Valletta, Malta

Valletta is an area in Malta that is full of ancient buildings and churches!

Valletta is the capital city and it's only about 1/4 square mile total. In that 1/4 mile city there are 28 churches!!! The amount of churches in Malta is shocking, (354 on this small island) but in Valletta there was literally one every block! Some of them big cathedrals, some small.

We started the day taking the bus to Valletta. The walk to the right bus stop was almost a mile, and we got off just a little late. So instead of it being a leisurely walk it was a great cardio work out!

Valletta like so many towns in Italy and Europe there are castles and out posts for watching for and fighting off the enemy. Malta like a lot of these areas changed hands many times from who owned or ruled them. In recent history, the British ruled Malta for over 150 yrs. Nice for us because everyone speaks English!

So our first stop was to see a cannon blow! I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a real cannon ball going off, but I see the impracticability of this idea!

Our next stop was of course for gelato. This one place formed their gelato into creations. Almost too pretty to eat!

Our next stop was the St John Cathedral. It is strange to me that St Johns is the biggest and most popular of the cathedrals on Malta out of the 354 churches. Since it is pretty well accepted that Paul the apostle brought Christianity to Malta when he shipwrecked here. We also visited a couple St Paul churches. But St John's is the largest and they charged us to enter $12. Which I understand because the upkeep must be awful on these places. And some of these churches/ cathedrals are not really churches so much as a museum or incredible buildings to look at. You can almost feel the difference when you walk in.

This cathedral was all done in gold. Not sure how much is real gold, but I wouldn't be surprised. Each portion was donated by some very rich person over the ages. The floor is full of crypts and I'm sure those poor people paid dearly to be buried in this lovely cathedral.

We went high on a balcony and got some beautiful pictures

There was this one statue that I thought was so beautiful of a mother nursing her baby. It was this sweet look the baby gives you when they pull away and look lovingly into your eyes. The artist here captured this so beautiful and amazingly brought life to it. It was actually a part of a stature called Justice and Mercy. The one mother holding the scale and the other nursing her baby.

So after the cathedral we went on search for something to eat while still looking at beautiful views. Lots of stairs and hills in this town, so we got a good work out to be sure! Rabbit is a common meat served in Malta.

So all the hills, steps and walking all over we were getting pretty tired, but we still wanted to see the St Paul's shipwreck church. It was also dark by now, but the town was still quite lively.

They were in the middle of a service when we went in. So we sat for a few minutes. Those candlesticks were like 7' tall!

As we were leaving town I saw this whole store of table clothes. It's oil cloth which is hard to find here. An entire store and that was pretty much all he had! I couldn't help but buy a couple to squeeze into my suitcase!

It was a lovely day in Valletta and we were so tired we fell asleep a bit on the bus ride home.

Tomorrow June and I go on to Barcelona and Monica and Tyler go off to London.