also weathers more than globigerina.  It is also very easily reworked and recycled so many of the temples have become part of daily life in Malta and Gozo and are incorporated into the stone walls surrounding the fields or other buildings.  Three temple sites have been identified on the Kordin plateau, but only one remains and is named Kordin 3.

Kordin 3 introduced me to the temple sites and got us all thinking about the amazing pre-history of Malta but although we were all happily standing in the sun beside the ancient trough grilling our captive archaologist, we were reminded by the organisers that it was time for us to move on to the next site, Tarxien.  To save you from the overlong posts that I tend to get into once I start piecing together my experiences, I'll post this and promise the next post on Tarxien with three more posts after that on the Gozo temples, the seminar and Tas-Silg at Marsaxlokk.

Sicily to Malta

I've found out from my last post that if I post just the photo, when I try to edit with text I can't work out how to get in.  So please read this story together with the following heading and photo of Modica.  The picture that heads up this piece is of a Catania verandah.  This group of postings is about the journey that Carol and I made in September.

On the way back from Mt Etna we called into the port to book our ferry ticket to Malta and then into the bus station to find out about buses to Modica.  Our Etna guide, who was a great source of information and help, advised us that Pozzallo had very little apart from a beach and that Modica was the place to go.  The Lonely Planet guide also said that Modica was for the discerning traveler and we decided that this was a nice category to put ourselves in, so Modica became our destination.  We discovered that there were regular buses to Modica and since we didn't want to rush away from our great apartment in Catania, we settled on the midday bus and spent the morning lingering over breakfast and going on a guided tour of Teatro Massimo Bellini.

We didn't really know what to expect from the bus trip except that we had to get our tickets from a cafe next to the bus depot on the day of departure.  Luggage was easier than the train - like in Ireland there was a luggage bay opening at the side of the bus.  I can't remember much about the journey but we both got a window seat and enjoyed watching the Sicilian countryside pass by.  After Syracuse, the road curves round past Noto and Pozzallo and into Modica.  The approach to Modica is dramatic as we crossed deep ravines and drove along one side of a deep gorge with the clustered houses of the town clinging to the other side of the gorge.

Modica is built around an ancient river bed that now runs underground.  It is surrounded by four rocky hillsides.  It was founded in the 13th century as the earldom of the Chiaramonte family.  An earthquake in 1693 destroyed the churches and buildings and the rebuilt city was on a river until the flood of 1901 when it became necessary to create waterways under the main streets.  Today it is late-baroque and included in UNESCO's cultural heritage sites.  The houses are stacked on top of each other up the hillsides as shown in the adjoining photo.

The bus pulled in to the station in the late afternoon and as usual, we were relying on Carol's Lonely Planet guide to find a place to stay.  We trundled our cases into a large but empty cafe across the road and consulted the guide.  There is a lower Modica and an upper Modica and we located what seemed to be a suitable B&B in upper Modica so Carol stayed in the cafe with our bags and I walked up to explore.  I found the rococo Chiesa di San Giorgio with the inevitable wedding taking place at the top of the 250-step staircase leading up to it.  The B&B we were seeking was on one corner of the square, but although I found a glass fronted office, it was closed.  I followed signs to another B&B but again couldn't get any response to my knocking.  I was enjoying wandering the back streets and steps but started to worry about finding a bed for the night so I backtracked to lower Modica and found a new hotel, Principe D'Aragona, just down the road from the bus station.  Returning to Carol with the information we decided that the hotel was the way to go and trundled our cases the short distance.

The expedience of the hotel gave us the evening to explore Modica and find somewhere to eat.  We found a tourist office that was open and acquired a map and a suggested walking route but as usual I lead Carol off in the wrong direction and we had to double back after trekking up one of the forks in the valley.  This wasn't an issue since Modica is a charming city to wander in, but we wanted to be back at the Cattedrale di San Pietro where we had spotted a stage being set up in the street opposite the cathedral's grand entrance steps.  That evening at 8.00 there was going to be a local gospel choir singing.  We arrived there in good time, got ourselves a good seat in the centre of the steps, and settled down to watch all the good citizens of Modica arriving for the event.  The choir were dressed in the robes of an American southern baptist church and although they were Italian, they were singing in American English.  They were also doing a lot of heartfelt praising the lord in Italian in between songs and after four or five numbers, Carol and I looked at each other and picked our way through the now packed steps and walked up to our hotel.

