St John's Co-Cathedral: A Second Visit

June 6, 2007

Today is the 63rd anniversary of D-Day, a horrific battle that fortunately led to the ending of an even more horrific government.

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St John's Co-Cathedral may have been the first "historic" site I visited after arriving in Malta a little over three weeks ago. But I got there not long before closing time and did not see everything. Besides, I wanted to see once more some of the things I did see the first time through, not least being Caravaggio's enormous painting of The Beheading of John the Baptist. This time I checked one of the books in the gift shop and found out that (presuming I'm remembering correctly) the painting is something like 360 cm by 520 cm, which would be something like 12 ft by 17 ft. Maybe I'm remembering the figures wrongly, because the painting certainly looks a good deal larger than that, if only judging by the size of the Oratory, where it is located. But then again, maybe I'm just not good at estimating. You'll have to find a Caravaggio book yourself, to have a look at the painting: photographing the painting is strictly not allowed.

In other parts of the church, one can take photographs, but without flash. Now if one is blessed with one of those complicated cameras with which one can set the exposure time, then one can get a decent photograph in low light by using a longer exposure time. But I am not blessed with such a camera (and probably couldn't figure it out if I were): the only setting on my camera which seems to turn the flash off is the "sports" setting, which takes photos very quickly. Why does this matter? Because I did indeed take some photos today and will put some of them here, but they will not look terribly good because I had to make the photo program on the computer compensate for the lack of light.

One of the things I wanted you to be able to see was the richly decorated tombstones which cover almost all of the cathedral floor space. Scenes like this one are not uncommon: the knights didn't seem to have any interest in pretending that death was anything but death:



The artwork is done in marble, sharply and beautifully: the haziness of the photograph makes the details look blurred. D.O.M. (the top line in the inscription here) is obviously some kind of conventional abbreviation that shows up on more than one tomb, but I don't know what Latin phrase it stands for. You can see that there is plenty of information included on the stone, for those who read Latin.

This one, with its cherubs, is more cheerful than the other, but note the skull and crossed bones at the top. When this motif was adopted by pirates, I don't know!



This painting of St George after he killed the Dragon is not at all dark and dingy (though there are plenty of paintings in the cathedral that are): the culprit again is the lighting. While we tend to associate St George with the English, the chapel in which this painting hangs was not for the English-speaking knights, but rather for the Spanish (or was it the Italians?)



In addition to the framed paintings which decorate the church, it is also loaded with murals painted directly onto the walls and ceilings. The main body of the church, the nave, is a barrel vault. Mattia Preti of Italy painted the vault, dividing it into 6 broad bands, or panels, of scenes. Each of the panels has a painting on the left side, as you face the altar; on the right; and directly overhead in the center. All of the scenes relate to the life of John the Baptist. I was able to get a photograph of a section of the vault, but it is so enormous and the photo taken from so far below that it didn't seem worth putting in: you simply can't tell enough about it.

This painted crucifix hangs in the passageway which leads from the nave to the Oratory, where the Caravaggio paintings are kept. It's essentially two-dimensional, of course, except for the thickness of the wood and seems to have some characteristics of Byzantine icons:



It's almost impossible to convey how ornately decorated this church is. There are some flat marble surfaces on the pillars in the nave which are simply marble surfaces, but almost every other surface in the church is decorated--painted or carved. You could look for hours, and in fact I spent about 90 minutes there today.

One of the things I had not seen on my first visit was the collection of enormous tapestries. There is a set of fairly narrow tapestries--maybe 6 feet wide and 15 to 20 feet high--each of which depicts one of the 12 apostles. Then there is another set, depicting scenes from the life of Christ, which are more or less square--15 to 20 feet on each side. The designer/artist was from Northern Europe--they are called the Flemish Tapestries. Together they form the largest complete set of tapestries in the world, according to the audio tour, and they are displayed in two different rooms at the church. One of these rooms also features the Choral Books: hymnals if you will, for the choir. They contain hand-painted illuminated illustrations and are bound with leather over wooden boards. Because of the poor condition of some of the bindings, you can actually see the boards and nails under the leather. But the pages--at least the pages the books are open too--are in very good condition and are quite beautiful. The books are something like 32 inches high! The other tapestry room has cases of priestly garments from the days of the knights. I learned that a chasuble is essentially a poncho.

There is also a hall of paintings, which I had missed on my earlier visit, but I don't recall any paintings here which wowed me. The crypt where several of the earlier Grand Masters to rule on Malta are buried is currently closed to tourists for preservation reasons. Rats! I would have loved to have seen that. Part (all?) of the crypt is underneath the altar and sanctuary at the front of the church.

