Day 6: Valetta, Malta

We found out on our day at sea, that the ship had a few engine troubles, so our arrival in Malta would be delayed from 7:30 until 9:30. This worked out perfectly for us, because it meant that we could be on deck for the sail-in to Malta. I got up around 8:30 to head up on deck. On the way out of our stateroom, we ran into our room steward, Raymund, and talked to him for a while. He is a really nice guy, took great care of our room, and gave us awesome advice about the ports. Once on deck, the views as we were pulling into port were absolutely incredible. The city of Valetta is a walled city, and most of the buildings date back to the 16th century. Words can not describe how awesome it was pulling into the harbour. I have also never seen the crew so excited to be pulling into port. A bunch of crew members had their cameras out, and a ton of officers, including Brent and Peter were on deck. The historian was giving us information about Malta over the loudspeakers.

After we were alongside the pier, we headed down to the buffet in Parrot Cay and ran into Kendell and Charlie, two of our servers from previous cruises. Breakfast was very good, and they had my favorite, the glazed chocolate donuts. It's going to be a good cruise :). We headed back to the stateroom to get ready, and a few minutes later we were crossing the gangway into the second country of our trip. We stopped in the terminal building to use the free wifi. Here is a cruising tip, if you want to find wifi, follow the crew. Once we had checked all of our emails, we had to make sure everything was good back home, we headed out into the city. The architecture of Valetta is very unique. Being halfway between Tunisia and Italy, the buildings are Arabic and Italian all at once. We headed up the steep and winding road into the city, and got some great pictures on the way in. We decided to just start winding our way through the streets exploring and seeing the sights. The entire city is hilly. In some places it gets so bad, they have steps next to the road. We walked through several streets and found a cool overlook of the harbour. I noticed that we were near the famous St. Johns Cathedral, ancient home to the Knights of St. John, so we headed over to take a look.

Across from the cathedral was a restaurant called Cafe Carevaggio. It was an awesome cafe sitting right in the heart of St. John's Square. We ordered some bruschetta, Maltese food is very similar to Italian, and had some Coke's. After out snack we headed down the main road through several of the squares. We stopped into the Palace of the Grand Masters, now the parliament building, and continued on to Fort Elmo and the Mediterranean. While we were down by the fort, we saw a huge domed building and decided to check it out. It turned out to be one of the 365 churches on the island, one for every day of the year. Incredible on such a tiny island. We stopped by a gelato shop for some ice cream, and ate in one of the nearby plazas. We headed down the main road towards the city gates, stopping to briefly check out the archaeology museum. I climbed on top of what I am sure is an old and historically significant gate, and then we proceeded through the city gates. After a stroll through one of the Knight's gardens, we headed back to the terminal for one last burst of internet.

Their was a classic car show on our pier, the officers of the ship didn't look to happy, but there were some awesome cars. We started some laundry since not a soul was in the laundry room, and then grabbed some food from Pluto's. They really loaded me down. I wanted one chicken finger and one taco, not four chicken fingers and two tacos :). I found that I could get a wifi signal from our verandah, so I used Skype to talk with Mary since I was going to be seeing her in a few days. I went to Phil Keller's Magic show at 6:30 in the Walt Disney Theatre, absolutely incredible. This guy really knows his stuff. He even levitated, on a ship. After the show I went back to the room to watch us sail out of Malta, it was just as beautiful as when we were coming in. I went down to the Promenade Lounge to work on blogs, something that was slowly becoming a nightly tradition. No Pluto dancing tonight though.

Dinner was at Animator's Palate, one of my favorite menus of the cruise. Incredible beef tenderloin and a baked apple crumble, all topped off by the restaurant changing from black and white to color. Once dinner was done, Paul Zerdin, a British Ventriloquist, had a hilarious cabaret show in Rockin' Bar D. This guy was absolutely hilarious, and people were talking about him for the rest of the cruise. There was a dance party after the show, Rockin' Country, a line dancing cowboy hat wearing dance party. I had headed to get a drink and missed hats being given out, but Katrina had saved me one, and I ended up out dancing with some of my friends. After the party, I worked on blogs for a little while and then went to bed.