We picked the easy option for the morning and hired a taxi to take us to the ferry in Pozzallo.  I'm sure if we had been there a little longer we could have negotiated public transport to get there, but our enquiries at the bus station had not produced very firm answers.  We also arranged a wake-up call taking full advantage of the services offered by a hotel!  So we arrived at the ferry terminal in good time and once we got through the simple formalities - no customs and my British passport meant I could travel as a member of EU - we were at the front of the queue with some time to wait.  Carol wandered off to chat to one of the local minibus drivers waiting for custom on the incoming ferry whilst I did my stretching exercises and looked after the luggage.  As ferry arrival time drew closer a whole fleet of buses and double deckers arrived to meet the groups of tourists who come over from Malta for a one day tour taking in Pozzallo, Catania, Mt Etna and Modica.

Carol and I exchanged luggage minding duties - she had found out all about the Sicilian minibus business and had started to give the driver advice about how to increase his market - and I wandered along the wharf to look at the working vessels moored up alongside as well as what appeared to be a fishing boat graveyard at the end of the wharf with several boats propped up on the quay.  I wandered back as the ferry turned into the small harbour and we watched a surprisingly large number of people get off and form up in their groups to get on the buses.

We had to load our luggage onto a small luggage train to embark and then we found a suitable spot at the stern of the boat to settle.  It was a beautiful day for a crossing - the sea was smooth and the sky was clear.  We found copies of the Malta Times and spread out over a couple of tables.  Carol was happy to stay in one place but I kept heading up to the bow to get my first glimpse of Malta and sure enough after about an hour the first smudge appeared on the horizon.  Gradually the outlines of Gozo and Malta appeared and a little later Comino could be distinguished.  As we got closer I could pick out the crowded buildings of Sliema and St Julian's as we pointed towards Valletta and then turned to head in through the heads of Grand Harbour.  

Disembarking was also easy and quick.  We walked out of the wharf at Valletta waterfront and picked up a taxi to take us to Marsaxlokk which was to be my home for the next six months.

Modica, Pozzallo and the ferry to Malta

Catania and St Agatha

The starting photo is of an excellent tour that we took around Etna.  

When we landed on our feet in a spacious apartment in via Antonino di Sangiuliano, Catania, we enjoyed our first day using our very own kitchen after finding the wonderful produce markets.  We bought huge amounts of fresh fruits, including the delicious small Sicily pears that I tried for the first time, and salad vegetables, including old-fashioned tasty tomatoes.  Carol had been disappointed in both Ireland and mainland Italy that there weren't obvious produce markets and when we did locate fruit and veg in shops and supermarkets the produce was not grown locally.  In Catania she was happy!  Now that I am settled in Malta, I am still enjoying the small Sicily pears that are shipped across regularly on the 2 hour sea trip.

We also equipped ourselves with a street map and undertook our first exploratory circuit of the main piazzas, picking up tourist brochures along the way.  Back at the apartment, we stretched out on the two huge sofas and planned our itinerary.  The main item on my agenda was to visit Mt Etna.  Most of the brochures were as  unhelpful as we had found the tourist information offices, but there was one that was clearly laid out and informed us precisely on what to expect from the tour.  We chose the Etna Experience tour which didn't offer a trip to the mountain with optional cable car to the top at enormous additional expense.  What it did offer was an informative tour of the Bove valley, the craters and lava flow and the Alcantara Canyons.   We returned to the most helpful of the tourist offices and booked, making an arrangement to be picked up on one corner of the main square in the morning.