The website is at http://www.stjohnscocathedral.com

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Here's a little photo for you readers of Acts of the Apostles: I'm not in Damascus, but this is indeed a street called Strait!



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Today the weather was lovely--pleasant in the morning; warm once the sun was well up; cloudless, blue skies. The waves were still crashing this morning, but had calmed down this afternoon. The sun-bathers were out again, and some folks actually got into the water. This morning, as I walked from the hotel along the seawall, I also saw what was apparently a scuba-diving class or group swimming near where a kind of corner is formed as the shoreline juts out into another little peninsula.

And I'm sure you're all dying to know that I am almost finished reading Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders and today purchased my next book: an anthology of mummy stories called Return from the Dead. It contains, principally, Bram Stoker's novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars along with four shorter stories including two by Arthur Conan Doyle. According to the back of the book, Doyle's "The Ring of Thoth" was the inspiration for Boris Karloff's original The Mummy movie.

The Great Rain of 2007

June 5, 2007

Well, as it turns out, yesterday's rain was even more momentous than I gave it credit for. Photos of flooded streets ran in both of the local papers I looked at today, along with a good bit of data which I'll hope to remember correctly.

They measure rainfall in mm (millimetres) around here. It takes 25.4 mm to make one inch. Yesterday's rainfall totals varied from place to place, to be sure, but it was in the neighborhood of 57 to 58 mm--or more than two inches. Now that kind of thing happens in Dallas with some regularity, though not nearly as often in El Paso. But in Malta? Yesterday's rainfall did more than set a record for the day: yesterday's rainfall total was more than has ever been recorded for the whole month of June altogether! One article cited two different locations, with different record totals for June: in one location, the record was around 28 mm, less than half of yesterday's total. In the other, it was 34 or so, still only about 60% of yesterday's totals. And again, both of those totals are for the entire month of June. In one location, the record books go back 140 years! So it was quite an event. Add to that the much smaller rainfalls on Saturday and Sunday, and this June already has almost 70 mm of rain: something like 85 times a normal June total. According to the newspaper, a normal June here is 0.8 mm--less than 1 mm! Or about 3/100ths of an inch. Astonishing.

Today was a much nicer day: no rain, and the clouds eventually broke apart to give us a nice sunny day. Still cooler than normal, and still quite blustery, but much better than yesterday. The waves are still crashing several feet higher than usual, so this storm, which came out of Italy, is having quite an effect on the whole general area.

I spent today in Sliema, walking around a bit, reading, doing email and the blog, generally taking it like a retired person. I spent about an hour after lunch working on another pencil sketch, but I won't make you suffer through this one. Hehehe. I had also intended to give you a photo of the outside of the hotel and of St Julian's tower, about 3/4 mile down the seawall from here, but apparently when I thought I was taking the pictures, I was not pressing down hard enough on the button and only got a light reading! Peculiar, no? But here is a photo of a building that sits off on the end of another peninsula more or less north of here (the other direction from Valletta, anyway), and gives me the feeling that I ought to be in Greece:



But judging by the sign, which I don't believe you can make out in this photo, it's just a casino. I'm wondering if this is the one the Australian couple visited a couple of days ago and were very unimpressed by.

Here's another photo, from yesterday's visit to the Armoury. This shows some of the engraving on another cannon: I don't know if it's the name of the maker or not. It says Rotenberger, a good German name that ought to translate out to something like Man from Red Mountain:



I also did a bit of Internet research today to find out about the Maltese canonization: St. Gorg Preca was canonized on Sunday, along with 3 others from other nations. Pope Benedict made a bit of his address in Maltí, which must have really pleased the Maltese people gathered in Rome for the ceremony. From what I read St. Gorg Preca is considered second only to St. Paul in his importance to Christianity in Malta. As most of you probably know, St. Paul is credited with bringing Christianity to Malta in 60 CE, after being shipwrecked here on his way to Rome. (I think my visit to St. Paul's Grotto in Rabat must be on the Travel Log for something like May 18?) I was told that Preca is buried under the floor of one of the churches in Floriana, next to Valletta.

I've got an email query out to a small hotel in Córdoba where I might stay for a few days in August, and I made my first Spanish booking today: August 5-9 in Granada, in a small hotel recommended by Lonely Planet. I need to email my travel agent and ask her about my Eurail Pass: the timetable only lists major cities, and I'm hoping that doesn't mean that I can only use the pass for those places. Most of the places I want to go are reached by smaller trains. Wish me luck!

