May 22, 2012: More music

A fairly easy day today after walking my legs off yesterday. Even my hips were starting to hurt by yesterday afternoon. It was also another very blustery and too chilly morning, though things seem to have improved a bit this afternoon.

I visited the Msida Bastion Historic Garden again and this time asked for the stone of Mikiel Vassalli, the "Father" of the Maltese Language. Not, of course, that he invented it, like Professor Zamenhof and Esperanto, but rather worked to make it a written and literary language. Or something like that. Anyway, he's buried in the Garden somewhere, but they don't seem to know exactly where, so there's a stone indicating that he and his wife are buried somewhere near. Here's the photo:

There are red and white geraniums at the gravesite, the colors of the Maltese flag, one of the women told me. So many of the stones are damaged that I asked her if it was all done during the World War II bombing or if it was partly vandalism. The latter, she said. It seems odd that the British would have just left it to decay, once it was full, since they were still running the island at the time, but I guess they did. She mentioned also that it was a Protestant cemetery--I suppose most of the other cemeteries in Malta are Catholic. The woman who answered my questions is British, but her husband is Maltese, though they met in England. She said she has lived in Malta since 1984. I would guess her to be 80-85 years old.

Here's a statue from the grounds, likewise damaged, but in that ancient Greek and "attractive" kind of way. You won't be able to tell from the photo, but the left foot is quite lovely!

After visiting the Garden, I went back by the hotel for my second windbreaker, which at the time might have become necessary.

There was a power outage for part of Valletta this morning--I don't know how widespread or how long it lasted. Marks & Spencer's cafe had power, and was swamped with people, perhaps because other cafes were out? I don't know. Since this is the second outage of the trip, I hope it's the last!

I had my lunch of ham, potato chips and part of a Coke in Hastings Garden, then hurried over to C. Camilleri & Sons confectionary for a post-lunch goody. I got a cream-filled croissant, which fortunately was more croissant than cream. (There wasn't a plain croissant on offer.) Camilleri has beautiful pastries as well as a broad selection of regular packaged snack foods, so it's definitely a place to visit in Malta. Those of you who can eat nuts and fruits could have a heyday here.

I made it back to the Oratory of St Francis in time for the 12:30 concert, today a performance of soprano Arienne Gaerty accompanied by pianist Ramona Zammit Formosa, who also played last week. It was another lovely concert, and quite full--about 75 people, I think, in a fairly small space. I had to sit on a side pew and draw from there. The older gentleman who sat down next to me asked to see my "masterpiece" once the show was over, so I showed it to him. He asked where I was from and we talked for a while, both there and as we both left Valletta. He is a Canadian Maltese, or a Maltese Canadian--a native Maltese who moved to Canada in his 20s and has lived there ever since. He and his wife are now back in Malta visiting, he said. He was interested in American politics, so we talked about that a bit too. He was glad to see that we had instituted health care reform. He also said that there aren't nearly as many Maltese in Canada as in Australia, when I told him that I had heard there were a great many. He said he gets a small Maltese pension as well as his Canadian pension because he worked for the Maltese government for several years before he immigrated to Canada.

Some general tips:

1. Go to Camilleri for treats.

2. If you're staying in Valletta and want grocery type items, you'll probably have to shop at The Wembley Store, which has a decent selection, but certainly nothing like Tower Supermarket in Sliema. Be warned also that you will not receive service with a smile. The Wembleyans seem to work hard to be unfriendly. My friends at the Hollywood Confectionary and Daily Needs are much nicer and friendlier, but they are more like a convenience store with a much more limited selection of goods.

3. Ill-mannered toddlers act the same in Malta as in the US, and their parents are equally oblivious in both places.

4. Don't come to Malta in May. Too windy, not warm enough. Malta is all about being outside, but being outside is no fun if dirt is constantly being blown in your face or you're constantly cold. I had thought that my 2010 trip was the anomaly, with 2007 the norm, but this trip proves the opposite. I got really lucky on my 2007 Atlantic crossing and Maltese trip. Chilly and windy is the norm, not the exception. "Fool me once, shame on you" and all that. My first few days here I used the hotel room AC almost all the time; since then I have it off a great deal of the time, and have wished on occasion to be able to turn on the heat. You all know how hotel rooms can be hot even when it's chilly outside, because they are so closed up. This hotel room is not hot.

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Well, I went back into town after writing the above, and I was wrong about the wind. It has not abated. Even so, I was able to sit out for a while at the Upper Barrakka and work on a drawing of an archway. The temperature had improved, I suppose because the morning clouds had mostly gone. It might have even been 75 degrees!