Whilst we were in Catania, there was a strike by garbage collectors and council employees who were fed-up that they hadn't been paid properly over the past year as the local council authority sank into debt.  The council workers appeared to be well-organised and we saw them often in the main square, Piazza della Repubblica, having meetings and making dramatic statements like dumping a whole skip of garbage on the steps of the Council offices or hanging a For Sale sign on the statue of Catania's emblem, a pigmy elephant with an Egyptian needle on it's back.  Like you, we also wondered about the origins of that emblem, but were unable to find out anything whilst we were there.

On the morning of the tour, we arrived in the main square to find that it had been closed off by the strike.  We were thrown into confusion about where to wait and for a while we dithered with Carol hanging out on one corner whilst I commandeered the corner where all traffic seemed to be diverted.  After the appointed hour had passed with nothing happening but the drama of the square, we decided to make one last desperate run on the tourist office.  Suddenly, the women behind the desk had become very helpful and phoned the tour company to see what was happening.  They were waiting for us a few streets away and sent someone to the office to walk us through the crush of diverted traffic to the 4WD jeep.

The tour was full, mostly with young travellers from all parts of the globe.  Predominantly European couples with one or two Canadians.  One young woman, now working in Brussels, spoke several languages and asked excellent questions of the driver/guide who was also very knowledgeable and skillful.  How he managed to do a U-turn in that crowded, narrow street with that clumsy, large jeep is still a wonder for me.  We soon left Catania behind and were out into the countryside heading towards the Bove Valley with the guide giving an excellent commentary and answering all kinds of complex questions about the social and cultural history of the area.  For the first time, I got a glimpse of the unique position that Sicily holds in relation to Italy and the Mediterranean.  The language is different from mainland Italy - not just a dialect, but a separate language that the guide informed us was in danger of dying out because it was no longer used in schools.  He also talked about the resentment that people in Sicily felt about being the poor relation of mainland Italy.  But when I enquired about any form of resistance movement, the answer was in terms of the locals needing all their resources to struggle against the volcano rather than the mainland.

The other interesting story that I started to hear pieces about from our guide was the cult of St Agatha.  St Agatha's name had come up elsewhere in Italy and I have discovered there are also several links in Malta.  Her horrible martyrdom was what first raised my interest and I've written about this in an earlier post related to the Knights of Malta.  But Catania is St Agatha's home town and there are several churches and chapels dedicated to her with stories of how the saint was called upon by local villagers to stop ferocious lava flows from destroying their lives.  Around Etna the villagers associated with particular St Agatha churches would process carrying the veil of St Agatha to oppose the flow which was miraculously halted.  In particular, in 1444 and 1886 the lava flows were halted as they almost reached the first houses of Nicolosi and documentation of the natural facts by local historians at the time formed a foundation for the miraculous stories that were sparked in the hearts and minds of the faithful.

In addition to the miraculous St Agatha as protection from the volcano, people around Mt Etna have also developed a particular philosophy according to our guide.  He argues that because people live continuously with the threat of the volcano looming over their future - "We may have no future" - people live for today and seek to enjoy the present to the full.  A powerful example of the way in which the environment shapes the way we think and live our lives.

After driving up through the valley and picking out increasing evidence of the lava flows, we changed into 4WD and moved onto more rugged back roads up through chestnut forest which is the second stage of regeneration after a lava flow.  We also did some trekking to investigate more closely how lava streams impacted on the environment.  The jeep was often driving on the lava bed itself so it was no surprise when we blew a tyre as we crossed a lava stream in the forest.  We all piled out so that our miraculous driver/guide could shift the vehicle to a more stable spot to start demonstrating his additional skills as mechanic.  As we waited, some wandered off into the forest to look for mushrooms (they returned with fungus that our guide advised was highly poisonous), whilst others took photos or chatted.  Carol took the opportunity to start identifying the botanical species in situ using a book salvaged from the jeep.

The blown tyre meant that we arrived a little late at our lunch spot which was a chalet high on a hillside with an interesting video about a recent eruption.  Our guide seemed to make a point of going round to each of us to talk about the implications of the blown tyre.  He expressed his relief when I told him that it had been an opportunity for Carol to sit and nurture her love of all things botanical.  He explained that sometimes tourists became difficult and pointed out that a blown tyre was not in the brochure!  Now was the opportunity for our driver/guide/mechanic to demonstrate his additional skills as chef and lunch host as he left us to prepare and lay-out our lunch on a nearby picnic table.  When we were called over, we found a superb array of local cold dishes, cheeses, meats, breads and wine.  Lunch was a great occasion that perhaps gave a little glimpse into the reality of Catanian philosophy about living in the moment!