PS: Have I remembered to tell you about the fast foods that are here (McD*n*lds, etc.) or not?

The Palace Armoury and Awful Weather

June 4, 2007

Because today's weather has been so hideous (more below), it was a great day to be inside at the Grandmaster's Palace, in the Armoury. (Unfortunately, getting there wasn't so pleasant.) You may recall that I was disappointed in the State Rooms at the Grandmaster's Palace. The Armoury, on the other hand, deserves a visit. I spent at least an hour and a half there, and I didn't even listen to all of the informational "clips" on the audio tour or read all of the instructive placards. I made the mistake of coming too close to lunch time! After spending at least 45 minutes in one of the two galleries, I went and sat in the entrance hall to snack on my "morning coffee" cookies and drink some water. Thus replenished, I waded back into history.

The gallery I spent the most time in displays a great quantity of armor: helmets, cuirasses (breast- and backplates), leggings, and several full suits of armors, some of them richly engraved. One thing one learns, wandering through this gallery and listening to the audio device, is how armor changed over the centuries, sometimes for comfort and effectiveness, sometimes for style. There are the "close-helmets", which are probably the kind most Americans think of in association with armored horsemen. These helmets pretty well cover the entire head, but were, of course, hot and difficult to see out of:



Then there are helmets that are more like the modern idea of helmets: covering the top and parts of the sides of the head, but leaving the face open. Most of us probably imagine them when we think of the Spanish conquistadores in the Americas. Many of these had "combs", or crests, on the top: a protruding ridge (sort of like a rooster's comb). Some also had small "brims" around the edges. There were other helmets, similar to these, but equipped with an attachable face-covering made of several hinged pieces which could be clipped up to protect the face, or let down for cooling or better vision. (I forget the name of these.)

Then there is the armor itself. Just inside the entrance of this gallery are two suits of chain mail, an early form of the knight's armor. Solid rings were linked with open rings which were then riveted to form the suit. I found it remarkable that the mail looks sort of like thickly corded wool! (Is that an effect of rust, perhaps?)



As plate-armor developed, and given that the higher ranking knights had more money at their disposal, knights began to order richly engraved armor. Unfortunately, with the low light in the galleries and the reflective glare one gets using a flash, my photos of armor mostly didn't turn out well. This is a cropping of one of them, showing a section of engraved metal. This engraving runs along the ridge that ran vertically down the center of the breastplate:



One of the mini-lectures given on the audio tour provided a great summary of the Great Siege of 1565. The Knights of St John had been a thorn in the side of the Turks for a good while, and the Turkish sultan (I believe it was Suleiman) also wanted to capture Malta as a base from which to invade Sicily and Italy. Grandmaster Jean de Vallette Parisot (after whom Valletta is named) knew that the attack was coming and summoned all the knights who were away to return. But apparently they didn't all make it: when the Turkish fleet arrived, with 40,000 soldiers, only 500 knights were on the island, supported by 8500 Maltese fighters. The siege began on May 18, and the help promised by the viceroy in Sicily didn't arrive until September 8. Up until then, the knights and the locals were on their own. Amazingly, they held off the Turkish fleet, and then, with the Italian and Spanish reinforcements, defeated it. This was the last time the Turks tried an invasion in the western Mediterranean, although their attempts to spread farther into Europe by land did not come to an end until the 18th century.

The historical information at the Armoury also notes that the first half of the 16th century was the final heyday, as it were, of armored knights, but that breastplates were still in use as late as the Napoleonic Wars. I suppose this comes as a surprise to us Americans, whose battles with the French, the "Indians" and the British were fought unarmored. I think many of us get the idea that armor went out with the arrival of flintlocks and muskets. But in fact, as the Armoury points out, a number of the breastplates on display bear the dent-marks of proof-firing, when a new suit of armor was tested by firing a gun at it, and armor-makers had to adapt to the existence of guns by adding plating to armor to make it less susceptible to piercing.

At the rear of the armor gallery is the display, intended--I suppose--to give one a sense of what it might have been like to see a unit of knights ready for action:



There is also in this gallery a display case featuring weapons and two suits of armor captured by the knights from the Turks. The Turkish curved sword was there, and it was interesting to see the differences in the armor styles. Unfortunately the display case was too dark for my photo to be worth using.

