Maltese weekend. About life and transport (without history and sights)
What to give you,
My dear man?
(S. Alikhanov, A. Zhigarev, music by R. Mayorov)
That's where and where, but I definitely wasn't going to Malta. Europe has not yet been explored, but here is some kind of island in the wilds of the Mediterranean Sea...
It was a hot August. The superb harvesting in a godforsaken Mordovian village was in full swing.
Well, yes, a boost of energy before the next school year.
Nothing foreshadowed "trouble". A cell phone rattled in the pocket of his shorts. Oh my dear friend, husband! Husband? ! If the husband calls at the height of the working day -? this is very urgent and important! Well, damn it, you need to take off your gloves...
– Choose Italy or Malta in February? says a male voice from the receiver without "Hi".
- Why in February?
- Well, mother, you don’t think about yourself at all... This will be a birthday present for you.
– Ahhh… Is it really a freebie?
– I'm talking about a gift for her, but she. . . Well, not very expensive, of course. . . Everything is just for you and for you! – right through the phone I see that laughs smiles : ))
– Can you think?
- Very short. For now, - but who would doubt about it for a short time, otherwise he will change his mind : ))
And here, under the well-aimed years of experience hitting potatoes in a bucket, the movements of the brains that had already forgotten how to think strategically at that time began: Italy - oh, Italy! (booms). Gorgeous! (booms) Seductress! (booms) You can drive there endlessly (booms)…
Malta (booms). What do I know about Malta? (booms) Island (booms), knights (booms), rabbits (booms)…and I haven't been there yet (booms-booms). Well, well, well, it's also further south, it's getting warmer (booms-booms-booms. . . )
All my life, on the background of the holiday on February 23, my birthday, which fell on the 24th, was always somehow lost. But for a dozen years now, such a neighborhood has become convenient, no, no, but the weekends are made long with the capture of my birthday. Now the generally accepted congratulations of the boys are overshadowed by festivities tours on the occasion of my birth : )). Thus, this time it turned out like this: we arrive in Malta at 6.20 local time on the 22nd (the difference with Moscow is minus 2 hours), and we leave at 21.30 on the 25th, a total of four days for drinking everything about all.
Company AirMalta – simply, without feeding. And this is very good, at least I managed to sleep a little. We took off from Sheremetyevo with a delay of 30 minutes, but landed on the island about twenty minutes earlier than originally planned, the wind was probably fair. We also flew back earlier, the wind turned in the other direction : )). There are no problems with joint seating in the cabin and paying for seat selection. When checking in online, seats with long legs were simply not available for selection. There is no online check-in from Moscow, but from Malta Airport - Luka - there is, very convenient. Especially for passengers without luggage, I went to the airport and went on my way, just show the QR code on your phone.
Tickets purchased and postponed. Over the next six months, several more trips happened, so that it was not at all before Malta, one might say, they had already forgotten about it. But then, by the end of December, information went through the tourist portals that a traditional carnival will be held in Malta from February 21 to February 25. Oops! And we didn't know. It's lucky that we planned a miracle island.
About life…
With the help of Internet recommendations, the town of Sliema was chosen as the location. I would like a place to spend the night in the center during cognitive adventures. But in Valletta, the capital of the country, it is expensive, and apartments are mostly there, which doesn’t suit me in any way due to culinary convictions. And Sliema is very close by and somehow it happened, all hotels and hoteliers. Once it was a fishing village, and with the development of the hotel business, it turned into a resort town.
Views of Sliema from the waterfront of Valletta
Views of Sliema from the embankment of Valletta
As usual, I was going to, going to, but not going to photograph slim contrasts. There are often modern high-rise buildings side by side with old sandstone houses. And sometimes this old man is also built on. Buildings on the facade are even, and along the perimeter they can be of the most bizarre shape - how they squeezed into the ancient buildings. But the Internet will help us! By the way, in this photo is just the place of our residence. Yes, the far left is our hotel Sliema Hotel by ST Hotels 3*.
Sliema. Photo from the Internet
Sliema Hotel 3* was selected according to the principle: everything at once and preferably not very expensive)), i. e. convenient location, sufficient comfort and breakfast - and all this for reasonable money. And we guessed it!
