Malta is ancient and ever-changing with over 6000 years of history. One aspect of Malta that I like is that English is one of the two official languages.
After almost 5 years, we finally arrived back in Malta on February 4, 2023 to 60F weather and wonderfully fresh air coming off the Mediterranean Sea.
Our first accommodation was at the Grand Excelsior Hotel that faces onto Marsamxett Bay in the shadow of the old fortress walls of Valletta. For 3 days we enjoyed how “the other half lives” as a birthday gift for my husband, Steve.
The Grand Excelsior Hotel is indeed a grand lady. She reminds me of the hotels I’ve seen in movies and TV of the travels of the great detective Hercule Poirot – Death on the Nile, etc.
My internal clock was still adjusting and I would go to the dining facility at 6 am when it opened and just sit with my breakfast watching the sunrise over the bay.
After our 3 nights of decadence, we moved to Bugibba, a resort area to the north of Valletta that we had not visited much when we visited in 2017. Our AirBnB apartment was on the 5th floor of a building that faces towards Bugibba Square and the sea.
On the second day in Bugibba, Storm Helios hit Malta and did a great deal of damage. From our balcony, we could see a river running down the street to St Paul’s Bay and cars trying to navigate. The torrent was up above the door panels of some cars at one point. The effect for us was just an out of order elevator (not pretty for two 70+ yo), but there were auto accidents, flooded ground floors (in our case 2 flooded underneath parking floors), buildings totally gutted by flooding, and power outages all over the islands. People are still doing repairs and it is now over a month later. (Yes, I procrastinated.)
Malta cleaned up from the storm quickly and life got back to normal. We loved Bugibba and, after the storm, we started traveling all over the islands.
One of the aspects of “living” in Malta that I particularly like is the fact that English is one of the two official languages of the Islands. But, we made an effort to learn a few words in Malti – grazzi hafna means thank you very much; mela means okay, alright, are you kidding, and meh depending on how you say it, lol; and sahha means goodbye.
My next post will be mainly photos and captions of what we saw on Malta and Gozo, the two main islands of the Maltese Archipelago. Until my next post, sahha, my friends.
