Malta

I have most of the month off, and with the weather in London gloomy enough to drive a native Californian mad, I decided it was time to blow out of town for a bit. I chose Malta because it is, in no particular order, cheap, warm, rife with beaches, English-speaking, and just about as far south as you can get and still be in Europe. Or, as someone told me, it's a place where they speak English and eat Italian. That sounded great to me, so I booked a flight and hotel, and off I went.

I left out of Gatwick on Malta Air, which has a quite a reputation. Online reviews complain about sudden cancellation of scheduled in-flight meals, getting bumped out of prime seats for the bratty children of Maltese officials, and having to brush the last person's crumbs off the seats. "Non-linear" is the way one person described their corporate approach to aircraft maintenance.

But it turned out fine - it was a very smooth flight, food was served (better than the bag of peanuts you'd get on a bargain flight in the US these days), and I happened to get a window seat on the east-facing side of the plane. It was overcast over the English Channel and as far as France, but then the Alps peaked up out of the clouds, and soon we were over the Mediterranean. Italy slid by off the tip of the wing, then the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, then Sicily. Malta is so small you can't see it before you're on top of it and dropping quickly onto the runway.

This season, the Maltese landscape is green and the air is warm. I knew the cab ride out to the area where I was staying would set me back about $35, so I decided if I could swing it, I'd take a bus. I picked up a map and bus schedule at the tourist office, hit up the ATM for some Maltese cash (a recent addition to the EU, they haven't switched from the lira to the euro just yet), then broke a ten-lira bill by buying another bus map. I found the bus outside, asked if it went into the center of Valetta (the main city on the island), and hopped on.

I had thought about renting a car so I could see more the island, but the first bus ride into town put that thought firmly six feet under, where it belonged. Driving behavior in Malta is eerily similar to Tijuana (or like the hairy ride I once took out of the ferry terminal Guaymas, although to be fair, I think Megan was driving that time) but with one difference. Malta is an ex-British territory. They drive on the left side of the road.

The bus left the airport and headed out on dusty, pothole-ridden roads toward Valetta. About a third of the way there, the driver stopped, a buddy of his hopped on for a chat, and then the driver proceeded to make a three-point turn while involved in a rapid conversation with the other guy, never once looking back to check if anyone else was driving through the intersection. Then he turned off the engine, and there we sat for about five minutes before I finally asked where exactly we would eventually be going, and when. The driver reassured me we'd eventually get to Valetta, so I sat back and waited until the he decided to get moving again.

Eventually I made it to the center of Valetta. Almost all bus routes on the island lead to the same terminal, and I was able to figure out which number route would take me to Qawra. Some three hours after I left the airport, and after a scenic tour that covered about half the island, I got off at the end of the line. From there I took a couple of turns up and down side alleys before I found signs noting actual street names that I could pick out on the map. The hotel I had booked at was a quick five or ten minutes' walk from there.

The neighborhood was kind of weedy, literally. It had that look that I've seen all over Mexico, where someone has set out cinder blocks as if to build something, then left them there until they are growing a healthy thatch of the local flora. I knew this area was the super-touristy part of the island, and at the rate I was paying per night at the hotel (less than $30), I figured I'd probably be staying at some divey place off the beach. Turns out, the hotel was just about as far from divey as you can get. In fact, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, showing up dusty and sweaty from the bus ride and with a pack on my back, I felt severely under-dressed for the occasion of checking into a hotel. They gave me a room on the floor just about the lobby, with a clear view of the weedy parking lot - the bargain room, I assume. But the room was large, with a deck, and an actual bed - quite a luxury after my months sleeping on a hybrid futon-couch in my cramped studio in London. In deference to Malta's very limited water supply and ever-diminishing resources, the hotel was built to minimize its water and electricity consumption. Every room had a little device to stick the key into to turn on the electricity; when you leave with the key, the electricity goes off and stays off until the key is replaced.

I had bought lunch back at Gatwick, not knowing if there would be food on the flight, so I ate those leftovers for dinner then cleaned up a little and went out to see the town. Not a couple of blocks from the hotel, in the gathering dusk, I heard a muffled voice amplified over a loudspeaker that sounded like chanting. I followed it and found a thick procession of silent, darkly clad worshippers walking slowly up the street, followed at the rear by a white van with a stereo speaker on the roof, from which a woman's voice repeated the prayer in a language I could not understand. I slipped quietly into the somber column of people, followed them to the cathedral at the crest of the hill, where the head of the procession was just carrying an icon and a moving altar of candles into the open waiting doors of the church. I watched from the sidelines for a few moments, then split off back into the night. I took a stroll along the waterfront, watched the edge of the waveless Mediterranean lap gently against the island shore, then headed back to the hotel and turned in for the night. From my room I could hear a far off rendition of an off-key Barry Manilow tune, and I fell asleep to the vague hope that this was a drunken karaoke moment and not a professional trying to live off the tips from that performance.