May 17, 2012: Msida Bastion Historic Garden and Ta 'Qali

Finally today I made it to the Msida Bastion Historic Garden (not plural after all), just down the road from the hotel. What a lovely place it is. Since it only began its life as a burial ground in 1806, under the British rule, I suppose that for the Knights of St John the area was simply a level space on the defensive walls. It apparently sustained at least one direct hit during World War II and was in terrible shape, a true chaos, when concerned folks began restoring it and beautifying it as a garden 20-odd years ago. The work is in progress, as I could see by the partial completion of a walkway along the parapet (is that the right word?) overlooking the water, near which limestone paving stones were neatly stacked.

The elderly woman who met me at the door is one of the volunteers who operates the garden, and not long after I began to roam the place, I saw her with another elderly woman, both of them there to work, I gathered. I saw plants in pots at one point, waiting to be put into the ground. Although it was officially full in 1856, there is a new tombstone for a young man who died in 1857, and there are some more recent cremation burials on the grounds. Much of the space itself is open grass, and there are many broken tombstones lined up against the various walls, so I can only assume that the cemetery was in such battered shape that they may not know where some of the stones belong! Or perhaps they're only awaiting their time to be restored to place. Here's a view from the cemetery, looking more or less north to Marsamxett Harbour and (I think) Manoel Island.

And here's a look confined to the cemetery itself.

It really is one of the loveliest gardens I've seen in Malta and deserves to be more widely known. I would not have known of it if I hadn't seen the sign right near the hotel entrance, and as I left, I spoke to a woman coming in who said that she is Maltese and lives in Valletta and yet never knew of it until a local television channel did a piece on it just this week. This interesting tomb is of a man who died in 1826, but the plaque at the very base of his tomb was added in 2003 by a prefectory of the Knights Templar named in his honor. I don't know what kind of claim current Templars make to the historic order, officially disbanded in the 14th century.

And this tombstone, in German, is from the 1840s. It reads, as well as I can make out, that Friedrich Schuettenhelm lies here far from the fatherland and from his (something) elders and sisters, and that everyone who loved him bids him an early goodbye. (Something like that, anyway?)

Another interesting tomb is of a man named John Tombs, and yet another commemorates a soldier who survived the Siege of Sebastopol and three other sieges, being dangerously wounded in the last of the four, but who drowned while bathing near Ft Ricasoli here in Malta.

It is a remarkable place, well worth the visit.

This photo shows a partially wrecked fishing boat which is mounted on the hotel grounds. See the guardian eyes on the prow!

I also did some shopping today, buying an early birthday present for one sister, not finding the right scarf (or something similar) for another sister, and serving as the middleman by buying a small piece of glass sculpture for another sister. I also found some Maltese bus toys which my two youngest nephews will be glad to see at Christmas time.

MALTESE WEATHER REPORT SO FAR:

Amount of sunshine: Very good indeed

Temperatures: Perfectly acceptable

Wind: Absolutely dreadful. Today may be the worst day so far, but the caretaker at the cemetery told me it is supposed to die down for a few days before roaring back. I hope it dies down soon. She also told me that before this latest bout of wind had started there had been two beautiful weeks, so I may have caught the very tail end of that nice spell last weekend.

May 16, 2012 (beginning with some leftovers from May 15)

I was wrong again about the Msida Bastion Historic Gardens. After posting Tuesday afternoon and having a bit of a rest, I headed off toward the Gardens thinking they would surely be open till 5, at least. But no! They are in fact only open three mornings a week for 2 and a half hours each time (and on the first Sunday in addition). I will have to wait till Thursday or Saturday to check them out. And they are not in any conventional sense gardens: they are a cemetery. The oldest known grave dates to 1806 and the last to 1856, by which time the place was full! Now I'd really like to have a bit of time to wander inside.

Back in Valletta I had a supper of "turkey ham," potato sticks and Coca-Cola. And I have a sad bit of news for my friend Debbie, all the way to Egypt on the ship by now. It has been a cause of grieving for her not to be able to find Dr Pepper in Europe, BUT this afternoon I saw it in Valletta, at the little take-out-only "sweets and sustaining" cafe where I bought my Coca-Cola. She should have come to Malta instead of staying on the ship, I suppose! Perhaps I shouldn't tell her?

Both pigeons and cats are in evidence at the Upper Barrakka Gardens, but dogs are forbidden. After finishing my meal, I took this photo, looking down into the saluting battery where my shadow appears in almost the exact center of the photo. This is probably as close to a photo of me as you are going to get on this blog!

