Day 68/188: Meh-lta (Malta)
You know how sometimes you go somewhere kind of random and have no expectations about the place, and then it turns out to be so cool and you have amazing memories you never expected?!
Malta isn’t that.
Our cruise stop to Mykonos got cancelled due to high winds, which was a bummer, but we all love sea days anyway, so no biggie. And then we got back on track with the schedule by stopping in Malta today. We’d watched that cruise TV channel about the port stops a few days ago, and we were cracking up at how boring Malta seemed compared to any of the others. It was 100% museums and cathedrals we’d never heard of, with nothing that stood out or looked fun in any way. We’re not anti-museum, but we’ve been to plenty on this trip, and we might have a bit of museum burn-out, especially for obscure ones about a place we didn’t even remember was a country. We have a friend who travels so incredibly differently from us, that we joked that he would love this port stop because he could go from museum to museum all day long.
I don’t mean to sound like the ignorant American here. Just because I don’t know much about a place, doesn’t mean it’s not cool. In fact, we really love finding places that aren’t as well known and figuring out what’s cool about them. Our hope was that we could do that in Malta, too.
But no. Malta is hilariously mundane. We figured since we didn’t have any particular destination in mind, it would be a good day to get on a Hop On Hop Off Bus and look for ideas. But even that was boring. (Also not air-conditioned and a painfully slow way to get around the island, but for now I’m focusing on the lack of excitement.) I think we ultimately rode on those buses for over two hours, and the audio guide gave us maybe 10 minutes total of facts about the area. There was a long stretch spent on the education system in Malta, down to explaining how they try to integrate kids with special needs into classrooms as much as possible. I mean, yay for that, but if your tourism specialists are that desperate for content, you may live in a boring place.
It’s not ugly, but it’s also not pretty. There are some beautiful buildings and streets thrown in here and there, but mostly there are just a lot of buildings that are equally nondescript. And then there are big fields of generic-looking crops. And on our hot bus ride from one side of the island to another, we passed through big clouds of strong horse manure smells, presumably from the farms.
The beach we went to was gorgeous, and the water felt great. But again, there was nothing that stood out about it. Now, that is a true first world problem, I fully admit. But it isn’t really a complaint anyway. We didn’t have a bad day. We enjoyed the beach. We all kept good attitudes. The people seemed nice enough. The little bit of food we ate was fine. I replaced my fancy $12 Target sunglasses (RIP, old friends) with equally fancy 7 euro sunglasses.
I feel bad ripping on Malta, because it’s not a bad place at all. It’s just a place. They can’t all be exciting. The world needs the sturdy workhorses of the world, and I think Malta is one of those. I’m just not entirely sure why cruises stop here.
For the record, I did ask around to fellow cruise and bus passengers, to see if maybe we’d missed something. At least the Austrians, Brits, and Italians we spoke to all seemed to be underwhelmed by today’s outings, too. Nobody hated it. We all just sorta shrugged our shoulders and laughed.
This was a pretty view to wake up to in port this morning.
Malta’s version of “Keep Malta Weird” is a bike stapled to a wall. I like it.
A building.
