My Maltese Adventure 2015: Week 5: Hikes and history

Having had a lot of rain last week I was beginning to look forward to the sunny season. We had been told it should start to get warmer in March, this became true as exactly on the first of March it was one of the warmest and brightest days we have had since being here in Malta! I was especially glad of the sunnier weather as we went on an organised hike by the University Residence which had been postponed since last week as it was too wet. The weather provided beautiful views and great opportunities to take lots of photos! I was particularly excited to go on this hike as I thought it would show us around areas of the island we might not have found otherwise. I really enjoyed the hike which took us around the north of the island and included walking around several bays, The Clay Cliffs, St Paul’s Island and through a WW2 Fort which came to a grand total of 10km in length. I was particularly interested in the history behind St Paul’s bay as this is traditionally known as where Paul was shipwrecked which is recorded in the Bible in Acts chapter 27 and 28. It was also enjoyable to take in the amazing and breathtaking views out to the Mediterranean Sea, taking time to appreciate the different shades and colours of the sea which I later found out are determined by the suns reflection and sometimes the different algae or seaweed in the water.

'Experienced' hikers

Walking through the different bays

Appreciating the different shades of the sea

Taking in the breath-taking views

St Paul's Island

Sun, sun, sun!

Making the most of the weather and our free time Rachel and myself have decided to take up tennis. We went all out and even bought our own racquets, however I feel we will need a lot of practice before we are ready for Wimbledon! On Saturday Rachel’s sister and her friend arrived so we have spent a lot of our free time showing them around different parts of the island. It was great they could join us on the hike on Sunday and on Tuesday we went into Valletta and did a walking tour of it. This was very interesting, especially as although I have already been to Valletta I didn’t know much about its history or what was in some of the different buildings there, giving me a greater appreciation for the city as I now know it is the smallest capital in all of Europe and despite this it was one of the most bombed cities in WW2. Malta holds the record for the heaviest and longest bombing attack of 154 days and nights and 6,700 tons of bombs due to its strategic location. As a result this devastated the small island and destroyed much of its infrastructure. This has slowly been rebuilt and as a result there are many new and interesting buildings in Valletta including ruins of the original Royal Opera house which have now been turned into an open air theatre as well as a new parliament building which the architecture, Renzo Piano has put great thought into as certain features represent the building’s use as it is built on stilts which was chosen to symbolise the instability politics often involves.