barns.blog

Having left Istanbul, we progressed through Thessaloniki to Valletta in Malta. This trip took a few days and we had a chance to relax at sea. Malta is geographically slap bang in the middle of the Mediterranean and just south of Sicily. Because of its position, it has been of strategic importance all through history. The single most important stage in the history of this (now independent) country was the age of the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem – today St John’s Ambulance.

The capital was founded by the Knights under their leader de la Valette in 1566. Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is home to St. Johns Co-Cathedral which is singularly unimpressive on the outside. Inside, however, it must be the most ornate and beautiful Cathedral I have ever been in. The Knights are buried beneath the floor, with de la Valette buried beneath the alter.

Malta is a tiny country – Valletta itself only houses just under 6500 people (roughly the same as the number of students at Rhodes University). Despite its size, it has a remarkable diversity as exemplified by the differences between Valletta and Medina (the ancient capital), which we also visited.

Following Malta, we visited Sardinia. Famous for it’s beaches, we saw an entirely different side of Sardinia. We travelled inland for about an hour and a half to just south of the centre of the island to a small town known as Barumini. The town is home to The Nuragi of Barumini, which is the largest of the nuragi on the island and pre-dates the pyramids at Giza by 1000 years. It was a fair climb into this conical shaped structure and was a little strange to descend through several thousand years of rock walls.

Finally, however, the cruise came to an end. From Sardinia, we spent a day at sea before disembarking the Navigator of the Seas for the last time in Barcelona. In Barcelona we took a open top city tour and simply stupefied on the bus. This was because we had had four hours sleep and had been on the go for 12 days. We did however see a variety of fascinating things, including the work of Antoni Gaudi, most notably the Sagrada Família. Towards the end of the tour, we drove past the cruise harbour and with the sound of a ships horn in our ears, got a final look at the Navigator of the Seas, and our trip was essentially over.

End Notes: This was a very short and terse description of our trip. The 37 photos here are a small sample of the 1200 photos and three hours of video which still need to be sorted. The history and names are as I remember them, with a little help from Wikipedia now and then. Please comment on any errors and notable omissions I may have made.