And this is a shot looking from the Gardens into the densely packed cityscape of Valletta.

The real May 16:

Once again I had morning tea at Marks & Spencer, followed by more drawing time in the Upper Barrakka Gardens. Ship day-tours were much in evidence today as two cruise ships were in the harbor--the Costa Luminosa and the MSC Splendora. The Splendora tour members wore more obvious stickers on their shirts, so maybe they get lost more easily than Costa cruisers. I heard one Splendora guide speaking in Spanish, but otherwise I couldn't tell the nationality of the groups. Later in the day I also ran into a group of Belgian high school students on a week's break from classes.

At 12:30 I attended the music performance at St James Cavalier, operatic vocalist Charles Vincenti accompanied by Maria Elena Farrugia on the piano. He had a fine, powerful voice and the performance was quite good. (I drew of course while listening.) Except for a s0ng from Porgy and Bess, all of his selections were from European masters like Rossini and Pucccini.

I had part two of my lunch after the performance, back at Upper Barrakka. Within two minutes of my opening my tuna can, the local cat was on point, just staring at me. The pigeons of course are always milling about, but they weren't interested in tuna. This photo comes from the top of the walls, inside the Gardens, looking down at construction equipment. You should be able to gauge, by the size of the office/trailer at the bottom, how high the walls are here. This is another dead end section, where the walls turn sharply and soldiers on both sides of the gap could fire down upon any invaders below.

After lunch, I visited the Malta At War Museum, which has been redone since I first went there in 2007. The organization is better now, and the descriptive wall placards give a good sense not only of Malta's role in World War II but also of the European war in general and of earlier events of the 20th century which had a direct bearing upon Malta. I had not remembered that FDR visited Malta before going on to Yalta, though of course Eisenhower was here on the way from North Africa to Sicily and the invasion of Italy. Nor had I remembered that Mussolini lived two years after being removed from power in 1943. It was also interesting to read that when the British gave Malta the beginnings of self-rule in the 1910s, there were two major parties, one of which wanted English and Maltese as the national languages, with the other wanting Italian. I suppose it's not at all surprising, given how long Italian-speaking knights had been in power here. And the Italian connection led also to some Maltese having Fascist sympathies in the years between World Wars I and II.

Flash photography isn't permitted in the museum, but I was able to get a (slightly distorted) photo of this drawing of men making coffins, though I didn't see any specific explanation of the context.

There's also a small air raid shelter included as part of the exhibits now, and it's bigger than my RV! I tried to get a photo of it, but there was simply not enough light for the photo to be of any use.

On my way back to the center of the town from the museum I took this photo of one of the guards outside the Parliament gates.

The weather, as you can tell from my photos, has been mostly sunny, but the wind again today was just brutal. Unfortunately the best parks/gardens are exposed--up on the city walls where every bit of wind hits them!

The question of the day is: Where is Lou Ann? Did she leave for Europe on Monday, or is she leaving tomorrow?

May 15, 2012: Music at the Oratory of St Francis

Today started off with beautiful sunshine, and a bit of chill wind, but is now mostly cloudy. In a few hours it may change again. Who knows?

I visited Marks & Spencer's cafe for the first time today and had a cup of tea and an iced pink donut while reading from DH Lawrence and browsing the local newspaper. There is a small tide of Libyan refugees still coming into the country because of the unsettled conditions there. May's total so far is about 250.

After morning tea, I went up to the Hastings Gardens, on the sort of northeast corner of the city, and had a can of tuna and an apple before doing some drawing. There is a monument here--undated but I don't remember it from before--from the Armenian-Maltese community to the Maltese people at large, thanking them for taking in Armenian refugees in 1375 (!) and 1915. Here's my not-terribly-to-scale drawing of it.

I also took a couple of photos here, looking northwest from the walls toward Marsamxett Harbour. In this one you can see how incredibly high the walls are here, and how they sort of loop in on themselves in spots like this. Imagine that I'm standing at a kind of dead end with the walls right in front of me and going out from me on both sides. You can see the blue of the harbor water, some boats in the marina, and the crowded urban areas just across from Valletta. Those high-rises in the distance are maybe Gzira, but I couldn't say for sure. to the right of the photo back there would be Sliema where I stayed on my first trip here.