May 21, 2012: Roaring Wind but a Decent Amount of Sunlight

So it was supposed to be 77 in London today and 86 in Berlin. Here? Maybe 72. Sigh. I will never feel 80 degrees again.

I took two long walks today, from Floriana to Sliema, and from Sliema back to Floriana. Yesterday I had thought I might go back to the Tarxien Temples today, but when I got up to cloud cover and roaring wind, I changed my wind. At least, I thought, if I were walking to Sliema I could catch the next bus if it started to rain. As it turned out, though, the clouds were thinning to haze by about 9 and later we actually had true sunlight some of the time: along with 25-30 mph winds, of course.

I stopped off at Ta Braxia Cemetery on the morning walk and one of the workmen there unlocked the cemetery church for me to look at. It's quite a lovely small building, reminiscent of St Catherine's Church in Valletta, small and roundish. Then he recommended that I stop off at the cemetery just a couple of blocks away and gave me directions. So I felt that I ought to do so, but first, on walking out the lower gate at Ta Braxia, I caught a glimpse of a young but quite wide-eyed kitten and stopped to look, then was startled almost into a jump when a full-grown cat (the kitten's mother?) sped off right in front of me. I can't decide if Lou Ann would be pleased that Malta is so tolerant of its feral cat population, or disgusted that the population is not dealt with in some way.

Anyway, I went on my way to what turned out to be the Pieta Military Cemetery, right next to a children's playground. Though not completely full, it is very nearly so. I kept thinking "a forest of tombstones".

In that section of the cemetery, some of the standing stones are right next to each other, which may not be apparent from the photo: there is no way there is six feet between headstones. So I wondered: Do they bury the dead on top of one another, or standing up? I don't know the answer to that question, but it comes up again in the "flat" part of the cemetery where a space roughly 3 by 6 feet will have three to six markers on it. I'm including this photo because the deceased here are Maltese, rather than Englishmen (or New Zealanders!) who died while serving in Malta.

You might be able to read the names Cutajar and Galea.

After leaving the cemetery, I continued my walk and passed through a small park alongside the Msida Marina. I noticed here a bust I'm sure I'd seen before but not given much attention to. But not long ago I read a novel, the name of which escapes me, which featured this very man as a character: Professor Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto. I doubt you can make out the inscription, but it's in Maltese.

After a while I made it into Gzira, where you find Samuel Taylor Coleridge Street (Triq), only one block long. I was a little irritated to find that at one end of the street, the sign is partially obscured by a convex traffic mirror. Mind you, the Maltese blind corners need these mirrors, but couldn't they have mounted it six inches higher and allowed Coleridge his full respect?

I finally made it to The Point Mall about 10:30 or 10:45, ready to visit Marks & Spencer's Simply Food and have a croissant--a PLAIN croissant without cream. I also had an iced pink donut and a cup of tea. I read a chapter of Titus Awakes while enjoying my late morning snack--my two cups of oatmeal had long since worn off. I browsed the bookstore a little bit, just for old times' sake, and noticed a series of tiny books I hadn't noticed last week: they're a new format called Flipbooks, or Flip-something. They're only about half the size of a mass-market paperback, but they're printed sideways, as it were: you open them with the spine horizontally in the middle instead of vertically. The paper is very similar to Bible paper, so that you can have a decent print-size, bigger than many paperbacks, and still have a fairly thin book, and one whose pages lie flat as you read. Of course there is the problem of "see-through" like you have often with Bibles, but the bright white of the page somewhat offsets that nuisance. It's certainly a great size for travelers (or folks who live in RVs), but there don't seem to be very many of them yet. Maybe I'll see more in the UK, which is where they are coming from.

By this time I was ready for lunch, so I headed off to Tower Supermarket and got some ham, potato sticks, sparkling water and a Red Delicious apple. The ham packet was close to 10 ounces, way more than I wanted to eat, but it was the smallest one I could find, so I took it. I had about half of it, along with the potato sticks while sitting on a bench in the shade, with the wind somewhat blocked by the buildings. Even so, the outdoor signs at the store behind me kept blowing over in the gusts, until the sales girl gave up on them.

