{"id":3647,"date":"2025-05-29T22:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T21:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3647"},"modified":"2025-05-30T17:01:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T16:01:18","slug":"valletta-malta-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/valletta-malta-2\/","title":{"rendered":"VALLETTA, MALTA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today we arrived in Valletta, Malta, along with three other very large ships (Norwegian Epic, P&O Azura and MSC Magnifica). We warned that the city might be a little bit busy, but I don’t think we were quite prepared for how <\/strong>busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a leisurely breakfast we headed for the quayside where a shuttle bus took us to the terminal entrance. From here it was only a short walk to the Barrakka lift, which, for \u20ac1 per person, whisks visitors almost 200ft from Lascaris Wharf to the Upper Barrakka Gardens in only 23 weconds. This provides easy access to the town centre and local attractions. The queue was quite extensive when we got there, however, so we chose to walk the long way round, via Victoria Gate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By doing so we were treated to the sight of a film unit shooting on a street corner. We hung around for a short while, and asked one of the operatives what they were filming, who confirmed that it was a scene for ‘Fallen 2<\/em>‘. I’m not familar with ‘Fallen 1′<\/em>, but will certainly look out for the movie when it is released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Upper Barrakka Gardens, when we got there, were heaving with people, as were all the adjacent streets leading into the town. Fortunately, after fighting our way through the milling crowds, we were still able to find a (second) pair of sandals for Tracey and get back to the ship in time for lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After lunch we went to the Playhouse theatre clutching our excursion tickets for a trip to Marsaxlokk (pronounced Mar-sa-shlock), a fishing village that I think can best be summed up in four words; a lot of boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The coach dropped us off just outside the village (which I would more accurately describe as a small town) and the guide led us down to the harbourside, showing us where to meet back up at the allotted time. We had about an hour and a quarter to wander around, which we spent photographing the fishing boats and the fish scrabbling for pieces of bread thrown out from the quayside restaurants to entertain the punters. There is also a large market there, catering for tourists for six days of the week, and is a fish market on Sundays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As ‘do your own thing’ excursions go, it was a pleasing couple of hours, seeing a Malta location that we’d never been to before, and being away from the heaving crowds in Valletta. On our return, the coach dropped us off outside the terminal, so we took the opportunity to return to the city, as visitor numbers seemed to have diminished slightly. We took the lift to the top and enjoyed a second, more relaxed, look around the gardens, gradually making our way to the harbour on the opposite side of the town, from where we could circumnavigate our way around the outer perimeter walls, past St Elmo fort, and the large bell tower (which was closed and covered in scaffolding), finally back to the terminal and a shuttle to the ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our slightly extended stay was made possible because of the bunkering operation which the captain told us would take about seven hours. All-aboard time was revised to 8.30pm, for a 9pm sailaway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We now have one sea day as we head towards our next location, Korcula, in Croatia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we arrived in Valletta, Malta, along with three other very large ships (Norwegian Epic, P&O Azura and MSC Magnifica). We warned that the city might be a little bit busy, but I don’t think we were quite prepared for how busy. After a leisurely breakfast we headed for the quayside where a shuttle bus took us to the terminal...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28,15,38,37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3647"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3657,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions\/3657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}