We woke up on Thursday morning to wonderful sunny weather, so we made quick changes to our day plan and hopped on the bus to Golden Sands beach. It took only about 25 minutes to get to this beautiful place. Malta is not famous for its sandy beaches—they are hard to find. Diving and rocky beaches are what attracts visitors each year.
We got off the bus and saw a brilliant view.
Wait…no…wrong picture….
We saw this!
Okay, so it might not be the most amazing beach in Europe, but we were starving for some sunny beaches, at this was great for us!
My mom with Alex.
Our first selfie in Malta.
There is something special to have your daughter and mom close like this.
The water was COLD. And outside temperature was not even in the 60s.
But somehow these were brave enough to at least wet their swimsuits.
Still so fun!
We stayed at the beach for an hour and a half, just long enough to play in the sea and dry out. We then caught a bus to M’garr, a typical Maltese village that still has a very traditional feel to it.
This is where we decided to try Maltese traditional dish—the rabbit. We ordered the whole rabbit to split among us all. It was baked in a Dutch oven looking dish and was delicious. But you can tell that the Maltese don’t like to waste any part of the rabbit as we found something that looked definitely like rabbit’s skull. Yeah…We were not sure about some other parts of the dish, possibly ears? The kids thought it was amazing.
We didn’t stay long in M’garr. We were hoping to go to another beach further north actually, so we took a bus back to the Golden Sands to wait for Bus 101. Well, in few minutes it came but it wasn’t an actual bus, but merely a minivan that fit maybe 10 passengers. Since there were already people in it, our whole family was not going to fit….and this “bus” goes only once an hour. The idea of the beach was forgotten and we found a bus that went to Valetta, the capital of Malta.
Valetta is a beautiful port! In fact, people say it’s one of the most amazing looking ones in the Mediterranean. And does truly look magnificent, no picture could depict that.
The main street in Valetta is easy to navigate. We were trying to find the place where they do the cannon ceremony (and we thought it was at 5 pm).
We ran into another pair of missionaries (what?) and they helped us figure out that we actually missed the cannon ceremony. We were saddened, so we bought some sweet pastries instead.
I love this picture. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s so real-haha. We all got our sweet treats—Alex is eating his, Robert is trying to tell Katya that she is being too picky, as she is trying to tell him that she doesn’t like any of them. Only Mark is posing for my mom.
And a few seconds later.
Continuing our walk, we came across a beautiful view of the port.
This tower looking thing lets you take an elevator to the bottom streets of Valetta, back into the center of the city. Mark really wanted to take that elevator, but you had to pay for taking it back up (free to go down). We knew that we didn’t all want to keep walking all evening on the “bottom streets” especially not knowing how long it would take us to get back to the bus. So Robert took the elevator with Mark, got out and walked the stairs up this tower. Mark was so happy-haha.
Beautiful sunset over the port.
We were still full from our rabbit lunch and had pizza leftovers from the night before in our apartment, so we didn’t eat dinner in Valetta.
Can you find Mark, the tired one? Maybe it’s because he walked all those steep stairs.
We shopped a little for a couple of souvenirs and took funny pictures.
Although this day didn’t go as planned most of the time, it turned out wonderfully. It’s a good thing we came to Valetta on this afternoon, as the following day Malta Winter Carnaval was starting and we wanted to see Valetta as it is, without all the craziness.
To Be Continued…
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