The other gallery at the Armoury is the weapons gallery. I suppose there must be at least two or three hundred different weapons on display here, and maybe many more. I'm not good at making those sorts of estimates. There were quite a few flintlocks and muskets, as well as a number of pistols, many of them in pairs. In their later days, the knights often carried a pair of pistols as well as flintlocks. Some of the pistols are two feet long or more! Imagine trying to aim one of them while on horseback.

Just inside the entrance to this gallery were two or three cabinets displaying cross-bows, with explanations of how they worked. Many of them had such pressure that they had to be "loaded" using a lever to pull back the cord. Once loaded, of course, they could be fired quite easily:



This photo shows some of the "pole-arms" of the knights: a pole-arm is a weapon put on a pole! They were inspired apparently by farm instruments in the early days. These in the photo are not made of gold, by the way; the rich tone of those arms on the right is simply an effect of my having to increase the light in the photo to make it easier to see:



This gallery also includes quite a number of cannons, some of the small, some of them quite large. The flash, which I used with this shot, seems to have gone right up the muzzle of this one:



This photo, taken without flash, shows how elaborately decorated the knights' cannons could be: designed for destruction, but beautiful nonetheless:



And this is a close-up of some of the engraving:



One of the cannons had two fish on it, apparently formed to be handles for the cannon to be maneuvered by, and another had (I can't remember) lions or dragons on it.

Someone whose stomach wasn't as empty as mine and who simply had a more intense interest in hand-weapons than I do could have easily spent 3 hours in the Armoury. It really is a fascinating place. Tellingly, though, even as impressive and valuable as these displays are, the walls in the galleries (which are at least 15 feet high) readily show the need of upkeep: peeling paint, stains, etc. Hopefully the surge in tourism in Malta will bring more money along for the renewal of their public places. Almost every one of the buildings I have been in, even the truly wonderful ones like the National Museum of Archaeology, need interior work. Of all the historic sites I have been to only the Hypogeum and the Roman Villa have truly first-rate structures housing the historical treasures.

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Today's weather has been awful--like a mid-April day in Dallas. (Or, as one of the locals said, "It's like November." He said he had never seen rain like this in June.) The first rain started about the time I left the hotel this morning, about 10:15. By the time I got to Valletta and entered the Armoury at the Grandmaster's Palace a little after 11, it was still raining, light and steady. By the time I left the Armoury about 12:45, the rain had actually stopped, but started up again, much more intensely, including thunder and lightning, at 1:45 and didn't stop until almost 4. Coming home from Valletta about 2:45, I was for the second day in a row in a bus driving through curb to curb water, but this time the water was moving, and the rain was still coming down. There were blocks' worth of standing or flowing water. Around 5 or so, the third rain came, and the fourth about 7:30. No evening walk today. And my poor "Malta hat" may never be the same: for one thing, the liner in the crest of the hat (scalp protection!) has come almost completely unglued. Straw just wasn't made for weather like this.

The waves are crashing and roaring; the water level on the beach is up several feet; and no one was tanning today.

Scenes from a fish market, and other tales

June 3, 2007

The Fish Market at Marsaxlokk

The famous fish market, at Marsaxlokk on the south coast, takes place on Sunday mornings and is only a small part of the market overall, which also includes fresh produce, handmade Maltese lace, typical flea market sorts of things (clothing, sunscreen and other sundries, collectibles), and even a couple of guys selling CDs of Maltese folk music. (Does every folk music in the world use the accordion?) The market is crowded with both tourists and locals--when I got on the bus to leave Marsaxlokk for Valletta, a number of folks got on with bags full of purchases.

Marsaxlokk, by the way, is pronounced something like mahr-sah-SHLOAK and is abbreviated on signs M'Xlokk. Xlokk may mean something, as there is also a town called Marsa. There were some nice-looking houses in Marsaxlokk, and we passed through a bit of countryside on the way there, though most of the route took us through town after town. Quite near Marsaxlokk is what appears to be a winery called Marsovin.

Some of you may may adore freshly caught fish; some of you may not. I suspect my brother-in-law Richard, my nephew Ross, and my nephew-in-law Randy would have loved to have been here.

Yep, octopus:



Yep, eels:



Big fillets, no? And as far as I can tell, that's a head in the rear left of the photo. I was told by two different men at the hotel (the cook and the Maltese-Australian guy) that these were probably swordfish fillets:



I call these "ugly fish":



And this sleek fellow looks almost like a small shark, doesn't he?



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I didn't get as many good photographs of boats as I had hoped to. Some of the Maltese fishermen still paint their boats in traditional ways, some of which may eventually go back to the Phoenicians--the eyes on the prows, for example.

