Valetta is a great place, and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. I visited the Bodekka (I think that's how its spelt) Gardens which provided excellent views across the port, to what are known as The Three Cities (again, I don't have the necessary swot-papers in front of me to be able to give you the full names - I'll update that later). At noon every day they fire a cannon, and I was fortunate enough to be there at exactly the right time to witness the event (also to capture it on video).

The day was spent mozying and sketching - mainly from the gardens and down by Fort Elmo, at the tip of the island, and along the water's edge by the port entrance. Several things fascinated me about the place. Firstly, I was surprised to notice that they drive on the right-hand side of the road, also how many people spoke english, and almost all the signs etc were in english. The people seemed split in their language - some spoke in english, some in maltese - as I say, I know there's a whole history lesson here, which would explain these things - there's a War Musem there, and many wartime relics (as far as I recall, Malta was an important British military base during World War II, and came under quite a severe beating from the opposition - if anybody has anything interesting to add to that, please feel free to add a comment!). Although the architecture is a curious mixture of Greek / Italian / Arabic, there is something very British about the place.

By far the highlight of the day, for me, was St. Peter's Cathedral. Not only has it a magnificent interior, with awesome ceiling paintings and intricate carvings at every turn, but it is also the resting place of Caravaggio's famous (and very large and impressive) painting The Be-heading of John The Baptist. All visitors, as they enter, are issued with one of those aweful mobile phone-type gizmos that you press the button and it speaks to you, telling you all about what you're looking at. This is ok, except you're supposed to press the button that corresponds with where you're standing according to the map, yet the map was virtually indecipherable. Most people seemed to be standing, looking perplexed at both their gizmo and map and scratching their head just trying to figure out exactly where they were (or maybe that was just me!!).

A wander about the street market and a look at the palace pretty much wrapped up my day. Since All-aboard time was 5:30, in time for Sail-away at 6pm (these are official terms as described in the Ruby News daily blurb), I was back on board in plenty of time, at about 4:30. Unfortunately, sail-away was delayed for an hour, as new arrivals to the ship had been delayed due to thick fog at both Manchester and Heathrow airports (this raised quite a cheer, as you can imagine). The weather here today, apart from the one brief rainstorm, has been quite warm, and it's a little hard to imagine what it must be like back home.