Day 19 - Saturday 30th September - Malta

We started the day with breakfast in a little cafe in the next street because we hadn't been to a supermarket yet. We had cappuccinos and toast sandwiches with jam. Interesting way to have toast but it was nice. Next we headed to the grocery store, as it was described in the info booklet in the apartment. It was called The Wembley Store and we decided it was run for the British tourist trade. Not very big and not really well stocked with everyday things but it seems this is the only supermarket type shop in Valletta. We managed to get a few things to get us through. The Maltese bread was especially delicious. We also stopped at a chemist caked Chemimart and bought my sports elasticised ankle bandage. Now it was time to explore this very old city in the heat. Very sunny and HOT! Not trudging weather but we walked slowly up hilly streets, up steep stepped streets, down hilly streets and down steep stepped streets.  The buildings are very tall and the streets narrow so it was easy to stay in the shade most of the time. The buildings have lovely traditional Maltese enclosed balconies painted in different colours making the street scape very pretty. There seems to be lots of renovation works going on everywhere. Old apartments being bought up, renovated and then probably rented as holiday rentals. Several buildings in our street have scaffolding all the way up the front and covered with mesh and the builders seem to work 7 days a week. Luckily not too much noise though. We decided to go to the Upper Barrakka Gardens which are just at the very top of our street past the restaurant we ate at last night. From the long long terrace bordering the gardens we had spectacular views over The Grand Harbour of Valletta and The Three Cities. The Three Cities are the three fortified cities of Birgu, Senglea and Cospicua. The oldest is Birgu, which has existed since the Middle Ages. The other two cities, Senglea and Cospicua, were both founded by the Order of Saint John in the 16th and 17th centuries. They are separated by two inlets,  which they call creeks and which are now marinas for serious luxury yachts. One was called Lionheart so we Googled to see who owned it.  Apparently it was built for an Englishman, Sir Phillip Green, a retail entrepreneur, for £100m !!!!! While we were up in the gardens the 12 o'clock canon was fired from the Saluting Battery below the terrace which scared the life out of us. Then we could hear canons going off all over the place. We took lots and lots of photos of the beautiful views and then it was time for a snack and a drink. We stopped at the cafe in the gardens and had a beer and a spritz and shared some Matlese Pastizzi filed with cheese and peas, cheese &  spinach. All yummy. We wandered back into the main street, Republica Street, and decided we needed to buy some hats (more hats) because it's just so hot and humid. Straw hats on, and now walking in the shade, we came across a gelati store called Amorino where they sculpted your gelati into a rose in the cone and you even had the choice of adding a gelati filled macaron on the top. Well this sounded too good to pass up so we joined the long queue. On my goodness! Soooo delicious! No matter what size you get, there's no limit to the number of flavours you can have! But we just chose 3 - chocolate, hazelnut & mango topped with a lemon filled lime macaron. We shared one because we saw the size of the cones coming out of the store. So so so delicious. Bellies full of deliciousness we went to the Grand Harbour to catch a ferry to The Three Cities. We trudged uphill and down many stairs. My foot was very pleased to have a rest on the ferry. We bought return tickets and thought the ferry would go into each inlet and stop to drop off and pick up people but instead it went just to one little harbour and back again. What we saw was very pretty so we didn't mind and it meant no walking for a while. When we got off we walked the opposite way to how we'd come and came across Victoria Gate, one of the gates of this ancient fortified city. We went through it and up more steps, up a hill and discovered that we were at one of the crossroads on our street. We had the harbour behind us and facing us was St John's Street which was very steep and all stairs.  Down the middle of the steps was a red carpet leading to a church built in amongst the apartment buildings. We knew there was to be a wedding when we saw groomsmen, flower girls and pageboys. So we sat at the outside bar on the terrace with the harbour view, had spritz and beer and waited to see the bride arrive. By the time the bride did arrive we'd finished our drinks so we joined all the other tourists to take some photos. She looked lovely and had 4 bridesmaids. She walked with her dad down the red carpet on the very steep steps to 'Here Comes The Bride' played on the bells and all went well until one of the pageboys started screaming NO! NO! NOT GOING! Hahahaha. The bridal party left him with his mum to have his little tantrum and went in. We later saw the bridal party having photos on a small metal bridge nearby which had been used in scenes in many movies apparently. What looked weird was that there were 9 groomsmen and only 4 bridesmaids. We went home for a rest seeing as it was just there and it was a bit too hot and humid for us. We went back out in what we thought would be the cooler afternoon, but no such luck. We wandered this very interesting city which seems to be going through a bit of a renewing stage with lots of repair and renovation works going on and took lots of photos of the buildings and balconies, some very much in need of TLC. In our wanderings today we had passed a little restaurant with a sign saying 'The best rabbit in Malta, Jamie Oliver'. It seems Jamie Oliver had been here. We wanted to have rabbit stew, which is a Maltese specialty, so we went in search of it. Several hilly streets and steps later we found it. Malta really is a mini San Francisco. The restaurant was called Angelica's and we ordered Duck Paté and the Rabbit cooked in Champagne.  It was all delicious but so much food we both waddled home.