This one was up on the dock, making it easy to photograph. The brightly colored hulls are characteristic, and many--like this one--are wooden:



This one has horseshoes on the prow. I don't know if that's the name of the boat, or perhaps the fisherman's hometown, painted just below and to the right of the boat's number: Tal-Karmnu. I have gotten the impression from various signs and placards that tal means of or of the, but of course it's possible that there's more than one meaning for the word:



This shot looks out into the harbor a block or so south of the fish market and just about at the end of the rest of the market.



You can see there aren't slips for boats; they're just sort of parked in the water. I assume they use smaller boats to row to shore from their "parking spaces". I noticed this same set-up in St Julian's (San Giljan in Maltese) although there it seemed more out of place. St Julian's, quite a tourist hotspot, is completely urbanized, and so it felt sloppy to me to have boats anchored all over the place, with their spots marked by floating plastic bottles.

I took this photo in Marsaxlokk too, though it's another type of transportation. This pickup belonged to one of the men selling fresh produce. In case you can't make out the logo, this is a Land Rover pickup, from the mid-'60s maybe?



And this photo does not come from Marsaxlokk, but while we're on the subject of transportation, why not slide it in? I snapped this while taking a long walk home from Valletta this afternoon. I think I may have been in the town called Gzira. It looks to be about 40 or so years old as well, but it's either a Morris or an Austin pickup. (And I think those two may be the same company anyway.)



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Here are a few neighborhood scenes. First I have two photos, both of which come from the town called Pietá, I think. (Sometimes I'm not at all sure which town I'm in.) These may give a much sharper idea than some of the earlier photos of how a maintained house or building will abut one in much worse shape. In this first one you may be able to read the sign in the building on the left--for sale or to let. Apparently this building has been recently redone and is set up for multiple residences or businesses. The building on the right, to say the least, needs work.



In this second photo, both buildings seem to be individual houses. The one on the right is in much better shape, though close up one can tell that it's probably been a while since the white paint job (especially on the balcony) was done. But the difference in their condition is still striking.



I took this photo simply because the name of the store amuses me. How could you resist shopping here? (When it's open of course.)



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The streak continues! While last night I was able to sleep well (with ear plugs of course), and the shouters to the right were still on fairly good behavior, I seem to have new neighbors to the left. And they, true to form, came in just a while ago (about 8:30, say) and turned up their television so loud that it's rattling out their door into the hall and through my door. I can't imagine what circumstances would require such volume on such a tiny television set. Perhaps they are sitting on the balcony with the door closed and still want to hear the television! I'm really tired of tourists who can't behave like anyone else lives in the world. (Note: I finally went down to the front desk and asked the man on duty to call the room. He did, and the folks turned the TV down.)

Buildings? Buildings!

June 2, 2007

This afternoon (early morning California time) I talked to my sister Jane whose birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday, Jane! She is looking forward to a good day, and since it's a Sunday, my brother-in-law doesn't even have to be at work. Y'all have a great day.

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The weather today was odd: cloudy, still and warm this morning; giving way to cloudy, blustery, chilly and wet; giving way to drying with some break in the clouds, but still chilly. A longish shower during the "wet" time, though nothing like what I hear has been going on in Texas. A good day for staying close to the hotel, having tea at Stella's, reading and doing email and Internet.

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I sat for a little while this morning in the park at Tignè Point and worked on this drawing until it began to sprinkle.



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This photo will give you a bit of an idea how the condition of the houses can vary within any given block. Although here the variation is not as extreme as in some cases, you can see that the home in the middle has either been renovated or consistently maintained, whereas on each side the homes have allowed their stone to become stained and weathered.



In this photo, the second floor balcony (actually the first floor, they would say here) has a recent banister/fence around it and has nicely done flower pots. Likewise the balcony to the right has a very attractive and heavy stone fencing. The ground floors show obvious signs of fairly recent cleaning and tending, but the upper floors are weathered and stained.



This photo shows where a new house or business is being put into a space where, I presume, a previous structure has been torn down. You can see that limestone blocks, of that lovely creamy yellow, are going to be used in the new construction as well as cinderblocks, especially, it seems, on the side walls which will be hidden from view.



