So work brought me to Paris & Berlin. . .: In search of more sun . . .

So the flight I was getting on was to Malta. I wanted to have a weekend away that was not going to be a whole lot of anything. While it was sunny and warmer than Paris, it wasn't exactly beach weather so I spent the time seeing the sites. My new thing is not doing much research before I leave so I really had no idea what Malta had to offer.

Day one was spent in the capital of Malta - Valletta. Valletta is one of the smallest capitals and the most southern in Europe - and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The entrance of the city is a gate that's gone through some renos over the years and it's now modern looking so a little out of place with the rest of the town.

I took advantage of one of the free walking tours to get a sense of the place. The tour starts at the Renzo Piano Stairs - same guy designed the gate.

Next stop I have a photo of is the statute of Jean Parisot de Valette, a French nobleman and 49th Grand Master of the Order of Malta. Malta has a long history of Grand Masters and orders of knights. This guy is famous in part for leading the resistance against the Ottomans at the Great Siege of Malta in 1565.

Valette

From there we passed the St. Catherine of Italy church, past the Auberge de Castille onto the Upper Barrakka Gardens which is the highest point of the city.

Originally built in the 1570s for the Order St. John, now it's the PM's office

Saluting Battery

The view from the gardens is the best part!

Fort Ricasoli in the distance

Fort St. Angelo

Then it was off to the center of town . . . and St. John's Cathedral which is probably the top tourist attraction in Valletta but due to my lack of planning, I couldn't visit because it was closed at noon on Saturday and all day Sunday.

The outside of St. John's

National Library with statue of Queen Victoria out front

Mid-way through the tour we hit the oldest street in Valletta that used to be filled with bars and hotels where the sailors would hang out when they got into port. A couple of the signs are still hanging outside.

Palace square was getting set up for some performance making it hard to snap pics. The weekend I was there was the one before Easter and apparently there was a public holiday already in Malta on the Saturday which this was a part of. Palace square houses the Armoury and the Grand Master's Palace - but it was closing early so when I got there I couldn't visit.

The balconies in Malta have a very distinctive look to them as you have seen above and will on the Palace. They serve both an aesthetic and a structural purpose and define the look of the buildings in Valletta.