Valletta, Malta April 15, 2008

At 7:00a.m. we were arriving into the port at Valletta. after attending a very interesting lecture yesterday on what we were about to see at this place, I was curious to see if it was true. At the lecture, the gal told us that the entire island is surrounded with tall thick fortresslike walls made completely of limestone that takes on a golden hue when the suns hits it.
True or false?? TRUE! When I opened the drapes to this site, it took my breath away! A gasp, that woke up Kathleen and she too was excited to see this beautiful port. We got ready to take the country by storm on our tour of Valletta.
Some history for you. Malta can trace it's human habitation back 7,000 years. Malta has been stormed over by many the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Normans, the Swabians, the Angevins, the Aragonese, the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the French, the British, and that's where it stops. They finally were given their independence by the British!! The history they maintained with the Knight's gives them their everlasting character with their Maltese Cross. The Italians and the Germans raided the island during WWII but were sent packing. Actually a bomb was dropped into the Cathedral but it did not detonate, so only a hole was made in the ceiling and the church survived! The walls that the Knights built certainly protected them and give this country a special appeal. One great story about their history was when the Turks were trying to run the Christians out of Malta, they killed some Christian prisoners they had and crucified their dead bodies, decapitated them and floated them across the harbor to intimidate the Christians into surrendering to them. The Christians then took some of their Turkish prisoners and decapitated them and put their heads into their cannons and shot those Turkish heads across the harbor into their laps! The Turks left, and the Christians held on.