Where's the puppy and the bird?

Today was Valetta, Malta. First thing, find out where Malta is. Oh wait, I don't need to know - I'm not driving. Next, find the falcon, or the puppy or the Cross, or the malted milk. Never mind.

We'd joined a tour a fellow cruisecritic member had organized for 4 of us. They had to cancel, but fortunately, Adele and Frank stepped in. Once again, we met at the Passport bar to meet for finding our guide.

Disembarkation was fast, and we walked out of the pier area. One other ship was the there - the Mein Schiff 2 (Mein Schiff is a joint venture between RCI and TUI shipping - a German company). I subsequently learned that the ship was originally the Celebrity Mercury.

We were to meet our guide, Therese at a bar at the end of the pier. After getting directions, we arrived at the bar and her at at exactly our meeting time 8:30. We jumped into her 7 seater car, and away we went.

The first part was a quick drive around Valletta, with a stop at the old looking walls of the harbor. (Pictures coming - promise!). We looked some churches that are getting ready for a feast or festival or something - the neighborhood was decorated, and it was all very festive. Therese started us off learning about Maltese food with some puffed pasteries - one stuffed with ricotta and the other with mushy peas. Both good.


Following that, we went to a fishing village and took some pictures. In addition to fishermen selling fish, there were a lot of local vendors selling purses, clothes, toys and the ubiquitous fidget spinners. Yes, they have made it even to small fishing villages.

Following that, and driving through other villages (Malta is made up of a couple of cities and a lot of villages) we arrived along the coast at the Blue Grotto - a rock formation where the water is very, very blue. We watched the tourist boats come and go for a bit.

Of course here it is:

We then stopped at a bar in a village called, I believe, Siggiewi for a tasting. I tried a local wine - a light wine made from Cabernet grapes, Glen & Adele had beer, and Frank a soda. The proprietress also served us some dip that was a cross between hummus and bean dip, a vegetable and egg dish that was roughly a quiche and maybe a sweet - neither of remember. We bid a warm farewell and headed to our next destination - Mdina.

Mdina is an old walled city in Malta. It was the capital of Malta on and off under different names, and it's history goes back over 1000 years. There are only a limited number of cars allowed, so we marked out side and walked in. The architecture is a mix of medieval and byzantine. It was a fascinating walk through the inner city.

From Mdina, we went to Therese's general home area for lunch in a restaurant that's known for it's local food. It was packed since it was lunch time on Sunday, so we decided to finish the north part of the tour, and eat on the way back. So we headed to the north of Malta.

On the way to the far point of our tour, we were quite surprised to see what looked like a New England building at the top of a ravine. When we got to the ravine, there was an entire little New England village! Turns out that was the exterior set for the 1980's movie Popeye. Malta agreed to let them film there, provided they leave the set intact. It was then turned into a theme park. We could see a stage in the middle where Popeye and Olive Oyl were leading the guests in a line dance or something.

From there, we drove towards the ferry to Gozo, but took a side road to the view instead. Therese said she liked that because the cruiseship busses couldn't get there. We drove to the end of the road, hopped out and took some pictures of Goza. We also watched the ferry heading to it's dock in Malta.


Back into the car, and back down to lunch. It was still busy in the restaurant, but there was a table for us. Lunch was included in the cost of our tour, and was very filling and good. There was bread with tomatoes and olives, rolled stuffed beef, stuffed eggplant, pork chop and stewed rabbit. I tried one bit of that. Not my thing. There were also roasted potatoes and fries. For dessert, there was a pastry stuffed with almond paste, but since almond is expensive here it was fake almond. She also gave us some halvah.

We went back to the car and then she stopped to run into a small grocery store. She gave each couple a jar of honey and some halvah. She also bought some prickly pear fruit to try. Not bad if you can get past all the seeds.
We drove back to Valletta stopping at the village of Mosta to look at their cathedral. A few more views of Valletta and back to the ship.

Tonight was our night for our first specialty dining at Qsine. We had a couple of hours before dinner, and we wanted to see the Beatles tribute show at 7:00 so we went up to the room to drop our stuff, relax and prepare for dinner. I took advantage of the time to call my mom and sister, who are still in France. This would be my last chance to talk to them in the same time zone. While I was chatting with my sister and explaining the differences between the Reflection and the Equinox, Arun came in to explain a few things about tomorrow night. (We get reserved seats at the show). We asked about making sure the laundry was out by 9:00 and he said just leave it and they'll get it when they make up the room.

We had a bottle of champagne that came with the room chilling in the fridge and thought we'd bring it to dinner. The issue was keeping it cold. At first we thought we'd drop at the restaurant on our way to the show, but we both ran out of time to drop and explain, and we weren't sure they would get it. So then we decided that since there wasn't time to go back to the room, we'd have our butler bring it down. No time to call him, so on our way to dinner, we stopped in Michaels club to ask them to call him. Apparently that was successful because the champagne did arrive.

We met Adele on our way to the restaurant and quickly got seated at a window table. Qsine is a tapas style restaurant, although not your mother's tapas. Our waiter said they recommend 6-8 things, and let them pick the order. He also said that he would do a few as a started, bring a "main", followed by the favorite tower of middle eastern treats and then we could decide what else we wanted.

We got through the main and the tower and then decided to go straight to dessert. I guess that happens a lot. Next time on a ship with Qsine, we'll go twice. For the food details, visit the cruise critic thread. Or I'll add later.

After dinner we walked around on the outside promenade deck, and up on top for a bit, and called it a night. We'd been up early, so after that off to bed, and I decided to write this on the sea day.