I had intended to take the ferry back to Valletta, but the sign said CANCELLED when I reached the "depot." I wondered if the wind was too high, or if there is something wrong with the boat itself, since last week they put us on a water taxi instead. I didn't want to get on the bus, so I walked back to Floriana, which hadn't been my original plan. One way in a day is enough. But it was fine. I stopped in Msida, harborside, and ate the apple I hadn't eaten yet and rested my feet. What is probably most amazing about these two walks is that I was actually able, for most of the time, to remove my windbreaker! Now don't go thinking we were having an actual warm day in Malta, because we weren't. It was just at the edge of too cool or almost warm, but with all my walking I was warm enough to take it off. Amazing. I'm sure they've been stripped down to the skivvies all day in London and Berlin, and it's just barely warm enough here for me to get out of my windbreaker!

I stopped off at the hotel and got rid of the second windbreaker and umbrella, both of which I had taken with me when I left this morning, had a sip of cold Coca-Cola, which I bought yesterday evening and stuck in the refrigerator, then headed into Valletta for afternoon tea at Marks & Spencer's cafe, a little sitting and staring at the clouds, and then chips and more tea at Cafe Deux Baronnes, while drawing another not-quite-perspectively-correct drawing based on Ft San Angelo, across the harbor from the cafe.

Rest in peace, Robin Gibb! (Of the Bee Gees)

May 20, 2012: Ugly Day

I'm so tired of being cold! Today for the first time since the cruise I actually had to wear both windbreakers for part of the day (and will probably have to again if I go out in a while). Cloudy, a cold wind, and a high of allegedly 21 (roughly 70) by 2:45. Good grief! It's only a month to summer, and we can't hit 75? Or 80? Will I ever feel 80 degrees again? I know some of you complain about being hot for four months a year. I can't give you any sympathy because I'm cold for eight months a year. And it looks like 2012 is going to be cold year-round. I got onto the ship 22 days ago, and since then it's been genuinely warm only two days--May 11 in Pisa, and May 12, the day I flew here. Friday was very nice, but it wasn't truly warm, just sunny and almost calm. I can hear the wind whining around the hotel even as I type at 3:40 p.m.

Sunday is a boring day in Malta at best--at best meaning "when it's warm and sunny". On an ugly day like today, it's interminable. I couldn't even go to Cafe Deux Baronnes for chips and tea because they shut down early--due to the wind, I suppose. This morning I saw outdoor cafes with their heat-towers burning, and just a few minutes ago the pastizzeria where almost everyone sits outside had almost everyone inside because of the weather. I'm signing off, and you can be my witnesses: no more transatlantic voyages and no more Mays in Europe. I'm tired of going back to February weather when Texas has only just begun to warm up. My trip of 2007 must have been blessed by the weather gods, because 2010 and now 2012 have been much too chilly almost every single day in every location. I had hoped that Debbie would bring good weather with her on this trip, but I guess she did the opposite. The only email I've had from her since I left the ship was from when she was on Mykonos. She said it was 60 degrees and raining. At least it didn't rain today (so far).

I visited the National Museum of Archaeology, which has spruced up its exhibits since 2010 and is looking much nicer. It's always a pleasure to see the Sleeping Goddess, though I really wish they would up the lighting in her exhibit room. Yes, she's 5000 years old or so, but I don't think a little more light is going to wear her away. She is a sculpture, after all, not a painting! There are still details in the displays that need tending to, things not labeled easily enough to figure out and so forth, but overall it's a nice museum with a fine overview of Malta's impressive prehistory. I guess we'll never know who these people were who built the ancient temples and made the ancient pottery and sculptures, but it's cool to see what they left behind.

There's a special exhibit upstairs too at the moment. On one of my earlier trips I got to see a selection from the traveling exhibit of the Chinese terra cotta soldiers. This time it's damascene work from the Khalili family collection. Damascene, in case you (like I) didn't know, is gold inlay work on iron. There are amazing pieces in this show: from cigarette-cases and matchboxes and compacts, to vases and urns from quite small to quite large, to "caskets" of various shapes and sizes (one of which is large enough to hold several bodies), to engraved weapons. Amazing detail and flourish.

Needless to say I wasn't out snapping photos on an ugly day like today, so I'll give you a few from the cruise when I wasn't easily able to post. This one comes from our sixth or seventh day at sea, when we were near the Azores and saw a few other boats.

And this is from Gibraltar, where the government is going to help you find some diversion! (We would say detour of course. They use diversion here in Malta as well.)

And this shows some lovely flowers, and a bit of architecture, from the Castillo of Saint Barbara in Alicante. It was sunny, and almost warm, that afternoon!