At 12:30 there was a performance in the Oratory of St Francis on Republic Street, so I went to that for 5 euros. It featured a Maltese soprano Marita Bezzina and a Maltese pianist Ramona Zammit Formosa. It may be that I have heard Formosa before at St Catherine's or St James Cavalier, but I'm not positive. Both of them have performed in many countries and both have studied in Malta and elsewhere. Today's program included Schubert's "Ave Maria" as well as the one by Mascagni, which apparently comes from the opera Cavallieri Rusticana (or something like that) because the tune is quite familiar. Perhaps the melody also serves in the overture. They also performed "O Mio Bambino Caro", "Panis Angelicus" and (piano only) the theme from Brother Sun, Sister Moon, written by Donovan of "Sunshine Superman" fame. During one of the songs Bezzina hit and held a note so long and high, in a room relatively small, that I almost expected the two windows to shatter. It was quite impressive. There were piano only interludes three times during the show, giving the soprano a chance to rest her voice, I presume. Here's the drawing I worked in while listening, and then touched up a bit while sitting on a bench outside St John's Co-Cathedral.

Walking down the street in Malta, one can hear quite a few languages, but one mostly hears Maltese. I'm not a statistician, to be sure, but my experience tells me that the Maltese language is in no danger of dying out. And perhaps because the Maltese spend a lot of time outside and have to compete with ambient noise, or perhaps simply because the so-called Mediterranean character is more expressive than the American, the language "feels" very vociferous and full of emotion, somewhat in the same way that people say that German feels harsh. One of these days one of you will have to decide to visit, and hire me on as your tour guide!

May 14, 2012: Out and About

Woke up to clouds and a cool wind this morning. (Actually of course I didn't wake up to a cool wind since I wasn't sleeping outside…) The sun came back as the day wore on, and the wind stiffened. I'd guess it was at 25 mph, maybe more, anywhere a building wasn't blocking it. I took this photo at Sliema, which maybe gives a bit of an idea of how choppy the water was, even inside the harbor.

I went over to Sliema because it was time to visit Books Plus, as I'd finished Wilkie Collins' Hide and Seek last night; because I wanted to stop in at the supermarket and get some foodstuffs not easily available in Valletta; and because I thought I might even have a baked potato at one of the cafes I visited on my last trip. At the bookstore, I finally selected The Virgin & the Gypsy and Other Stories by DH Lawrence, whom I haven't much read. My baked potato run was a bust because the cafe is gone: the building it was in is under renovation. I also couldn't spot the kiosk on the seawall that I used to frequent but couldn't tell, because of construction, if it was gone entirely or being upgraded. Got several things at Tower Supermarket (which I've been using since my first trip here) including some sliced turkey for a quick lunch and (get ready to laugh) a jar of pureed carrots and potatoes (i.e. baby food!) The puree wasn't exactly tasty, but I figure it can take the place of an apple for today.

I also visited the ritzy new shopping mail at Tigne Point, called (quite original) The Point Shopping Mall. Tigne has been undergoing reconstruction and renovation since before I first came to Malta in 2007. The mall is quite nice and glitzy, four levels around an open atrium, not enormous but far and away the largest shopping center I've seen in Malta. It even has a Debenhams (from the UK) and things like Nine West. Cinnabon is there too--Cinnabon seems to be everywhere now. There's also a supermarket there called Chain, which I'm guessing comes from Italy, based on the signage inside.

This photo was also taken along the waterfront in Sliema of a young man doing a chin-up on a metal pipe of some sort right by the water.

After a quick stop back at the hotel to drop things off and have a bit of post-lunch snack, I took the bus out to Ta 'Qali, the crafts village. I wanted to have a look at some decorative glass there, but also to visit the American Embassy and see if they could help me with my passport issue. This was my first visit to the new Embassy out there. It's quite a secure little compound with all sorts of guarded doors, metal detectors, and inspection wands. They weren't able to do anything, but one of the people I talked to told me the exit stamp from Fiumicino Airport should do the trick and keep me from having to go through the rigamarole of being part of yet another complaint against the Italian authorities for being so lax. I hope so.

Back in the village itself I found a couple of small silver objects which I will not detail further as they will be part of a birthday gift for someone who's probably going to read this, and also had a muffin and a cup of tea before getting back on the bus. The wind was really stiff and chilly coming out of the north or northwest as I waited at the bus stop.

Back in Valletta, I visited my old friends at the Hollywood Confectionary, whom I've been shopping with since 2007. Ham, potato sticks, and Perrier this time. They estimated they've visited London four times since I was here 2 years ago, and also Venice. The grocery business must be good! I also mentioned possibly going to St John's Co-Cathedral tomorrow, and the owner suggested I go to mass one day instead of paying to visit during the week!