After lunch, we had one more stop at the Alcantara Canyons.  We climbed down lots of steps to the bottom of the canyon where an icy cold stream runs and the more adventurous youngsters took their shoes off and waded in.  There were several canyoning parties just coming out of the canyon with their wetsuits and canyoning gear.  The canyon is an excellent example of how ancient lava flows invaded the Alcantara river and the spectacular columnar basalt cliffs were formed.

Prior to our trip to Etna, we had tried to find out about the Virtu ferry crossing to Malta from the South of Sicily.  We had been directed to the port area where the booking office was and discovered it was closed in the middle of the day like most Mediterranean businesses.  I had then lead Carol on a somewhat disastrous exploratory circuit of Porto Vecchio and we got hopelessly trapped inside the port and couldn't find a way out to get back into the centre of Catania.  Huge lorries thundered past with drivers making suggestive gestures out of the cabs and we ended up in a carpark on the way to the airport with a long walk back to town.  So we were grateful when our miracle-working guide said that he would drop us at the port when we got back into Catania.  We were then able to easily find the now open ferry office and make a booking from Pozzallo for Sunday which was in two days time.  That just left us to make a decision about getting to Pozzallo in time for the morning ferry and I'll write about that in the next post.

But before leaving Catania, I want to mention two more things that we stumbled on whilst we were there.  One was the Teatro Massimo Bellini where we went on a guided tour of this impressive baroque theatre and found out about the opera season that I think starts in November.  The other was L'Opera dei Pupi which was a delightful family puppet theatre held in an upstairs room just off the main square.  All the puppeteers were members of one family and the tradition was handed on over three generations.  The show was in Italian but there was plenty of action with knights and ladies and saracens and jesters so we were able to follow some of the story.  The knights fought each other with swords and cut off each others heads and arms.  The ladies drove the knights to their heroic deeds by being impossibly beautiful and spurning their affection.  I divided my attention between the delightful string puppets and their puppeteers above whose faces and bodies acted the role they were playing with great passion and tension.  At one point, the jester was horribly trapped under the headless corpse of a saracen and was struggling to free himself.  I was sitting in a corner on the front row and suddenly the jester called on me in English to help him which of course I had to do much to the delight of Carol and everyone else in the audience!

We enjoyed the theatre tour on our last morning in Catania before taking the bus down to overnight in Modica before catching the Malta ferry and I'll tell that story briefly in my next post.

Flashing in Florence

I've just re-read my last post about the grand tour, Rome and the train trip to Catania and it is very long so I think I'll try a short series on Florence, Catania and Modica ferry to Malta.

Florence deserves more than a one-day visit but we made it a full day.  The train trip from Rome was a good way of seeing some of the Tuscany countryside and we decided that if we return one day we would stay in the countryside and take the train up to the city.  Carol and I have got quite good at train travel and we can spot a tourist place to get a walking map of a new city in the blink of an eye.  I had no agenda other than to see the Ponte Vecchio and Carol had eyes only for David so we worked out a stroll from the train station through central areas with palazzos, churches and duomos to the Galleria dell Academia.  Florence was crowded.  Rome had not prepared us for the squash of Florence with groups of tourists dutifully following their tour leader holding aloft the distinguishing flag.  The queue for David was very long and we had no choice but to join it and crawl forward for two hours chatting to the people patiently waiting with us.  Carol kept finding tips in the Lonely Planet guide on how to avoid the queue by joining a group or by booking in advance, but somehow the waiting was all part of the experience and I enjoyed the people watching as you can see from the photo that heads this post.