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Was it only the English who used to name, rather than number, their homes, or was this a common practice in other European countries as well? Whether the influence comes from the period of English control, or dates back to the time of the Knights, one can see homes, especially on the side-streets away from the newer construction, with name-plaques as well as numbers (which I'm presuming are newer). While many of the house names are clearly English--St. Clair, Daisy, Clarence, and this one--



others show different linguistic backgrounds, some of which may be Maltese. But are these 19th century (or earlier) survivals, or the signs of more recent purchases by folks from other countries? I'm assuming, for example, that the house I saw in Rabat named "Vie en Rose" is a fairly recent naming. Many of these houses off the "main drag" are two-story, plus basement: nice-looking, sturdy-looking edifices. Mind you, they are not separate buildings with yards, but separate buildings built right up against their neighbors and right up to the sidewalk. Many have double sets of front-doors: that is, there is a double-door at the sidewalk with, about two feet back, a second double-door, which presumably leads directly into the house or to a staircase to a first-floor-above-ground dwelling. The thickness of those cinder-block and limestone walls helps to explain how they can stand to live so close to one another: there is at least some muffling of the city noise, once one is behind one's own doors.

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Out-Bellowing the Bellowers: Yes, that's right. The Bellower has been bested. Early this morning (3 a.m.) I was wakened by the two young men who came in talking as loudly as New Yorkers discussing the Mets on a Manhattan street corner during rush hour. When it continued without abatement, I stepped out into the hall to see if they were sitting in the chairs grouped near the staircase. That's when I discovered they had moved into the room directly next to me (the room once home to the Bellower's parents) and were presumably the same guys who woke me up at 1:30 a.m. the day before. They were in their room, still talking as they needed to be heard over the roar of an approaching subway. So I knocked on the door. One of them opened the door, apologizing profusely, and they did actually quieten down. Then this morning, when I went down to breakfast, their "Do Not Disturb" tag was hanging on their door. Ah, if I were a crueler man I would have stood there and screamed bloody murder and banged on their door! (The "Do Not Disturb" placard was still hanging there when I returned to the hotel at noon to have my lunch.) Now they are awake, with the TV blaring. I hope I get to sleep all night tonight. Apparently I have been consigned to the Absolutely No Social Awareness At All wing of the hotel. Too many people here seem to think life is a screaming contest.

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Of the newer hotels here, Le Meridien in St Julian's (San Giljan in Maltí) most impresses me. (There is also a Le Meridien, aka The Phoenician, just outside the gates of Valletta.) Instead of a boring high-rise block, this Le Meridien feels like two joined pieces, only one of which is loosely rectangular, the other having a sidewall which juts off at quite an obtuse angle. Le Meridien looks like a sequence of tall vertical units, most of which protrude from the core at different distances, creating a kind of wavy flow, instead of the flat outer surface so common to high-rise hotels. I suppose the architect was simply adapting the structure to an existing lot structure, but when you add to this staggered front the balconies on every outside room and their smoked glass sliding doors, pillars built onto the multiple corners, and a stucco or faux-stucco exterior, the overall effect is eye candy. And the hotel is, in fact, absolutely enormous. I can't imagine how many hundreds of rooms it must have.

Walking?

June 1, 2007

Pay day! A good feeling, even for a retiree. . .

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I've been reading Dracula, and so naturally this derelict, locked-up mansion on the western (I think?) side of Rabat reminded me of Carfax, one of the houses Dracula buys in the London area to use as a base. You may think of 1313 Mockingbird and The Munsters, if you prefer.



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I took a middle-length walk from the bus terminus in Rabat, just outside the walls of Mdina, along the main road that leads more or less west (as far as I can tell) and out into the countryside. Because this road, unlike so many others, is a no-parking road, the traffic can move more freely (read: faster) which can make for a pretty scary experience for a pedestrian. The sidewalks are narrow, mostly 30 inches or so, I suppose, though occasionally dropping back to about 18 inches--and that's including the curb. When a car going 30 mph or so passes by only 18 or 20 inches away, it's kind of unnerving. When one of them honks, or squeals the tires, in between the high stone or concrete walls of the buildings on both sides, that's kind of unnerving too. Partly I walked this way because I just wanted to do some walking, and partly I wanted to see the Dominican monastery my guidebook showed as being on the road. According to the book, the monastery only has about 20 monks left. I don't think I saw any of them, though I did see some people coming and going. This photo shows the columns and arches along one side of the courtyard:



I couldn't help thinking that this courtyard and its colonnades would be a great place to sit, read and drink tea. I think the brothers ought to open up a coffee shop to soothe the weary tourist and bring in a little extra money. Places to sit and read outside (or inside, for that matter) are rare in Malta. The parks--often called gardens--are not plentiful and are not generally large. The trees in the gardens are often relatively small (owing, perhaps, to the lack of rainfall) and, frustratingly, are often not positioned to provide shade for the benches! The best shade along the seawall in Sliema, for example, comes in the last hour or so of daylight, when the highrises across the street (one of which I'm staying in, of course) block the setting sun.

