Maltese Memories

Tags

football, friends, island, Malta, Mediterranean, soccer, World Cup

My memories of Malta, formed mere weeks ago, are jumbled and not altogether sensible. Like many recollections of past trips, the ones formed here make no sense on paper, but the associations are somehow even more solid for their inexplicability to others. I’ve written before about some nonsensical links I’ll always have from my travels and how they sound absurd to outsiders but are so tightly connected for me. Think Boy George and St. Petersburg, Russia. R.E.M. and the roads of the Peloponnese. Beyond those questionable musical connections, I’ve reminisced about toilets in France, paper products in Tibet, a mysterious white horse in Ecuador, my radio claim to fame in Cape Town, and so many other random but powerful memories.

As our trip to Malta was planned, we only really had four days to explore and get to know our travel mates better. As executed, we were down to three days and two nights, and a chunk of that turned out to be devoted to a couple of World Cup football matches, a sporting event I don’t think I had ever watched – or really wanted to watch – in my life.

The trip started poorly, with our Turkish Airlines flight leaving Houston so late that we missed our connection and had to spend what would have been our first evening of cocktails and dinner with old and new friends at Istanbul airport instead. It could have been worse. IST has been massively updated, and the place was hopping with activity, had a decent airside hotel, and offered an array of fun dinner options. Not Plan A, but we made the best of it.

Arriving early on day two, we met Kelly and J, along with J’s brother and his wife (an amazing bonus couple!), at our quaint little hotel in Valletta. After a quick breakfast, we were off for a walking tour of the capital city, some barely-past-noon beers, and then a boat ride to the Three Cities, which the group had explored a little bit the day before we arrived. Here we were treated not only to toasty yellow stone walls and narrow streets, but to the brotherly banter of J and T. My J is one of two brothers as well, and it was clear even in the first hours of strolling and chatting that we would be a compatible, and often goofy, group!

Kelly and J had spent the previous week in Doha at the World Cup, and like true World Cup fans, their schedule in Malta would include a double header of matches on our second night. Not certain we would be able to sit through both contests, we showed up for match #1, Croatia vs. Brazil, with intentions of politely watching for a short time and having a small amount to eat and drink with the group before venturing out on our own for the evening. In short order, however, we tumbled headlong into the excitement of the match and a cascade of drinks and cheers. Buoyed by the upset results, we hung around for a change in venue and the start of the next quarterfinal, Netherlands vs. Argentina, only to find ourselves once again entranced by a sport we had only ever suffered through as our children played youth soccer for the few years we all could tolerate.

We did manage to see more of Malta than the two bars that hosted our soccer-viewing marathon. In addition to the Three Cities, we ventured out on a bus to Marsaxlokk, a small fishing village south of the capital.

We ambled for hours above, below, and within the burnished stone walls of this fortified little island, and we even had a Michelin-star dinner at Noni in Valletta.

We admired doors and door knockers,

San Francisco-style urban hills,

and a full complement of beguiling streetscapes.

We burned a path in Merchants Street, up to the city gates and Christmas market, back down to the hotel, up to St. John’s cathedral and its Caravaggio paintings, down to Fort St. Elmo, over to Old Bakery Street, and out onto the ramparts on all sides of the city.

We got a solid feel for this unique little island that sits between Sicily and Tunisia, and we had a great time with our friends old and new. It was a joy to be back in Europe again and, in spite of its newness to us, it had the familiar old feel of so many beloved places on the Mediterranean.

We’ll remember the walks and the walls, the cuisine and the scenery, but when we think about Malta in the future, my bet is that we’ll always associate it with soccer (ok – football; see how fast I’m learning?!) and the simple good times of watching those exciting matches with beers and snacks in hand and convivial friends by our side. We even watched the finals when we got home; we’re hooked, and it’s all because we met Kelly and J and T and R in Malta!

Taking a Leap

Tags

Canada, Decision-making, leap of faith, Malta, roadtrips, Vancouver, western U.S.

It’s fitting that my blogging and real-life friend Kelly introduced me to the expression “Leap, and the net will appear.” Not much leaping has gone on here for a while, but it was an innocuous message from Kelly a few days ago that launched a swift and thrilling decision to meet her and husband J in Malta just four short weeks from today. That has, in turn, prompted my first blog post in quite a while. Not exactly a high-wire act, but a pretty nice shot of adrenaline after these last few years!

Lake Tahoe: the last place we saw Kelly and J

I go through phases of throw-caution-to-the-wind leaping. There are times like the one where I decided on a whim to cash in my airline miles and fly for 48 hours in order to meet other blogging friends Lisa and Fabio on their sailboat off the coast of Madagascar for a week, and other stretches when I settle into a safer existence in which any sort of impulsive decision-making seems irresponsible or just too damn hard to pull off.

Madagascar: Lisa, Lexie, lemurs!

Jumping back onto the blog feels scary and impetuous, too. I’ve drafted plenty of posts that fizzled out mid-composition in recent months; they just felt boring and uninspired, perhaps because my blog is about travel stories, ideally set in exotic or far-flung locales, and all I had done in the last several years was drive our car back and forth across the U.S. and western Canada.

You’ve read all about my road trip addiction, the pull to the west as summer gets underway, the call of blue byways when the days are long and a sense of giddy adventure rises in my chest as we exit a new hotel on a warm morning. But even the granddaddy of our road trips to date (over 5000 miles, starting in Houston and making our turnaround in Whistler, British Columbia, and in between big chunks of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Utah) failed to inspire a riveting, or even good, tale. A little follow-up drive of some 3000 miles up the spine of the Appalachians was equally beautiful … and equally devoid of mass interest. You’ve been there, done all this driving with me before!

Sure, it was fun and very scenic at times, and the people part has been great. Lots of family, some more bloggers like Alison and Don in Vancouver, our now-IRL pals Pam and Sean in Oregon, my 29029 gang at Whistler Mountain, and my best high school and college friends in Montana and South Carolina.

Vancouver and Whistler probably did deserve a write-up; they were first-time destinations for me and were breathtakingly gorgeous, but I just couldn’t flesh out a compelling story.

Bend, Oregon was a photographer’s dream, the southeast and Appalachians offered somewhat fresher driving routes, and there was even a new grandbaby visit in there for good (the best) measure! Still, a narrative eluded me, photo essays aren’t really my stock-in-trade, and personal stories have been mostly off-limits here.

In our non-travel life, we’ve been contemplating other big leaps as well. Our reason for establishing a second base in Colorado two years ago (our son’s growing family) suddenly disappeared when he took a new job in Ohio in July. That tipped the east-west scale a little farther to the right, with kids now in San Francisco, Ohio, and Boston, and precipitated a now-endless discussion of whether we should stay put in the middle of the country to be able to fly quickly to any of the three places (really four, since my parents are still in Pennsylvania) or try to move somewhere where three of the four could be reached by car in a day’s driving? With my husband J’s job allowing him to work from anywhere these days, we began to contemplate a relocation, but we know better than to follow peripatetic children, and part of our mostly-practical selves keeps saying to be patient.

I think we can sit on that decision a while longer, but the overseas travel itch was not as easy to push off. Perhaps a sudden or last-minute opportunity is more conducive to decision-making, at least in our household. We can’t seem to make dinner plans with friends or neighbors for months on end, but when one of us suddenly proposes an outing that evening, it works! In this case, Kelly casually suggested we join them, I latched onto the idea, J was impressively open to it, and two days later, everything was booked … I hope she really meant it! Next post from Malta!