And yesterday I forgot to mention that, on going into the Upper Barrakka Gardens, I saw two men leaving, one of whom said to the other something about "that ship losing power the other day." And I wondered if they were talking about the Crown Princess and, if so, how wide the word has spread since we "made contact" with humanity again.

I hope that all of you, wherever you may be, are enjoying your weather more than I am, and I hope that I will live long enough to feel 80 degrees again.

May 19, 2012: Changing of the Guards (and the Weather)

I struck out downhill (toward the harbor) rather than uphill (toward the bus terminus) this morning and discovered that that road leads down and around to near where the ferry lands, and also the curve in the road where I stood in 2010 and took a lot of photos of the Valletta Grand Prix. I haven't heard anything about it this year, so I guess it's not an annual event. By going downhill I passed alongside, and above, the hotel's pool and outside "play" area, so here's your first photo of the day:

Once the road more or less bottomed out and I was heading northeast outside the walls of Valletta, I spotted some ruins built right onto the water. Perhaps they were once part of a shipping business, or a fisherman's house.

On a little farther I came to a tiny little residential area, also right down near the water and outside the walls, where--much to my surprise--an RV was parked. You know I couldn't resist that photo.

And then from there I was on and into town, climbing up toward the city center. Marks and Spencer let me down--don't tell Lou Ann. When I was there yesterday for morning tea, I noticed that they had Devon scones (i.e. plain scones) packaged up in fours. I decided not to buy them then, but decided later in the day that I ought to have something on hand a little meatier than cookies to supplement my diet. But when I went back in the evening, they were all gone. Likewise there were no plain croissants. So I figured I could start my Saturday there with morning tea, and buy some scones today. Nope. No new supplies for Saturday, AND they didn't even have muffins or donuts in the cafe. So I was stuck with buying a package of little chocolate chip muffins as the least chocolate-y possibility I had. Let me tell you the truth--I am TIRED of chocolate. Why doesn't it ever occur to businesses that if the plain/vanilla foods sell out, and the chocolate foods never do, that they OUGHT to offer more plain stuff? But it never seems to work that way. Those of us who want plain food have to fight each other for it. Ick.

Anyway after my tea and muffins, I went up to the square across from the Grandmaster's Palace and Armoury to sit and read for a bit with the wind more or less blocked off by the buildings. I heard a bit of a stir after a while and there it was--the Maltese Changing of the Guard! So here are three photos for you:

Sort of cool, no? It was an almost entirely cloudy morning, with even a bit of sprinkling a couple of times, so this was a nice diversion from the ugly day. A bit later, on my way back to the hotel to drop off the remaining muffins and some applesauce I'd bought, I passed this young bagpiper near the vanished city gates.

He represents one thing that is different about Valletta this time: more street musicians out and about. Another one I've seen a couple of times looks like he came straight out of the Andes--and he may well have. He plays wooden flutes etc. and sells his CDs too. I've also seen, more than once, a couple of older men playing accordions, and this morning there was also a clarinetist playing along to prerecorded music near the fancy Caffe Cordina, with a sign noting that he sometimes plays parties!

I visited St John's Co-Cathedral today, my third time there, during the 3-hour free admittance "International Museum Day" offering. I had forgotten how incredibly ornate the interior is, with virtually no spot left unadorned. One of the placards gives 400 as the number of tombstones which cover the floor of the nave. I also visited the Oratory where two of the seven Caravaggio paintings which he did while in Malta are on display. The Beheading of St John the Baptist is about the size of two Casita RVs, and you will probably remember my mentioning it before. The other Caravaggio here is a painting of St Jerome. There are many works here by a painter named Mattia Preti, whom I'd never heard of before visiting Malta in 2007, and a couple of the tapestries are based on "cartoons" by Rubens. It's interesting to see some of the priestly garments on display too, since some of them are from the 1400s, before the Knights had even come to Malta.

Later in the afternoon I was visiting St James Cavalier again and was told there was about to be a guided tour of the traveling exhibit that's finishing up tomorrow. So I joined that tour and got to hear about some of the works I had first seen a few days ago. One of the women in the tour was actually from the British Council for (Something) which sponsored the traveling exhibit, and she said it is going on to Macedonia from here.

It's been a mixed day for weather: terribly gloomy morning, mostly sunny afternoon, but with a return of wind, though not as roaring as before, and a chill to the air, which makes me think that London may be as warm as Malta today since I saw on the TV that London was supposed to be 19 today (i.e. about 66 or 67 Fahrenheit.) I hope there's at least one warm day when I'm there, and I hope it will warm up here. I am heartily sick of wearing a windbreak (or two!) all day long every day. I may never leave the southwest again.

