On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Deputinize America
As planned, we shifted our stay to Mdina, the high point in the center of Malta, a medieval town built on top of the detritus multiple civilizations that had claimed the island for 3000 years. The name of the place is in fact the old semitic word for “town”, the language being rooted in Phoenician.
Fans of Game of Thrones will recognize the city gates from the first season.
For this stay, we were lodged at the Xara Palace, a 16th-17th century Knight-built structure that abutted the wall. We had a lovely terrace overlooking the plain toward the sea, but more on that in a bit.
This is the scene that GoT fans should recognize.
So this was our private balcony with hot tub. About an hour and a half prior to dinner our first night there, I decided to take a soak in the hot tub, and wife took a shower in a bathroom which was 4 short steps up from the bedroom level. She had the door closed (she’s a freak who likes a steamed up shower room), and heard some footsteps coming up. She called out my name, heard nothing. The door latch opened, letting the steam out and irritating her because the door just stayed open. Five minutes later, she heard me put the cover on the tub and come in down another set of steps. She was clearly spooked and asked me if I came in the room to open the bathroom, but I hadn’t – I’d been outside in the hot tub the whole time.
There’s actually a decent set of images of that room, its steps and that terrace at dark on Hotels.com.
I got to looking and found a NYT article from 1970 describing the Xara Palace. That article said that Brit officers who were tired of getting bombed in Valletta during the Siege of Malta in the early 1940s had attempted a billet there but left after a couple of days because of all the ghosts……
There were deep, deep ruts in the stones at Dingli Cliffs, clearly from efforts to cart goods and rocks.
A Phoenician gravesite.
More cart tracks.
War for Ukraine Day 1,161: Odesa in Russia’s Sights
Pete Downunder
Watergirl – did you get my email about the Australian election?
eclare
I looked at the hotel on hotels.com, it looks really nice. But ghosts…don’t know if I could take that!
Baud
Some places make me wish I could go back in time to see them as they were.
zhena gogolia
Cool!
stinger
Wonderful — thank you! The “ghost” encounter is certainly interesting!
WaterGirl
@Pete Downunder: I did! By the time I got it, you would have just gone to bed.
I will reply to your email message with my phone number, and you can call anytime you think we are both likely to be up. :-)
I am good from 7am to 10pm central time. 8am – 11 pm Eastern, if that helps.
Thank you
edit: email just sent!
Geo Wilcox
There are sunken roads in England as well. I mean like VERY sunken due to the soft ground. The air in these roads is cooler than the ground above and makes for a pleasant difference when hiking.
terraformer
What an amazing view from your balcony! I could handle seeing that every day
Mark Liberman
“The name of the place is in fact the old semitic word for “town”, the language being rooted in Phoenician.”
True about the meaning of the word, but in fact Maltese is basically the same as Tunisian colloquial Arabic with some extra Italian borrowings. See here…
WaterGirl
@Mark Liberman: Welcome!
WaterGirl
@Deputinize America
Since today is the final entry for Malta, I just wanted to say thank you for the series!
Torrey
I’m really enjoying this virtual trip to Malta. Including the ghosts, as long as they stay in Malta. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great to hear someone wafting about in Phoenician?
exbarrowboy
We were at the Xara Palace hotel in 2018, a blink of an eye in the history of the place. We had a different room with no hot tub and no spooky happenings.
The hotel was lovely but definitely a step or two up from what we had been used to. We did ask for help from the front desk for getting a cab to a nearby beach town, and ended up in a chauffeur driven Jaguar with a driver who would wait for however many hours it took while we wandered around. We ended up just saying that we’d make our own way back and took the bus. There’s an excellent bus service throughout the island and it’s an interesting way to see the locals. We’d also taken the bus to get from our Valletta hotel to the hypogeum.
There seemed a rather strange mix of ordinary working folk with a layering of rich folk whose wealth is of somewhat dubious provenance. The receptionist was Russian (who was much amused by my Old Rasputin(*) T-shirt), there were what seemed an inordinate number of software companies “innovating” with online gambling, and there seems a well earned reputation for corruption. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia
I did see rumors that a film based on the siege of Malta by the Ottomans in the 1500s is under development. It would be interesting to see such a thing, as long as Hollywood doesn’t take too many liberties along the way.
* “Old Rasputin” being the Russian Imperial Stout from North Coast Brewing Company, a daughter had given me a T-Shirt for a birthday or Christmas or some such occasion.
way2blue
Malta. Would love to visit. Thank you for the tour.