The galleries leading towards David had plenty of amazing things but somehow I have forgotten the succession of sculptures and paintings.  I think there was also a very interesting display of old musical instruments.  When we got to David, I felt like I wanted to prolong the anticipation and dutifully looked slowly around all the sculptures in the side galleries before finally giving my full attention to the huge, white marble man.  Certainly his head and hands seem disproportionately large and his penis is very small but Carol assured me that there is a reason for this.  The overlarge bits are because it was designed to be viewed from some distance below the plinth on which it was located.  The small bits are because it was considered ignoble and coarse to be hung like a horse.  What I found most amazing was to be able to walk all round him and there was even an interactive video next to him that enabled the viewer to see each part close up and all round.  We spent some time trying to work out just how a slingshot works because he has a kind of strap going all down his back from the hand at his shoulder and he is holding a stone in his other hand.  We also tried to see the difference in the two sides of his face from boyish innocence to determined manhood but it wasn't as clear as we were told.

Afterwards, we walked down to the river n our way to the Ponte Vecchio.  Like Rome, there are statues everywhere and I have quite a few pictures of imitation Davids.  There was also a piazza with statues of the great artists in alcoves in the walls and beneath them artists displaying their paintings.  We walked across the Ponte Vecchio with its old jewelry shops and then took the next bridge back across so I could get the classic photo showing the bridge, the houses and balconies on one side, the cloudy sky and the reflections in the water.  By then, we were running out of time to walk back up to the station and catch our train back to Rome.

Italy and the Grand Tour

My last post about the journey of a Maltese priest by sea to Rome reminded me about the reverse trip that Carol and I undertook almost two months ago.  This post is a sketch of that September week of travel.

We managed to meet up as planned in the new jungle of Heathrow airport at terminal 5.  I was grumpy from my British bout of flu and from my train and bus trip to the airport.  On the awful journey down from Scotland a week or so before, I bought a seniors concession card that lasts for a year.  This appeared to be saving me a bit of money but I forgot to read the fine print so when I left my brother's house with my cheap fare ticket nestled in my pocket, I left the concession card on my brother's  kitchen table thinking I wouldn't be needing it again.  This turned me into some kind of monstrous rail cheat as I discovered when the inspector came round and insisted that I had to buy a full ticket there and then.  I couldn't even just pay the difference.  So my cost-saving experiment turned out to be very expensive!

Rome

We landed in Rome about 8.00 pm without anywhere booked to stay and of course neither of us could speak the language.  Carol had the Lonely Planet guide to Italy and located an area near to the Vatican that she thought would be a nice quiet area and when we got to the train terminal we spotted a tourist hotel booking agent and asked them to book somewhere in that area.  Then we jumped in a taxi.  The hotel was in via Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli just across the river within easy walking distance of the Vatican with a bus stop just around the corner.  Our plan was to stay in Rome for a couple of nights and then go to Florence for a few nights before taking the train down the west coast to Sicily from where we could get a ferry over to Malta.  But the hotel turned out to be such a convenient find that we decided we would stay in Rome for longer and just go to Florence for a day trip on the train.  This meant that we could get a 3-day Roma pass that allowed us to travel freely on the buses and get free entry to our first two museums with reductions thereafter.  It was well worth it!

This post is taking me longer than I anticipated as I'm surrounded by maps and all the memorabilia of our trip.  It is taking me time to piece together the story and I'm enjoying the reflection but I need to find a picture and post this so I can take a break and come back to it again.

So our first day in Rome we found our bearings by walking using a map picked up at the hotel.  We strolled along the river to the Vatican, took one look at the huge queues waiting to get into the museum and decided to leave that for another day when we felt stronger!  I am always happy just wandering around and looking when I am in a new city.  We decided to use our first free museum pass going in to the Castel S. Angelo which we got very attached to over the coming days as it grew into our very own local castle.  I think it might be a little neglected in the wider surfeit of monuments, fountains and buildings that contribute to the tourist experience in Rome but I think it started out as someone's mausoleum and it has a long circular ramp inside the central building leading to great views across the river from the ramparts.  It also has its very own pedestrian bridge across the river with monumental statues on either side all the way across.  

