Far from being the pensioners’ paradise many people believe them to be, the sun-kissed and fun-packed Maltese islands are popular with everyone from toddlers to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern
When Ireland beat Malta 2-0 in the Ta’ Qali Stadium on November 15, 1989 to qualify for the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy, the 5,000-strong Green Army celebrated by drinking the island dry.
Tour guide Darrell Azzopardi, who was in his 20s at the time and attended the match, has bitter-sweet memories of the all-night hooley that resulted in many fans missing their flights home.
“Losing 2-0 wasn’t a huge shock, and we were happy to party with our Irish friends afterwards,” he said. “The Maltese are very fond of the Irish, they’re such good fun. But the next day, when reality sunk in, we were upset that we couldn’t cry into our beer – they’d drunk it all.”
Fortunately, bars and restaurants have since restocked, and a pint of top-selling Cisk lager can be had for as little as €3.50.
A few weeks ago in The Dubliner, looking out on Spinola Bay in St Julian’s, I paid just €13.40 for two pints and a Gordon’s gin and tonic, served with a smile by Stacey, from Finglas, Dublin. At those prices, which are common throughout Malta and neighbouring Gozo, she wasn’t the only one smiling.
“I came on holiday, fell in love with the place and decided this is where I wanted to live,” said Stacey. “I’m here 11 years now. It’s fantastic. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
There are those who wouldn’t want to spend their summer fortnight anywhere else, which explains the high number of year-after-year repeat visitors. They’d be quick to tell you Malta is a family-friendly destination and not the “pensioners’ paradise” that people who haven’t been there believe it to be.
Bertie Ahern is a pensioner, and at 71 was easily the oldest person on my early morning Ryanair flight from Dublin to Valletta. The youngest was a baby screaming blue murder two rows behind the former Taoiseach, who’s probably dropping heavy hints to his grandkids about noise-cancelling headphones for his birthday in September.
Most passengers, however, were aged from their mid-20s to 50s, and many had small or teenage children with them – the Maltese islands have attractions and activities galore for all ages.
There are four flights a week from Dublin and two from Shannon, and next month a lot of the seats will be occupied by hip young things heading to Europe’s biggest free music festival, Isle of MTV (July 18-23, isleofmtv.com), which will be headlined this year by US pop rock outfit OneRepublic.
Being creatures of the night, it’s unlikely the music lovers will be up and about to video the ceremonial firing of the cannons from the 16th-century Saluting Battery just below Valletta’s Upper Barrakka Gardens.
It’s a twice-daily event, at noon and 4pm, and makes one hell of a racket, but the views from the gardens across the Grand Harbour to Fort St Angelo and the Three Cities of Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua are well worth the assault on the eardrums.
Festival-goers tend to get by on burgers, which is their loss, because Maltese cuisine, heavily influenced by nearby Sicily with a dash of north Africa to spice things up, is a treat for the taste buds.
Among the traditional dishes holidaymakers should try are pastizzi (little puff pastry snacks filled with ricotta cheese or mushy peas), aljotta (fish stew), spinach and tuna pie, spaghetti with sea urchins and baked stuffed aubergines.
Rabbit features on just about every menu (sneaky parents tell their little ones it’s chicken) and comes either fried with spaghetti or in a hearty stew, stuffat tal-fenek, with red wine and garlic sauce.
Punters who have never visited the payout window in a Paddy Power shop can get their own back by tucking into horse pie at Nenu the Artisan Baker in Valletta’s St Dominic Street. The high-protein meat is slow-cooked overnight in Red Rum – sorry, red wine – and tastes like braised steak.
Local soft drink Kinnie, which has a bitter orange flavour, is to Malta what McDaid’s Football Special is to Donegal.
Years ago, a Maltese waiter named Joe who worked in the Europa Hotel in Belfast looked forward with great excitement to visits from his relatives back home. He was happy to see them, of course, but happier still that they always brought a dozen bottles of Kinnie, which he would ration until the next time they came.
Joe said it was the one thing above all others that reminded him of his childhood (it reminds me of cough medicine, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it).
At a mere 27km by 14km, Malta is minuscule. When you include Gozo and the even tinier Comino (population: two), whose Blue Lagoon is a popular swimming and scuba diving spot, the islands would fit three times into Co Dublin.
The Maltese all speak English, use the euro and three-pronged plugs like ours and drive on the same side of the road as in Ireland, so hiring a car to get around is stress-free if you avoid peak hours, which would try the patience of a saint.
Take Paul, for example, who was shipwrecked off what is now the touristy St Paul’s Bay in 60AD. He was being taken to Rome to be tried as a political upstart, but a storm washed the boat on to rocks. All 270 people on board managed to get to shore, and were treated well by the hospitable islanders.