I keep forgetting to mention the issue of the Lascaris War Rooms, a historic site I haven't visited on either of my previous trips. I mention this because one is likely to see a sign pointing to the war rooms from virtually anywhere in Valletta and the signs certainly don't seem to point in the same direction. According to my map, they are on the Grand Harbour near the southwest corner of the Valletta walls, and I'm thinking I've seen the entrance at least once, without ever going in.

I've also forgotten to mention two couples I met on Saturday, both of whom had been on the Crown Princess. One couple rode just behind me on the bus to the airport. They are both retired school teachers from New Jersey--the husband a band-director, the wife an elementary teacher. NJ must pay its teachers better than TX because they have been to every continent except Antarctica and South America, and they were flying out of Rome to Istanbul on Saturday to spend a few days there before getting on a much smaller ship--90 passengers with 80 crew members (!)--to spend several days sailing around the Greek islands and spending nights ashore at various locations. Sounds amazing.

The other couple I didn't see until we were waiting for our luggage at the Malta airport. Yes, I wasn't the only person from the ship flying to Malta. They retired from Britain to Malta five years ago and are living on one of the floors of a hotel in Sliema overlooking the harbor. The husband said they bought "the floor" and finished it out, but the floors of that hotel look so large from the street that I'm thinking surely they can't have bought the whole floor, but merely a section of it. But what do I know? I also talked a bit on the bus to a woman from England whose husband is Maltese, and she said they have been living on the island now for 18 years. Apparently he was in the UK for about 25 or 30 years before that. She said it's get a little claustrophobic here sometimes, a kind of "It's Sunday again; what will we do this time?" I can imagine that's true since the island is so small.

May 13, 2012: Mother's Day (US)

Today has been a take-it-easy day. I slept 10 or 11 hours and didn't get up till almost 9. Even after so many hours in bed, it seems that the nicest minutes of all are still those between the buzzings of the snooze alarm. I had oatmeal and tea for breakfast, two teacups full of each. The oatmeal is Jordans Quick & Creamy Porridge, bought yesterday at Wembley Market in town. I fix it in the room with the electric kettle. After breakfast I took a short walk around the grounds and did a few exercises in the fitness center before cleaning up. Then I sat in the lobby and did a little bit of Internet work.

I went into Valletta about 11 and saw, happily, that Wembley was open. Unfortunately I decided not to stop in there until I was on my way back out of the city and by then it was closed. Only open 3 hours on Sunday. Rats. I had part one of my lunch at Cafe Deux Baronnes, tucked at the end of a short street that dead-ends into an entrance to the Saluting Battery at the Upper Barrakka Gardens. Deux Baronnes' tables are all outside and overlook the Grand Harbour (British spelling). While I was enjoying my fresh, hot fries and pot of tea, the cannons at the Battery were fired (noon daily)--it's quite a "concussion" they make. After eating I went up to Upper Barrakka, one of my favorite places in Valletta, and spent 30 minutes or so working on a sketch of part of the gardens. Then I roamed over to the arts centre and wandered several of their galleries. The current exhibit contains a lot of prints, etchings and pencil work, but also paintings, so I couldn't really detect any particular theme. There were works on display by artists whom I'd never heard of, as well as those of Wyndham Lewis, Augustus John, and Lucian Freud. Also a series of etchings by David Hockney, from the '60s, which reminded me very much of Edward Gorey's work. Perhaps as many as ten pieces were by Madame Veronde, whom I'm totally ignorant of.

I then wandered more or less northward, passing down part of Merchants Street, which was completely under reconstruction on my first trip here, open in 2010, and now "embellished" down the center with bench squares which have planters in the center and, about once a block, the outdoor dining area of a restaurant. It's a great improvement on the dust and noise of '07. I walked past St John's Co-Cathedral and down St John Street to stop in at Hollywood Grocery to visit with my old friends from my previous visits. But it was closed. I don't know if it's always closed on Sunday or if it too shut down at 1. I'll check in again in a day or two. Since both it and Wembley were shut, my chances of finding some ham or turkey slices for part two of lunch were gone so I got a big croissant at a patisserie near the gates, and an apple for later. I also took this photo of the construction right inside the gates. That's St Catherine's tiny dome to the left in the photo, and the girders of (I think) the new Parliament building on the right. In the bottom right corner you might be able to make out a pylon looking drawing which I think may be part of the new open gate for the city.

I thought you might also want to see a photo of the hotel I'm staying at, so here it is:

And here is what you see when you step out the front entrance of the hotel, the Msida Bastion Gardens, which date back to 1806, according to the signs. (NOTE: I was wrong. Misreading signs again, an easy thing to do in Malta. The Msida Bastion Gardens are farther down the street. It's a good thing I don't have to drive here, or I would be perpetually lost. I canNOT figure out their directional signs.)