We continued our Rome orientation by strolling across this bridge and into Piazza Navona for lunch.  This piazza has the fountains that are essential in Rome, plenty of outdoor cafes vying for our custom and an art market in the centre where artists present their Italian landscapes and portraits.  We also noticed several women, some with disabilities, who were begging along the cafe strip.

Walking back to our hotel via another of the many bridges, we located several of the classic Roman sites including the Pantheon, Trevi fountain and numerous palaces.  Rome is stunning in that there are fountains, monuments and palaces at every turn but what we didn't expect to see was the astonishing number of people who were getting married in all these iconic places!  We learnt over the next week that wherever you are in Italy and whatever day of the week it is you will find someone having their wedding photos taken.  In Libya, I had come across several pre-wedding parties with people taking over a street to celebrate with cars honking their horns as the men in the family drove through in trucks.  In Rome, there are gorgeous white wedding dresses, elaborate posing and the entire population driving past and wishing the couple well.  In Catania, the couples followed each other into the main square, posed in front of their white vintage cars, and took a walk around the square.

With everyone in Italy getting married, it didn't surprise me that the ancient waiter in the small pizzeria around the corner from our hotel, addressed us as though he was madly in love and wanted to marry us!  Even with our non-existent Italian we guessed that he wasn't just explaining why it was taking so long for our pizza to arrive after we had found a red-checked table cloth in the crowded restaurant.  But we had our half carafe of red so it didn't seem to matter very much!

The next day we bought a ticket on a jump on, jump off, open-top, double-decker bus to extend our exploration of the city.  The double-decker bus with English audiotape guide is a good way to get about the main tourist spots and enjoy the skyline of the streets.  This time, we spent most of our jump off time walking around the amazing coliseum and circus Maximus.  But looking back now at the maps, I think I will need to return to Rome and stay there for a month if I want to do more than flit over the surface.

On our third day, we walked over to the Vatican again and queued to go into the Museum.  This time, on the advice of the man on the desk at our hotel, we went around lunchtime and the queue was small and moved quite rapidly.  But the museum was still crowded and even by the time we got into the Sistine chapel and looked at that ceiling that is so familiar, it was still difficult to find space to sit on one of the benches and look up.  By this time it was closing time so we had half an hour to finish off our crooked neck before being ushered out and back onto the streets of Rome.

The opera

The other thing that has to be done in Rome is go to the opera.  We spotted a flier for La Traviata - not at La Scala, but at the Chiesa di S. Paolo entro le Mura.  It was performed by the Orchestra e Coro i Virtuosi d'Opera di Roma and we booked two tickets.  It was close to the Opera House and we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there on the bus and work out how to pick up our tickets.  There is an Irish pub just across the street from the church where the performance was to take place so Carol set about finding us a table in the crowd whilst I went to get us some wine.  When I got back, Carol was deep in conversation with a young man from Lebanon who was visiting Italy to teach in peace studies at the university.  As we sat and chatted about the world in general, a woman came down the street dressed in her finery and I remarked "I bet she's going to the opera" as I looked down at our own travel-weary jeans and trainers.  We watched her continue down the street and sure enough she joined the queue that was starting to form outside the church.  Since it was unnumbered seating allocation, I jumped up to join her in the queue and left Carol to enjoy the pub and the young man.  The queue grew rapidly and began to spread across a zebra crossing threatening to block off a side street and cause chaos so I suggested with hands and gestures that we should move it around the corner.  Somehow, everyone got the picture and shifted so that the queue curved round but just as we were settling in a young German couple jumped in in front of me.

"The back of the queue is down there,"  I pointed out politely to the young woman.

"Well you decided to change it, so I've decided to come in here,"  she replied

"Yes, we decided to change because the queue was blocking off the street," I explained piously.

"And we're in here now so there will be no more discussion," said the young man.

"Well that's very stylish of you," said I and we stood in awkward silence for the remaining queuing time as my organising Brit side fumed inwardly about Germanic arrogance.

In the meantime, Carol and the young Lebanese man were laughing merrily from the Irish pub across the zebra crossing.  As it transpired, we managed to get front row seats in the church theatre and enjoyed the show but I find now I can't remember as much about it as I can about the drama of the queue!  I know Carol found the positioning of the orchestra in front of the singers and without a pit tended to make the orchestra dominate the performers and I agree with her but I found it fascinating to sit so closely to the instruments and watch how things worked in together.

