It was good to be back in Malta. My first trip was in the early 1990s, when I was on my way to Tunisia. Much has changed, as the island is more prosperous and certainly far busier. My hotel had two exposures (each with a balcony) looking over the Grand Harbour, site of the 1565 defeat of the Ottoman navy. We wandered around Valletta, explored a bit of the three cities across the Harbour, took a day trip to Mdina, the pre-Roman capital of the island. Mdina’s narrow, winding streets make one feel as if one has strayed into a Middle Eastern souk. No trip to Malta is complete without a visit to Gozo, one of the three main islands of the archipelago. In one of the few mistakes of the trip, we took a party boat from Sliema Creek to Gozo. The main purpose of the boat was beer and stopping at a crowded Comino beach for swimming.