The hotel has a Floriana address, and Msida is yet another of the small towns along Marsamxett Harbour, so maybe the Msida Garden name goes back to an earlier designation connected to the fortifications.

I hope all of you in the U.S. are having a wonderful Mother's Day. It's still morning for all of you as I write, though it's almost 4 in the afternoon here.

May 8, 2012: Alicante, Spain

Our tour guide was a nice informative guy, but the tour itself was a little too disjointed to be really satisfactory: too much driving time, not enough time on the ground. We saw the old city center of Alicante, some of which is quite nice; went up to the Caves of Canelobre in the mountains outside the city; and visited the Castillo de Santa Barbara (St Barbara's Castle) on a high mountain right in the city. The Castillo is the old Moorish fortified town, with significant Christian additions done later on. Before the time of the Moors, the town had been on the low seaside flats below, which is also of course where the city is today. This part of Spain was the last to fall to Franco in the Spanish Civil War of the '30s, and a part of the Castillo was used as a prison by both sides of the conflict, at one time or another. Our guide showed us a section of the Castillo where released prisoners carved their names (and often the dates of their release) in the stone flooring of a plaza that overlooks the town and sea below. It's a really impressive fortress, with a great view and beautiful architectural features. Unfortunately we didn't get to see a lot of it from within because our time was so limited. The drive up to it, and down from it, was really something, though, a very narrow winding road which enormous buses nevertheless go up and down regularly. Our driver was quite skillful. We discovered the wifi opportunities at the pier just outside the ship when we returned from the tour, and so I got a little bit of catching up done, including posting to the blog, which you of course know by now!

May 9, 2012: Barcelona, Spain

I slept to a decent hour--8 a.m.--and had a leisurely breakfast, walk, shower and post-breakfast--before taking the shuttle into town to do some walking and shopping. None of you will be surprised that, of the three and a half hours I spent in Barcelona, I spent about 2 in bookstores. I came away with three books--two original Spanish publications, Oscuro bosque oscuro (which more or less means In a dark dark wood) by Jorge Volpi of Mexico and En salvaje compania (In wild company) by Manuel Rivas of Spain--and one translation from the German--De la vida de un inutil (About the life of a useless man) by Joseph von Eichendorff. The most interesting of the bookstores was the one I visited last--unfortunately--knowing nothing of it ahead of time: La Central. It had a large selection of fiction which I could have spent much more time in if I hadn't already been so long in the other two stores! It's the one where I found Eichendorff, and they had other books by authors I'm interested (but can get easily in English) like W.G. Sebald and Joseph Roth. As far as I know, none of the three I bought is available in English translation, although there may be a very old translation of the Eichendorff as it's 19th century.

I put a few miles on my feet of course, walking the length of Las Ramblas, a famous series of streets, each called La Rambla (Something), with a wide pedestrian median between two fairly narrow one-way streets. Lots of restaurants and shops along both sides, with kiosks appealing to tourists and seating areas for various restaurants in the median. I had a cookie and a cup of tea in Starbucks on Las Ramblas as I went "up" and then fries and a Coke in Burger King after I left my second bookstore. When I went wandering off Las Ramblas, ambling toward the church of Sant Pau (which I also remembered from 2007) I came across the Museum of Contemporary Art with a large abstract sculpture on the plaza outside and some interesting graffiti on a wall across the street. I made my way through some basically residential streets, with high-rise apartments on both sides of the narrow way, and saw a brightly painted playground on an empty lot where a multi-story building used to be. Clever use of a fairly small space. This enormous cat sculpture was in the shade in Las Ramblas, with a young couple having their lunch underneath.

When I got back to the bus pickup area near the harbor and climbed on, someone called my name, and there was Debbie who had left her day-tour at its end so that she could try to find a good wifi location. No luck for her, unfortunately. She is traveling with her new iPad and has hardly been able to use it at all because somehow her order for 4G in Europe, which she placed before she left Texas, didn't get processed correctly. At least she can download her photographs into it from the camera, and work on writing up her experiences.

May 10, 2012: Cassis, France

Today Debbie and I both took the bus tour to Cassis, a small town on the coast to the east of Marseille. We spent almost two hours on the bus getting there, because the tour guide took us through the heart of Marseille and along the coastal road most of the way so that we could see more of the sights. There is an enormous cathedral in the heart of Marseille, built of alternating reddish and cream-colored layers of stone. I think the guide said it is second in size (in France) only to Notre Dame. There are also old fortifications guarding the harbor, including those on the small island where Dumas had the Count of Monte Cristo imprisoned. There are lots of really striking jagged hill- and mountaintops--reminiscent in many ways of the Big Bend area of Texas, though with more greenery--and, not far from Cassis is Cape Canaille, which is--if I understood the guide correctly--the highest vertical drop (or fjord, as he had it) in Europe. Once again, I think many of us were amazed at the roads these enormous tour buses manage to make their way on.

