Malta Part I

Warning: if you have no interest in Family-Vacation-to-Malta pictures, skip this post. I have stretched Blogger's capacity to upload photos here. But what's the point of taking pictures if not to share them?

My mom and dad are celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary this year and they wanted to celebrate by taking the entire family someplace exotic. My husband suggested Malta, because it's a relatively inexpensive and interesting place to visit, where there are wierd ancient ruins and where people speak English everywhere you go. That's how I ended up on this trip with my folks as well as my brother, his pregnant wife and their 2.5 year old.

First, a picture of our view from our balcony. We stayed at a fairly nice (they call it a five-star, but we weren't quite sure how they got all the way to five) hotel called the Corinthia Marina, and somehow Bill talked them into upgrading our rooms to suites on the top floor. Yeah, the view is pretty sweet.



Here's a fairly typical picture, of a fairly typical activity for the Norton-Leverings on the trip. Elements to notice: toddler (my nephew Alex, who commanded at least half of the attention expended in entirety on this trip) holding a train (he's always holding either a train or a truck, a Thomas-the-tank-engine train is usually preferred) and eating a cookie, while his grandma and aunt, both drinking their pretty good coffees, look on. We did this every day, several times a day, in multiple locations.

We rented a car, but often we took the bus, due to the fact that they drive CRAZY in Malta, on the left hand side of the road, very fast, around the rotaries which are at pretty much every single intersection. And they only have standard transmission cars in Malta. The only person who dared to drive was my husband Bill, and the only car we could get sat only 4 people, so we couldn't all fit in the car and go someplace together. So below is a waiting-for-the-bus picture, with one of my rare knitting pictures. Look, knitters, I am KNITTING while waiting for the bus.

Here Alex is doing what he wanted to do as we waited for the bus, which is pushing his stroller around. The child is fanatical about anything with wheels--trucks, trains, strollers, cars, you name it. People have no wheels, so they are of little interest from Alex at this point in his development. Unless they are holding a toy car, or a cellphone, which is just as interesting because it makes beepy noises and has buttons on it.

We took the bus our first day to Valetta, which is this ancient walled city in the north of Malta. It was the weekend they were celebrating Carnivale, which is sort of like Marti Gras crossed with the Mummers day parade. So lots of people in a walled city makes for loud and crowded and wild, which was a bit difficult for the introverts in our party to tolerate but somehow we made it through the day.

One of the more bizarre elements of the day was our lunch at the Labour party headquarters of Valetta. Yes, they have a restaurant open to the public. The food was pretty good

but we had to eat our entire meal while these guys looked on

Kind of like eating in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, only in some wierd parallel universe where the labour party is in charge. I guess that's how people in England and Malta feel all the time. See that labour party guy sitting behind my mom? I guess that's how he feels. Wierd.

We watched the Carnivale parade (don't Mom and I look cool in our sunglasses?)

Which included float after float painted in horrific neon colors--this is the mother goose float, I believe--



And the above float is meant to portray Aslan, the lion of Narnia. All the floats were accompanied by people in various states of costume, some fairly elaborate and some simple. These people were charged with the task of dancing very lame dance routines for long lengths of time. Witness below.

I think these are grown women in schoolgirl outfits, dressing and dancing provocatively with the "school days" float. I think some of them are grown, anyway. Those women need to knit themselves some midriff covers!

Well, that's about as much blogging as I can stand for the day. I'll probably post a couple more times about Malta. Next up: " The Cats of Malta, An A-mews-ing Tail".