Three of the four upper walls overlooking the monastery courtyard displayed plaques like these, apparently designed as calendars or some other sort of astronomical observation. Perhaps one of you will recognize what this is and tell us all by leaving a comment:



I was also curious about the significance of the years listed at the bottom of the larger plaque.

This photo comes from the front facade of the church next door, which I presume belongs to the monastery, which makes me in turn presume that the saint here is Dominic. You will notice that pigeons don't even respect saints!



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It wasn't terribly far beyond the monastery when I came to the edge of Rabat and walked for a while in the countryside. Here there were no sidewalks, which made the walking a little more nerve-wracking. I couldn't help but feel that the drivers, who so often drive right down the middle of the street if there is no oncoming traffic, were deliberately hewing close to the shoulder, simply to irritate the crazy pedestrian--me. I passed stone walls, some in better repair than others, and I could hear sheep bleating behind one of them. I don't know if these sheep, or another group of animals somewhere else, provided me with such a strong aroma of poop at one point. There was no open "range" that I could see--everything was broken up into walled-off fields. Just about at the point I stopped and turned around, I found this lovely little fixer-upper for any of you who are handy with home repair:



**

Back in the city I had a little lunch and then roamed around in Mdina again. It's such a beautiful and tiny place. As I mentioned to my sister in an email, Valletta is very much what you expect an old European city to be: tall buildings, narrow streets, shops on the ground floors with dwellings above them. And I like Valletta very much. But Mdina is truly like stepping into the past or onto another planet. It is all of a piece--the limestone walls that surround it, the limestone (or faux-limestone?) walls of the "blocks" within it. If you didn't know better, you might think it was an elaborate and expensive movie set. There aren't, as far as I can tell, individual homes in the sense that we think of it or even, as in Valletta, separate buildings in different styles which share side walls: there are, instead, big blocks with continuous outer walls, and I gather that individuals own their own "chunk" of it. So that, for example, one chunk may be beautifully repaired and restored and another chunk adjoining/attached to it may need some work (while still looking ten times better than a lot of the buildings in Sliema). Mostly it looks really cool. The residents are allowed to drive their cars in, but not the tourists, so there is mostly foot traffic.

One of the shops I roamed in for a bit today is Mdina Glass. It sells art glass--decorative glass--vases and bowls and dishes of all different colors; clocks whose glass faces display Maltese scenes: glass "canvases", as it were, of Madonna and Child. Mostly I wanted to see the inside of the shop which itself would make (and probably once did make) a beautiful home: two floors connected by a triple-turning staircase; big windows letting in lots of light; high ceilings; and the natural insulating capabilities of limestone.

**

Today's trip to Mdina and Rabat, my third, was the first on which I have gone "directly" to the two cities, rather than stopping and getting off the bus somewhere else along the way. It was not exactly a marvelous experience. Because of the state of Malta's roads, and the necessity of a bus to make frequent stops, and probably because the bus was taking a weaving route to cover a certain number of cities, the ride to Mdina took 50-55 minutes, and the distance--I would guess, as the crow flies--is probably no more than eight miles. The return trip was shorter--only 45 minutes!--but I spent 30 of those minutes standing because a tour group of German high school students and sponsors (I think I heard the leader tell the bus driver there were 22 of them) were on the bus as well, making it more than normally packed. And in case you are wondering, German high school students don't offer their seats to standing adults. (Nor, for that matter, despite the 200+ years of Malta being ruled by knights, does chivalry seem to be alive among adult men either. I've let women take my seat, but the practice doesn't seem common.) If one is sitting, one can read or watch the towns and countryside passing by; if one is standing and lurching, it's pretty dang hard to read, and the angle that one sees out the windows doesn't offer much of a view either.

**

My Maltese-Australian friends have booked themselves a week in Tunis. They talked to a travel office that offered a package including airfare, one week's accommodation in a resort with golf course, and two meals a day for 140 Maltese lira a piece. At 4 Australian dollars to one lira, they'll be spending a bit more $1000 Australian for the week, but for a couple that's not bad at all. They'll be doing this the first week I'll be in Gozo.

**

June 1st and 2nd are the birthdays of three of my cousins: Cheryl, Holly and Danell. I hope you all have great birthdays and a great year to come. (My sister Jane's birthday is Sunday, but don't tell her I told you.)

