The inlets are named "creeks" - a quaint word for the strips of water upon which these towns have been dependent for their livelihood for centuries.
Vittoriosa, Senglea and Kalkara stick out into the Grand Harbour like fingers. It was the longest we've walked without seeing a single postcard stand. Add in Kalkara and you have a stretch of neighborhood Malta, a big slice of local color. As it turns out, the trio of "cities," Conspicua, Vittoriosa and Senglea, are simple, workaday towns. With its fortified walls, called the Cottonera Lines, its castle and its historic significance, we thought that the area would feel like a staid tourist attraction. While our visit to Fort Rinella was a disappointment, the walk there gave us a closer look at Cottonera - comprised of the Three Cities we'd stared at from afar along with the town of Kalkara. It was from the roof deck that we got our first, real sight of Malta - a view of the Three Cities.
"You will love it," he said in the strange islander/Italian/British accent that we've now come to recognize as Maltese. The odd, lively man who showed us our room implored us to go to the roof deck before bed. Our hotel was well-worn and we were well-spent. Speeding through a Venetian archway here and clattering across a stone paved street there, we immediately got the sense that Malta wasn't going to be the built-up resort we'd feared. The night we arrived in Malta, after midnight, the taxi driver zoomed us through the streets of Valletta to our hotel.
0 kommentar(er)