Cassis itself wasn't terribly impressive to visit, though apparently it is quite a summer hotspot: a nice beach, lots of boats, sunshine. The median income must be quite high here. There were vineyards in the area too, so I suppose there is a lot of locally produced wine. Debbie and I mostly wandered along the streets around the bay/harbor there, taking photos and looking around. For 60 cents Euro you can use the clean public restrooms (I know you'll all want to know that), and you can have an inexpensive munch after a visit to the Petit Casino grocery store (supermarche) where you can get Lay's Barbecue Potato Chips (Debbie did), fresh fruit, and galettes bretonnes (butter cookies--I got those). We had a little semi-picnic on a little plaza, then wandered a bit more. Most of the eateries seemed to be geared more to full-scale meals or ice cream than to nice little coffee shop/bakeries, so I didn't have a cup of tea and a pastry.

Here's a photo of the cool (and pretty new-looking) lighthouse. Look carefully and you can see a man sculling at the bottom.

We returned to Marseille mostly by freeway and got back about 1, after which it was time for "actual" lunch on the ship, working on photos and blog entries and so forth. Later this afternoon it's "classical cocktails" in the Wheelhouse Bar with the Polonia Quartet on tap.

May 11, 2012: Pisa, Italy

Today is my friend Tim's birthday (48th, hehe), but I won't be able to email him and tell him happy birthday until tomorrow at the earliest. So I hope he's having a wonderful day. At the moment it is, I believe, about 6:45 a.m. in Dallas, so I suppose he's getting ready for work. Happy birthday, Tim!

I took the ship's tour to Pisa today, and saw the Miracle Field (or Campo Mirabile, if I spelled that right). It's not the site of a miracle in a normal religious sense, but rather the area just inside the medieval walls where the Duomo (cathedral), Baptistry and Bell Tower (the famous Leaning Tower) are all located. Also here is the cemetery, the walled Campo Santo (holy ground) which would have been fun to wander, I think, if I'd had more time. The ancient western gate opened right into this area, but it's not used now--instead we came in through another gate underneath a Medici shield--just a few hundred yards over. The newer parts of the city are outside the gates, which do not completely survive. The ancient Jewish cemetery is right outside the western gate, and just barely left of center in this photo you can see a section of the old walls. As our guide Pierino reminded us, Jews weren't allowed to be buried inside the city walls in centuries past.

The Miracle Field area was quite crowded with tourists, as you can imagine, and more than once I saw someone striking either the "holding up the tower" or "pushing over the tower" pose that is much a part of tourist visits here. Pierino also pointed out to us that the leaning tower is not just leaning--it is also sort of curved, because the tilted sinking of the tower became apparent even as it was being built and the builders had to adjust some of the higher stories because of the unstable ground. So the roofline of some of the floors is not actually parallel to the floor. The tower is the bell tower of the city, and there are seven bells near the top of the tower which can be seen through their arched openings. It's still allowed to walk up to the top, but you have to buy a timed ticket and go in at a certain time, so I didn't even look into it. In this photo below you see the tower just to the right of the cathedral, the Duomo (dome), and most of the dome structure is visible too in this photo. The entrance is at the opposite end of the cathedral, farther to the left than this photo goes. The building of the cathedral began in 1064, and the architecture reflects the Romanesque tradition, but also Moorish and Byzantine elements.

The city's enormous baptistry is just a bit to the west (I think) of the church, and it too is domed. Pierino said that, until 1913, it was the only place in the city someone could be baptized into the Catholic Church here. This photo shows a storm drain outside the Baptistry. The Baptistry is an amazing, intricately decorated building, and I think this lovely storm drain is worthy of the building!

After our walk from the bus parking lot into the old walled city, and our tour of the Miracle Field, Pierino set us free for about an hour to wander. Will it surprise you that I went first to a coffee shop and had a cup of tea and a cornetto integrale (an "integral" croissant)? The croissant was excellent--with just a bit of sweetness to it--and the tea was very good too--a French brand I've never heard of--Dammann Brothers. I had my snack standing at the front counter in the Italian fashion, and then visited the stylish WC (water closet) before heading back out to explore. Mostly I roamed the large open area of the Miracle Field, but I also set off down a couple of side streets, a little less crowded, and saw a "living statue" just off the main road, all decked out like the Renaissance and standing strikingly still (though I did see him turn his head).