Cheerio!

Music at St Catherine of Italy and HMV

May 31, 2007

I've ridden the shuttle ferry from Sliema to Valletta several times now and walked up into (or down from) the city by passing through this arched gateway, but this is the first time I've consciously noticed the dating plaque on the surface inside:



Yep, it says 1568, only three years after the "Great Siege" when the Knights of St John and reinforcements from the mainland fought off an Ottoman fleet.

When one walks up toward the center of Valletta from the dock where the shuttle comes and goes, one of the streets that's easy to use is St John Street, or Triq San Gwann (I think I spelled that correctly). As one climbs this street from sea level where the dock is, up to the hillcrest in the center of the city, one passes the Hollywood Market, which I've mentioned before; Caffé Café, where I've had tea once; and this small record shop:



The Antonio D'Amato Record Shop has been in existence (whether in this exact spot or not, I don't know) since 1885, as the engraved stone on the entrance floor notes. It warms my heart to see a real record store like this, even if, once one is inside, most of the "pop" is the same old radio hoohah once seems to hear everywhere in the world. For a store of its size, it has a fairly sizeable classical collection, a great deal of it on the "budget" Naxos label, and on some out of the way shelves to the left of the entrance, I saw the tell-tale spines of LPs! The shop also sells DVDs, which is probably essential for its business nowadays. I took a photo of the front of the store, below these signs, but once again my camera program is balking at downloading the image. It shows the label at the top of the main window which says HMV & MGM Records. I have to wonder how old that label must be if MGM Records would be considered a draw to customers!

**

I attended another performance at St Catherine of Italy after lunch. Marita Bezzina, a Maltese operatic soprano, sang 10 different composers' settings for "Ave Maria," accompanied by Michelle Cachia Castelletti on harpsichord. Castelletti was supposed to play the beautiful small organ there in the church, but the hostess said it was not functioning properly: one of the stops was not working, she presumed because the variations in the weather here in the past few days.

It was a lovely concert, featuring both the -- to me -- most famous "Ave Maria" settings, those of Schubert and Bach/Gounod, but also containing settings by Verdi, Fenech (a Maltese composer), and Mascagni, whose name I didn't recognize, but whose tune I did. After the performance I asked Bezzina if it has been performed with another set of lyrics, and she told me no, but that it comes from Mascagni's opera Il cavalieri rusticane (I swear I've misspelled that). I'm pretty sure a performance of it is on the Movies Go to the Opera CD from the early '90s, and I'd imagine quite a few of you would recognize it too. It's quite a remarkably lovely tune. Bezzina said it's often performed by orchestras as an instrumental piece.

While listening to the concert, I worked on this sketch, inspired by a section of the fortifications down by the shuttle dock. You will note that I have wrongly arched the church roof seen through the window! Ah, me, perspective!



The ugly mess on the row of stones under the window is my attempt to reflect the unusual weathering on many of the stones here, which makes them look somewhat like the coral the rock may once have been.

**

I had a post-concert snack in the Upper Barakka Gardens and got into a conversation with a mother and grown son from one of the suburbs of London. I gathered that this is their first visit to Malta, unlike most of the English I have talked to here. They are quite enjoying themselves and recommended that I take one of the harbour tours, which I have not done so far. The mother also mentioned vacations to the Channel Islands with her children when they were young. Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, is on my itinerary for July as I go from England to France.

**

A pleasant (though very small) surprise when I checked my credit card billing this afternoon: the dollar has inched up (actually it's more like it's millimetered up) against the Maltese lira since I arrived two weeks ago. My bill for my final 15 days here at the Europa, which I'd imagined would be something like $383-384 when converted from lira to dollars, was actually a little under $381. Ah, the small joys of retirees!

**

How the other 1/10th of 1 percent live:



**

I have now been in Malta longer than I have been anywhere except the United States. I was in Canada for a week in '76; the Bahamas for a week in '79; Germany and Austria for 6 or 7 days in '86 (sponsoring high school students!); and my visits to Mexico have been only just over the border, and never for a night. The cruise was 16 nights, and tonight is my 18th night in Malta. I wonder how to "place" the cruise: some of the time we were in US waters; sometimes in Portuguese, Spanish, French or Italian waters; and some of the time in international waters. What do I call it: dislanded? After Texas, I have spent the most time in Arizona (where I lived for one school year and which I have visited several times). After that, it's probably California, Florida, and New Mexico in a pretty tight cluster. And then, I reckon, it's Malta. An odd thought.