May 18, 2012 (and a dribble from May 17)

Yesterday afternoon after posting for you all, I went back into Valletta and had fries and tea at the Cafe Deux Baronnes. While eating, I worked on a drawing of the cafe (and I'd like to do a color version once I get back to the States) and incited some attention from a couple of the employees. So I took a photo of it before leaving, and then let them keep the drawing there at the cafe.

Today after a visit to the post office and morning tea at Marks & Spencer, I went down to the harbor to ride the ferry over to Sliema for the first time this trip. I bought a "return" ticket (two-way) and sat down to read while waiting the ferry's arrival from Sliema. After just a few minutes, one of the employees came to tell me and the other passengers we could take the water taxi instead. There were only four of us, so they sent us over on a much smaller boat that would hold perhaps a dozen. Much closer to the water, but also a much quicker trip. After leaving the boat, I took this photo of crowded Sliema parking. As if driving here wasn't bad enough!

You know that I love Books Plus in Sliema, and I had pretty well decided on the book I wanted to buy, but I still browsed for a while first. There are so many books on the shelf, even in a small store, that either aren't available in the U.S. or fly under the radar because there are so many books to try to keep up with. I may look for one or two of them when I get to London, since most of the English books here come from the U.K., but I ended up buying what I thought I would: Titus Awakes by Maeve Gilmore and Mervyn Peake. Mervyn Peake was an English author and artist whose most famous work is the Gormenghast Trilogy which several of us in my high school group read after reading Tolkien. It was marketed as fantasy at the time, but it is most certainly not. Sometimes like Dickens in some ways, often quite funny, sometimes very creepy, and quite original. Several years ago the first two books of the trilogy were made into an English miniseries, which was also quite interesting, under the title Gormenghast. Well, Titus Awakes is a fourth volume in the series, a volume that Peake wasn't able to write before he died. He was terribly debilitated during his last 8 or 10 years of life from some kind of degenerative brain disease and left only a few pages of text and some notes for the fourth volume. His wife Maeve Gilmore took those pages and used them to create the fourth book herself, after his death in 1968. She died in 1983 and the book was "lost", only to be found again very recently. And so it was published last year, which was also the centenary of Peake's birth.

Today we finally had a day of light wind! Now Malta, like Galveston (and Dallas for that matter), hardly ever has a truly calm day, but today the wind wasn't roaring and it was pleasant to be out and about. After leaving Books Plus, I went by the Tower Supermarket and got some food for a little picnic on the seawall overlooking the Mediterranean, right near the Europa Hotel where I stayed on my first trip here. Then I went back to The Point, the new shopping mall, and roamed for a while, along with having a croissant and another cup of Marks & Spencer tea. Then I went down to the Strand in Sliema (which overlooks the harbor, not the Mediterranean proper) and spent maybe 30 minutes doing a drawing looking across at Manoel Island. My ferry return trip was again on the water taxi, though I saw a big ferry coming across as we headed out. Maybe they're sharing the chores nowadays?

Back in Valletta I went to the Lower Barrakka Gardens for the first time this trip, and it was quite pleasant. I worked on another drawing, this one with distorted perspective since perspective gives me trouble. Some of you my remember the Alexander Ball monument from my 2007 blog. Here's my drawing:

One of the purposes of the Gardens seems to be to celebrate freedom in countries around the world. In addition to an older plaque in honor of the Italian Garibaldi, there is also a 40th anniversary plaque to the "Prague Spring" of Czechoslovakia in 1968, commemorating the friendship of the Maltese and Czech peoples, and another in honor of the 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising in Hungary. And there is this little tree, quite recently placed for Queen Elizabeth II's 60th Jubilee in April:

Perhaps someone will get my friend Nancy on the Internet to show her this photo, even if the inscription can't be made out.

From the lower gardens, I could look west and see the columns of the Upper Barrakka Gardens, and the yellow umbrellas of the cafe, AND a pair of large cruise ships. I hope they'll still be there when I go back into town shortly to have a bit of tuna and applesauce in the Gardens.

Malta, by the way, has replaced its aging fleet of buses since I was here in 2010, and that is quite admirable. It's to be expected, in such a situation, for the fares to go up, but it hardly seems welcoming for the fares to be higher for tourists than for residents. Come on, Malta! You can do better.

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?