Policemen were in prominent evidence, I suppose because of the tendencies of pickpockets to target tourists, and I'm sure that made most of us feel a little better. Though we had fog on the drive over to Pisa, the weather otherwise was quite sunny, and it actually got warm enough that I could walk about in just a shirt without a windbreaker. Such an occurrence has been astonishingly rare on this trip. I have little doubt this has been the warmest day since leaving Florida, or possibly even Texas.

May 12, 2012: The Cruise Ends

I am exhausted! The cruise ships treat you great while you're en route, but once the final morning arrives they can't wait to get you off the ship. They delivered me to Rome's Fiumicino Airport at 7:10 this morning for an 11 o'clock flight. I might have had the great advantage of arriving 15 minutes later if my luggage tag hadn't had the wrong group number on it, but even so I was still up at 4;30 and having breakfast at 4:45 a.m., an hour which shouldn't even exist in the conscious mind. Once again, no one from the Italian government had stamped our passports when we got off the ship, and this time, even though I argued for 10 minutes with the police at the airport (I had plenty of time, remember), they adamantly refused to stamp my passport showing the date that I had entered the EU. Their excuse? I didn't enter at Fiumicino--I entered at the port. The fact that no one at the port did his/her job made no difference at all.

Why does this matter? Because Malta insists on a date-of-entry stamp on your passport when you get ready to depart the country. SO when I landed in Malta and got my bag, I went to a tourist information office to find out how I could get a stamp there so that I would have no trouble on the day of my departure week after next. And you can already guess my results, I bet. They adamantly refused to stamp my passport, telling me I would have to wait until the day I am leaving; check in at the airport; THEN, with boarding pass in hand, go to the immigration police and once again have them fill out all the paperwork complaining about Rome's refusal/negligence in re my passport stamp! This is incredibly frustrating. A hotel employee, when I checked in, recommended I talk to the American embassy and see if I can get the issue resolved ahead of time instead of having to add one more stress to a very early departure on May 24. Wish me luck.

On a more positive note, my sister Jane and my friend Lou Ann would be very pleased with my hotel accommodations this time: the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Floriana, the town which shares the peninsula with Valletta. I'm about a 6-8 minute walk from Valletta's entrance itself. The hotel (but not my room) overlooks Marsamxett Harbour and has some very pricey rooms. My room however faces the entrance. The hill the hotel is built upon is so steep that my room is ground floor on the entrance side, but sixth floor on the harbor side. It's certainly the swankest room I've ever stayed in on my own though even so the shower doesn't drain properly--I believe this is a characteristic of British and (former) British Commonwealth nations. The hotel's my splurge for this trip--not something I had originally planned, but something that developed as the pieces of the trip fell together.

The two biggest pieces of news here on the island are the championship season of the Valletta Football Club, which--I was told--still has one game to play but has already clinched the title. The city is celebrating.

Less pleasant for the moment, but perhaps more momentous, is that the old Valletta city gates, which date back to the British period, are gone. They are being replaced as part of a huge renovation project right inside the city walls: a new parliament, a new open air performance theater (to replace the opera house bombed in World War II), and a new city gate which will also be open at the top, doing away with the road that once ran along side the walls there. Needless to say this has messed up the first few blocks inside the city walls, at least to one side of the main road, but will, I suppose, be beautiful to look at at some point. I hate to see the main gates go, but it's high time that the performance hall was restored and the open plaza that's now vanishing was not particularly attractive either. There is also restoration going on at St Catherine's Church, where I have listened to so many musical performances in the past, so I won't be hearing any of those on this trip. Hopefully I'll be able to catch a couple of performances at St James Cavalier Center for Creativity and maybe even at one of the other churches which had posted an upcoming performance of "sacred and profane" vocal music. The only performance scheduled for Teatru Manoel, the knights' old theater, is tonight, and if I tried to go to that I'd certainly fall asleep. I hope to be in bed by 8:30, which will be 16 hours after I got up this morning. Wish me deep sleep tonight.

May 7, 2012: The crossing ends as we make land at Gibraltar

Here's what I wrote on April 28, the day we embarked: "Finally! We got to board the ship around 2 p.m. and get ready to leave gloomy, cloud-covered Ft Lauderdale behind." Unfortunately, we left only Ft Lauderdale and not the gloom behind. This has been far and away the most cloud-covered and chilliest of my three transatlantic crossings. Not until yesterday--the eighth of the voyage--did we have a truly sunny day, and even then there were clouds a great deal of the time. Sunday the 29th was warm, but beginning on Monday the 30th, the winds turned terribly cool. At least a couple of day our highs were only in the 50s: February in Texas!