The hotel is part of ST Hotels. We knew that it was part of this network, but that it was possible to use the benefits of one of the hotels, Bayview Hotel, in the form of an indoor pool and sauna, no. So keep in mind, otherwise I received a reprimand from my husband for missing out on such important information : )). They didn’t take swimsuits with them because of the winter non-swimming season, and in the shops there were no suitable sizes, again, because of the non-swimming season: either on super-slim ones, or “sails” with “parachutes”, but normal, medium, so say, the circles have not yet been delivered.
The hotel is located at the very central "heel" of Sliema, where buses stop to all parts of the island, well, or almost to all (official website of public transport in Malta). There is also a pier ferry to Valletta. The double-decker tour bus also stops here. Well, and a bunch of shops, cafes...
The beach component was not disclosed by us, but they (beaches) should be somewhere nearby. In any case, there is a coastline. For the boasters - the views from our room:
Read more about the wonderful staff, internal content and domestic characteristics of the hotel in separate review .
About transport…
When you check into a hotel, receptionists immediately give out a flurry of information - a bunch of memos with schedules, routes and verbal recommendations. That's for sure, you won't get lost in Malta. By the way, I share, maybe someone will come in handy, even if you don’t stay at this hotel. All this can be designed and found on the official websites (above in the text), but the finished version is more convenient : )).
The layout of the main attractions turned out to be very useful (decoding of numbers of places of interest in the upper right corner) and route numbers from and to these points (in the lower left corner of the sheet):
Schedule of ferries:
Scheme of bus routes:
It is, of course, somewhat loaded, but in combination with separate schemes at bus stops, it is quite understandable.
When planning a trip, we had a question: rent a car or use public transport? Since we are amazingly lazy, poorly trained already, and in general, we are not averse to drinking alcohol on vacation (a little beer or knowing the wine feelings, so to speak), we decided that we would get by with buses in four days. And then while you move away from the flight (night), while you switch to left-hand traffic (oh, the horror for my brain is their roundabouts! ), There may be traffic jams.
As it turned out in practice, the movement is very intense. And these narrow streets, often with two-way traffic... where to snuggle: to the right or to the left - a terrible dream of a motorist! How the heart stops when from the passenger compartment of the bus you observe the process of passing with the oncoming one of the same. . .
There is also a carnival, it turns out, you need to carnival : )).
In general, there is no time left for car driving. Of course, with a longer stay and the presence of driving skills, it is better to take a car, it is easier and more comfortable to travel.
Read more about fares and passes on the official Malta public transport website.
After arrival at the airport, we bought travel cards for a week for 21 euros. Ride as much as you want, but they don't work on TD express trains, and okay, we only met one like that once. The site has a phrase in the description of the “Free Trips TD Plus” travel card - “Free trips on TD Plus”, but the bus driver refused to accept our travel cards, said that they should pay 3 euros from the nose in cash, they say, this card is not valid on this route. (At one tour forum, I was told that TD and TD Plus are different things. But since I didn’t need it anymore, I didn’t delve into this difference). The cost of the travel paid off completely even for these 4 days. It is clear that if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t get on the bus late at night “tortured” by the carnival and whining about “I want to go home” in order to drive three stops, but proudly walked to the intended goal only three stops, perhaps not even whined : )). But he, the travel card, is - so let it work!
Somehow, more and more old reports about Malta came across before the trip. Or just in the old ones, the emphasis was on local retro public transport buses. And now they don't. Now quite modern buses run with an electronic scoreboard, announcements of stops.
By the way, the driver stops only on request: either someone waved on the street, or inside, you need to press a button in advance. But, I think, such nuances are relevant in sparsely populated areas, ordinary tourists rarely run there. Although, there have been cases of missing the right stop and on the beaten track, like Valletta - Sliema.
We met those very retro ones only as souvenir stalls:
It must be borne in mind that for the most part the bus routes are very ornate, sometimes it seems that we are circling around one point. And it's sometimes annoying. But here we also found our plus: there is free Wi-Fi in transport, who needs to try, who urgently needs to plunge into work : ))
By the way, Wi-Fi in Malta is good, and it is almost everywhere, there is a lot of it. It goes without saying that in hotels and cafes, I mentioned buses, and there are also free access points on the streets and squares. True, once I tried to connect at such a point - I failed, and there was no great need, maybe it would have worked.
About drinking…
Alcoholic drinks are demonstrated, for readers 18+ ))
We never have a problem with drinking. Yes, yes, we are the same pigs who will find their own puddle : )).
