Day 94 - Wednesday, April 9th, 2025 – Malta

This is the first day I'm back on the ground for the next 5 or 6 if I count correctly. Up front, Malta is a very interesting place. It is very clean and for the most part modern. Its population is 90% Catholic, not that that plays into the clean or modern. He was a British colony until 1979. From this perspective you can tell that it is very British. For example, you see the red telephone boxes on the corner like you would in London. I didn't look to see if they had phones or not. I wouldn't be surprised if they do. Especially in this time. The primary language is English. They drive on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car like in England.

We drove through the city until we ran into an archaeological site. I don't know that I have the exact name of it, but it was where there were 4 temples from different time frames. Maybe the pictures will help. Our tour guide, whatever his name was says that this is the site of the oldest man made structure in history. He said it was 7000 BCE. This would make it older than the pyramids and Stonehenge. Obviously, humans have been living in caves forever, but these were the first manmade structures. Different temples were pointed out you could see the advancement in the technology. Obviously, the structures got more defined and modern looking. The earliest temples were hard to make out because the stones that defined those early temples were reused to build the newer temples. I don't know if the pictures captured it or not but there were stones about the size of bowling balls that were used to move some of these larger stones. Basically, it was just a cool sight to see the progression of technology.

From there we went up to St. John’s Cathedral - a very ornate cathedral. Tons of gold everywhere. Built somewhere in the 1500 for John the Baptist. Caravaggio painted several paintings. He was a contemporary of Michelangelo. As part of this cathedral, they had presentations on Caravaggio. They had a 10-minute movie which helped explain his movement from Rome to Milan to Malta and back. This was a cool part for me. The art means so much more to me when it's explained to me why it's important. Even when it's explained to me, I'm not sure why it's important, but at least they're trying to teach a little dog tricks. Of course, Mary loved it because it was a church.

From there we drove up to a market. The first thing on the map was to get some food into Mary. With her diabetes she needs to eat on a regular schedule. Play time we got to the market we were pushing our schedule hard. We found a place that had ham and cheese on the menu. We ordered that. To our surprise out came a hot dog in a wraparound bun. We were too hungry to argue, so we ate them with a smile. In this same market we were able to get T-shirts, magnets and postcards.

From there we drove up to a viewpoint. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. I stayed in the car because I was freezing at this point. Mary went and took several pictures. From there we drove a little further into a medieval city. Apparently 94 people still live in this medieval city. There's one Catholic cloistered monastery that has been there forever and there's only nun remaining on the left. She's 75.

From there we drove back to the ship. We were both tired and beat up so we decided not to go to dinner. Instead, we ordered in. I had a burger and bean chili. Both were very good. My fries were not good. Mary had chicken club sandwich and fries. She did not eat the bread. She liked her fries.

We laid low until we got to bed. It had been another successful day.