Paul introduced Christianity to Malta, which is 85pc Catholic (Ireland is 69pc) and has 365 churches – one for every day of a non-leap year, so there’s no excuse for missing mass. When he eventually got to Rome and was hauled up before Nero in 68AD, he was found guilty and put to death, but at least he has a holiday resort named after him, which is more than the nutty emperor can say.
St Julian’s, where I stayed at the Marriott Hotel and Spa, is named after the fourth-century patron of fiddlers, circus clowns and murderers, so an eclectic clientele.
Julian died of natural causes, unlike his parents – he killed them in their bed, thinking they were his wife and a lover – and John the Baptist, whose beheading is depicted in Caravaggio’s massive masterpiece in St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta.
The cathedral, built by the military and charitable Order of the Knights of St John (also known as the Knights of Malta) and completed in 1577, is perhaps the most magnificently adorned place of worship in all of Christendom and an absolute must-see. For those who are superstitious about stepping on graves, a visit could pose a problem – the entire floor is covered with nearly 400 ornate marble tombstones commemorating knights and officers.
The remarkable story of the order and the history of often-besieged and bombarded Valletta and of the islands as a whole is told in author Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Kappillan of Malta.
This wonderful work of fiction that’s also packed full of fascinating facts is my all-time favourite novel and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Mind you, at 500 pages it would be wise to start reading now if you’re planning a holiday in September, when the temperatures are more bearable – they often reach 32C in high summer (the hottest day on record was 43.8C in August 1999).
My week-long stay in mid-May was blessed with fine weather – a bit overcast at breakfast, clearing by late morning and 22C come lunchtime, which proved perfect for a picnic one afternoon on a tree-shaded hillside overlooking Mgarr port on Gozo.
Ana Kisling, from Ukraine, who used to work in aviation in Malta, has lived on Gozo since 2008, and proved the perfect picnic host. An accomplished cook, she set up her catering business (see Gozo Picnic on Facebook for details and bookings) after becoming a mum, and it has attracted nothing but 5-star reviews.
Her clients range from families to tour groups, and quite a few fellas have taken advantage of the romantic set-up to propose to their girlfriends.
“I even had one guy who turned up with two beautiful young women and proposed to them both,” said Ana. “I didn’t know where to look!”
Ferries go back and forward all day long between Cirkewwa on the northernmost tip of Malta and Mgarr (a 20-minute crossing), where buses, taxis and tuk-tuks wait to collect passengers for a tour of the island.
The top sights for day-trippers on Gozo include the medieval citadel overlooking the capital, Victoria, and the Ggantija temples – the oldest man-made structure in the world – which date from 3600BC, making them older than Newgrange by 400 years and the pyramids at Giza by 1,000 years.
Back on Malta, and not far from Cirkewwa, is the higgledy-piggledy seaside Popeye Village, which was built as a film set for the 1980 musical comedy Popeye, starring Robin Williams. Instead of being dismantled after the cast and crew headed home to Hollywood, it was preserved and turned into a tourist attraction that’s especially popular with children.
Another filming location is the walled former capital, Mdina, whose monumental carved gateway will be familiar to Game of Thrones fans as the entrance to King’s Landing.
Guide Darrell’s colleague and actress Audrey Marie Bartolo knows more about the HBO blockbuster series than anyone else on Malta – she played a Dothraki – and tickets for her GoT tours are in big demand. Audrey is also a professional singer and competed in the 1990 Maltese heats of the 2010 Eurovision, which was won by Italy, with Ireland’s Liam Reilly a close joint-second with Somewhere in Europe.
The poor old Malta fans had nothing to sing about after that match in 1989 when John Aldridge bagged both goals and forced the Cisk brewery to work overtime for a week, but Darrell said the Irish will always be welcome on his beautiful home island.
“As long as they leave some beer for the rest of us,” he added.
GET THERE
Ryanair flies from Dublin and Shannon to Valletta. Travel agents Sunway (sunway.ie), Cassidy Travel (cassidytravel.ie) and Click&Go (clickandgo.com) offer package holidays to Malta.
STAY
The Malta Marriott Hotel and Spa (marriott.com) overlooking Balluta Bay in St Julian’s offers all the top-class dining and leisure facilities you would expect from a 5-star establishment. But the icing on the cake for a traveller like me, whose idea of packing is to throw a pile of clean but creased clothes into a bag, is that there’s an iron and ironing board in each room and suite. It’s a simple amenity that too many hotels neglect to provide – don’t they realise it’s a godsend?
GET A GUIDE
Tour guide Darrell Azzopardi can be contacted on darrellazzopardi@gmail.com and Audrey Marie Bartolo on audreymarie783@gmail.com
Tom Sweeney Travel Writer 