Oh, on the occasion of my birthday, the hotel presented me with a bottle of local dry red wine. Nothing like that, nice wine.
Since our flight was without luggage, there were no piercing and cutting objects with us. I had to remember my student skills in the corkscrewless opening of wine bottles. Girls, always have a ballpoint pen in your purse, a catchy tail is welcome, it can be very useful : ))
Despite the rather specific taste, we liked the local non-alcoholic drink Kinnie, nicknamed the Maltese answer to Coca-Cola. There is something in this sweet bitterness. And the colder, the tastier, we think so.
Very girly yummy - local cactus Bajtra liquor.
I took with me 100-gram scales within the limits of what was permitted in my hand luggage. During the inspection, they did not embarrass anyone, at least get drunk, and they confiscated plain water...
The Maltese beer Cisk went well. In a supermarket in St. Julians 1.25 euros for a jar of 0.5 liters, in a shop in the center of Valletta - 1.3, in a snack bar on the waterfront Marsaskala - 2.5, in the same place, but a little to the side - 1.8.
The format of 250 ml in glass is very popular, in establishments for 2.8 euros per bottle. Moreover, the locals have a good time on a Sunday, because these bottles go : ))
About food…
Motto: "Stop starving and eating pasture already! You give local cuisine with goodies and unusual things! ”
This was probably the first time my husband was involved in the preparations for the trip. Since the nutritional part of our trips, as a rule, remains without preliminary analysis, well, this business passes by me, it just seeps (I don’t love it... ), then as a true breadwinner and earner, the husband decided not to rely on a stupid wife anymore and took the kitchen business to myself. He practically memorized the names of local dishes (of course, there is a cheat sheet in my purse, if anything), their composition. I marked all kinds of food establishments on the map, focusing on the Tripadvisor rating, but not focusing on my greed addiction to saving the family budget : ). . . But, as a rule, we are not lucky with local specialties. So this time we did not understand the taste of the Maltese rabbit.
For me, who is not a member of the union of respectable culinary housewives, even then it turns out tastier. Maybe, of course, I should have tried somewhere else, but the price tag is impressive in cafes and restaurants in Malta, I didn’t really want to experiment for such euros. It’s easier for us.
I liked it very much pastizzi - small pies with different fillings.
And they cost a nice price - 40 kopecks eurocents apiece. Judging by the queues behind them and the number of citizens eating them next to pastizzerias, these pies are the favorites of the local public.
Of course, you can’t try everything in a few days, considering that we did a good job of filling up breakfast like that at the hotel. But sweeties cannoli were hard to pass by. What kind of rabbit then or pasta : ))
There is also a wonderful place in Valletta in the very center, right opposite the entrance to the Palace of the Grand Master - Valletta Food Market, it is also indicated on the maps like a Is-Suq tal-Belt market. In fact, this is indeed an indoor market in the past, considered the oldest in Vallet. Now there is a huge variety of different food, a variety of cuisines of the world. This is where you can arrange a belly feast!
In the evening hours, it's not overcrowded:
There is also a supermarket right there, if anything.
In Valletta itself, there are small shops. They are like fairy portals - they look small, but there are several floors:
But whether it was related to the carnival, or some kind of economic crisis, most were closed. Walking the streets of the city. . .
. . . up and down the steps. . .
. . . or without steps. . .
. . . you navigate the map to the nearest market in search of life-giving moisture... And here:
In Sliema or St. Julian's with shops, of course, simpler. You can even meet departments with Russian products. Yeah, what if you get bored or heartburn torments you - you need to buy soda : ))
And for the price of goods - expensive. Still, the bulk of products are imported from the mainland. Although, there is also local production. I won’t name absolute values now, but in general it’s more expensive than in Moscow, for example. What I remember exactly and shocked my village soul was potatoes for almost 3 euros per kilo.
At first I thought it was a special kind of delicacy. But no, I specifically looked in a large supermarket, and it is - 3 each. There are larger copies, but also packed in small bags.
This is where I will end the organizational and everyday part of the story, in fact, with what this story began with - with potatoes : ))
To be continued: and about the carnival (Ah, carnival-carnival , or Maslenitsa in Maltese), and about the sights…
Maltese RPGs. Fabulous luxury behind modest walls
Maltese rpg. Through the yellow streets of Valletta
