Our four day getaway to Malta was fairly unexpected as visiting the country had never been in my sights until recently. We happened to be flying to and from Munich airport because of a family wedding in Austria, so we decided to pick a place that the airport flew to, to tag on a little holiday onto our trip.
Malta has one of the richest histories in the world, which stems back to its first inhabitants in 5600 BC. Its central position in the Mediterranean sea, with easy access to mainland Europe, Africa and the Middle East, made it a prime jewel for everyone looking for a good location to trade.Sieges and forceful takeovers are a part of Maltese history and it has been ruled by the Phoenicians from Lebanon, the Romans, the Arabic, France and then Britain all within the span of 8000 years. Its no surprise I noticed the interesting mix of cultures from the architecture to the food. Not to mention the amount of cities we visited that were built as fortresses to withstand the many battles that the country’s land endured.
We stayed in the magnificent, capital city of Valletta which in itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We spent the day wandering through the city and soaking up the Baroque architecture. We were lucky enough that our visit coincided with the Marsovin Summer Wine Festival which was celebrating its 100 years anniversary and were given special wine glasses as a memorabilia. We visited the capital city of Victoria on the neighbouring Maltese island of Gozo and we kayaked to the Blue Lagoon in Comino Island. We saw the Popeye Village set where they filmed the 1980 Musical Production ‘Popeye’ and my favourite part was visiting Mdina, the ‘Silent City of Malta’, which is stunning medieval streets that were the filming locations of several scenes in Game of Thrones.