On the fourth day, we got a train to Florence for a day but I think I'll post that story separately tomorrow.  I'll also come in again to this piece and finish off the train journey down the coast to Sicily.

Train to Catania

When we were booking the train to Florence, we also booked tickets for the day following to go down the coast and across to Catania in Sicily.  We struck lucky with a charming older man on the desk in the booking office and he sorted everything out very quickly as we explained what we wanted to do.  He suggested that we get a first-class ticket to Catania as this would give us more space but as it turned out, space was limited even in the first class carriages.  We had already discovered how difficult it was getting our trundle cases up the steep steps into Italian trains but even once we were in and had found our seats, we quickly realised that there was no room for our cases as well as the six occupants of the carriage.  So our two cases travelled to Catania stacked on top of each other in the corridor outside the toilet.  At first we stood them upright side by side but as we got further south and the line deteriorated they kept falling over so we worked out a way of laying them flat.  

Carol and I were jammed facing each other in the two middle seats with four middle-aged men, one in each corner.  They were all very uncommunicative, but Carol very quickly slipped into working out who and what they were by their reading material and their conversations on the mobile phone.  One was an architect on his way to a big job in Naples.  Another had a wife in Rome as well as a wife in Sicily.  A third was something big in the Mafia but we didn't look at him very much.

One of the men got out at Salerno and a young couple with a baby and piles of luggage took their place.  It was impossible for them to fit into one seat with luggage space so they quickly negotiated more space on the rack piling a baby stroller on top of my laptop and spilling out into the two carriages next door.  

South of Naples and Salerno, the train runs along by the Mediterranean sea with mountains on one side and beach with rocky groins on the other.  The Lonely Planet guide describes the country south of Paula as "overdeveloped and ugly" but the sea continues to be turquoise and deep blue.  There are lots of speed boats and paddle bikes for hire but not many people on the beaches.  One or two people lie sunbathing on the coarse, grey sand.  

Another of our men got off here so the young couple re-united in our carriage and the father played Game Boy and dozed whilst the mother held the baby on her lap.  They were returning to Catania after visiting relatives.  They managed to explain to us that after we cross over to Sicily, the train divides with some carriages going to Palermo and the rest going to Catania.  As we got down towards the toe of Italy, the train comes down to a huge bay.  There is a regional airport here with package tours from Northern Europe.

We weren't sure how the ferry crossing was going to work and were suitably amazed when we reached Reggio di Calabria and after a bit of shunting backwards and forwards the whole train simply ran onto the ferry.  We were then all allowed to pile off and go up to the ferry decks.  Then as we came into Messina we all got back on the train which ran off the ferry and carried on to Catania.  The straightforward simplicity was stunning!

Arriving in Catania

All the way down on the train, we were anticipating that when we got into Catania it would be as easy to find somewhere to stay as it had been when we landed at Rome.  This was not to be! We trundled our cases up and down the station trying to find a tourist office or hotel reservation desk that would be open at that time but there was nothing.  Eventually when we were standing outside the tourist office because the sign seemed to suggest it should be open, two young men from one of the Scandinavian countries came up and we got into conversation about places to stay.  They recommended their hotel, so armed with a name and a street, we ventured out to the taxi stand.  Carol was keen to practice her assertive taxi skills in Catania.  The taxi dropped us outside a backdoor in a very narrow street with only a very small plaque to indicate that it was anything other than a residence.  We tentatively found our way up stairs to reception but the hotel was full.  