One of the great treats of the crossing was getting to hear the Polonia String Quartet several times, playing a mix of contemporary and classical pieces. I did several sketches of them and passed five along--one of each member and one group drawing--and they seemed pleased to have them. I've also enjoyed sitting in for parts of a few of the art auctions. The most notable purchase I was "in on" was a Rembrandt engraving which went for more than $14,000. Clearly most of my fellow passengers are not ex-school teachers on pensions. The range of works offered for sale is fairly broad but the "serious" end of the spectrum--prints or engravings by Rembrandt, Picasso, Dali and Chagall--is pretty limited. Most of the works are by contemporary artists in popular veins. Yes, even Thomas Kincade. (Did I spell that correctly?)

I've also enjoyed a couple of movies--Midnight in Paris, which was just as delightful the second time, and My Week with Marilyn, which I hadn't seen before. My Week was more serious than I expected it to be.

My niece Daphanie's birthday passed while I have been incommunicado. She will prefer that I not mention that she is now 45. Hehe.

Some of you (especially Cindy S. of Dallas) will be mightily concerned about my culinary selections. They have included ham, turkey, cold peas and corn (from the salad bar), oatmeal (of course!), bagel, apples, potatoes fried, mashed and baked, stewed carrots, rolls, brownies, cookies, soft serve vanilla ice cream and gelato, and lots and lots of hot tea.

I've done a good bit of drawing while on the ship, not just the Polonia Quartet, but also versions of people on deck and even one drawing of part of the ship. Here's a photo of a sunbathing women with painted toenails.

We have had 6 time changes in the 8 days of the crossing, as well as the time change I made coming from Dallas to Ft Lauderdale. Holy cow! It's not jet lag, but it's ship-lag to be sure.

And today of course we finally came to land again. Normally I really enjoy the days at sea, but this time I didn't much because the weather was so uncharacteristically unconducive to being on deck. Hopefully from here on out, things will look up in that department. I've named this crossing "The Voyage of the Damned," owing first of all to the weather, but also to the fact that norovirus appeared on board about 3 days out into the voyage. And then yesterday we had a bit of excitement, if that's the word, when we lost all power for a few minutes! I was sitting on deck, fairly well screened from the wind, when everything went silent. The "outage" didn't last long, but it took a while for all of the engines to come back online, apparently. It was a little unnerving.

I made a ship-sponsored day tour this morning. We took in Europa Point, which is I believe the southernmost point of Europe. There's a mosque here, paid for by King Faud in the '90s, and a lighthouse. Our guide said there are about 2000 Muslims in Gibraltar. The total population is around 30,000. There is also a large Catholic church, a Church of Scotland, an Anglican church of course, and 4 synagogues. From Gibraltar you can glance across the harbor to Spain and across the Straits to Africa. It's been sunny today, so Africa is easily visible, but the wind is still too chilly for me. Maybe tomorrow we'll sweat!

We also visited St Michael's Caves, which have a performance "hall" inside them (with excellent acoustics), and stopped to see the Barbary apes. Perhaps this photo will amuse you.

After returning to the ship, I had a second breakfast (a waffle and a box of Froot Loops) and then walked back into town to sniff around and see the sights. Gibraltar is quite small, three square miles maybe, and the city center is compact and easy to stroll. Very "British" looking, to be sure, since the Brits have controlled it since 1704. Fish & chips, pubs, and so forth. I had a donut (which tasted very much like cake) from Gibraltar Confectionary and an actual Coca-Cola, for the first time since Florida (or Texas?) There is an enormous banner in the center of town, in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's 60th Jubilee this year and upon which she is called "Queen of Gibraltar," and quaintly named establishments such as The Angry Friar. I also saw the Cannon Hotel, which I had once planned to spend a few days in, five years ago, before I cut short the original "European adventure."

Well, we are now pulling out to sea again. I am hoping to get to bed earlier tonight. I've been a bit sleep-deprived for a few nights, first because of loud pounding noises coming from somewhere in the ship and waking me before dawn and next because of an early day tour today. Late last night they moved me to a different stateroom and plan to pull some panels off the wall in my old stateroom to see if they can find what the problem is. I was sad to leave my old steward behind, but I'm sure the new one will be fine.

PS: This is a quick update from Alicante, today's visit, where the pier has wifi just outside the ship. I'll write about Alicante later!