We asked for their suggestions and they sent us down the road.  At this point, Carol was much more adventurous than I was and lead us off trundling our suitcases down the extremely narrow footpath to find the suggested B&B.  Again, the door opening directly onto the footpath but this time a series of apartment bells to try - two of them had the name of the B&B we were looking for.  The young man who responded to our call, greeted us warmly and immediately started making arrangements for us to go up to our room until he worked out that we were not the people who had phoned him earlier!  All three of us were devastated as we realised that the B&B was also full.  We stared at each other.  Then, as though he was a magician, the young man pulled out his trump card - if we wanted, he had a newly completed apartment that we could use at the same price as a room in the B&B.  It was just down the road!  So we set off again, trundling our suitcases and me feeling more and more anxious about being mugged in Sicily.  When we got to the building which was similar to the others we had been into in that it was built around a courtyard and had lots of marble steps, my heart sank again as I saw all the builders' rubble on the steps and noticed the wobbly handrail, but Carol was valiantly proceeding so we left our cases at the bottom of the stairs and went up to inspect the apartment.  It was great!  Plenty of space, well finished with two huge settees and two bedrooms.  So we had landed on our feet again!

I'll tell the story of our two days in Catania, one night in Modica and over to Malta when I write about Florence in my next post.

Birgu again and the Grand Tour

I've had such a full week delving into the neolithic sites in Malta and Gozo that Saturday is turning out to be a day of collapse.  I have so much material to get up on to the blog that I am almost stalled so I've decided to be gentle on myself and tackle one thing at a time.  This first post for November will be following up on my previous post about the military and naval fortifications.  

I returned to the Maritime Museum in Birgu for a lecture given by the young man who had so impressed me on the fortifications trail.  It transpires that he is the curator of the Museum and is currently completing his Masters degree on the naval history of Malta.  The lecture drew on the diary of a Maltese man, Don Ignatio Mifsud, who wrote in detail about his sea journey from Valletta to Rome in 1746.  He was traveling to be ordained as a priest but wrote lovingly about the meals they had on the way and the various stops made over the 2 and a half week journey.  It seems the trip at that time generally took about one week but Ignatio tarried longer than he should have in Castelamara near Naples where he met a beautiful woman and flirted for two days.

The boat they sailed in was 20 metres long and a bit like a Maltese luzzu but with a low freeboard so it was very sensitive to bad weather which they encountered several times along the way.  On the first day, after beaching at St Julian's to cook their dinner, it took them only 2 hours to cross to Sicily.  This is about the same time as it takes the fast ferry to get across today!  The diary gives all the ports of call along the way up the coast of Italy to Rome together with details of the food they prepared at each stop, bad weather encountered and run-ins with customs officials whom they mistook for bandits!  The journey was the exact reverse of the trip that Carol and I had made by train, bus and ferry to get from Rome to Malta.  I am still promising to post the story of our journey but I wish now that I had kept as detailed a journal as Ignatio did.  After being ordained, Mifsud returned to Malta where he worked as a priest and published his story in Maltese using the printing press that had been established in Malta under Lascaris and was re-established in the 1740s.   He is buried at Floriana. 

After the lecture, I slipped out without the offered maritime coffee because I needed to get back to Valletta before my last bus to Marsaxlokk left.  A short stroll across the promenade and I was able to jump in a dghajsa for the magic night trip across the harbour.   The spelling I've used here for the traditional Maltese water-taxi is taken directly from a postcard that I bought this week on Gozo.  It seems that I got the spelling wrong the last time I posted but I was quickly corrected by one of the participants in another site I've been invited to join called Global Friends of Malta.  There are some sounds in Maltese that can't be represented easily in a Roman alphabet and the 'h' in dghajsa should have a cross bar on the upright.

The dghajsas drop passengers off at the old fish market at Valletta.  Like many of the buildings in Valletta, this building now rests unused awaiting a future.  Valletta is a UNESCO listed heritage site and the residential population has been steadily declining over the past century.  I am beginning to think that that trend will start to reverse soon and already there is growing debate about the kind of capital city the Maltese people would like to have.  In 2016, Valletta will be 450 years old and I went to a half day seminar run by the Valletta Alive Foundation about the future of the city.  I have also been investigating the possibilities of buying a flat in one of the three villages of the city.  I will post a blog soon about those two ventures, but for now, I'll just promise the next post in the vague sequence that seems to form as I write and that will be the story of our journey from Rome to Malta made nearly two months ago now but still unreported in the rush of images and ideas and feelings as I settle in Malta.