Malta

We are all settled into our Sliema (pronounced Sleema) Malta apartment.  It's a couple blocks slightly uphill from Balluta Bay.  It was overcast and drizzling when we arrived, but when we awoke the next morning, the sky was robin's egg blue, the sea was deep blue, it was 68 degrees (a vast improvement over Spain), and there was only a slight breeze.

The first day, after feeding ourselves, we bought tickets for the "big red bus" - the double-decker tour bus from the "Original tour Hop on Hop Off" company we've used in London, Madrid, Cadiz, and Barcelona.  We've found that this tour gives us a great overview of the sights to see in the area.  We learn a lot about the history of each place from this tour and we can use the information to decide where we want to apply our free time.

So, over a couple days, we "did" the north side of the island: Sliema (where we got on and are staying), Valletta (the national capital), Mosta, Mdina (the ancient site of many civilisations), Buggida (pronounced Boojeeda, on the far north shore), St. Julian's (where the nightlife is found), and many other fascinating places.

The most fascinating facts that I remember from this trip:
1. Malta has the dubious honour of being the "most bombed country in the world".
2. The church in Mosta had a bomb drop through the roof among 300 parishioners during a service and it did not explode.  They now have a fake bomb residing in the church as a reminder.
3. Mdina was badly bombed during WWII because it was the site of a military installation and the site of many ancient fortresses.  After the war, a glassblower set up shop a remaining hangar and an art community developed around it in other buildings and Quonset huts, which still exists today.
4.  There are Ficus trees 60-70 feet tall lining streets in Malta.  In Tacoma, we keep them in pots.
5.  St. Paul is said to have been shipwrecked here when he was being taken back to Rome for trial.  He ended up organizing the early Christian church in Malta, making it one of the first Roman colonies to convert.

So, here is what Malta ooks like.

The shoreline along Balutta Bay in Sliema, just down the hill from our apartment

The water changes colour around the corner in the area where the ferries leave for the other two islands.  Further along, are the salt pans that were built in the 1400s and are still used today to make salt from seawater.

This is one of the Hop on Hop off buses that we took to learn about the area.  

The church in Mosta where the WWII bomb dropped through the domed roof, in front of 300 parishioners, and didn't explode.

The Glassblowing business in Mdina, the ancient site of a fortress  much of which was destroyed in WWII.

The Sliema Strand where you can take the ferry across to Valletta, the capital of Malta.

One of the ancient entrances to the walled city of Valletta.

Those fascinating Ficus trees that line some of the roads 

View from the Sliema Strand

Huge Ficus trees in a little plaza across from the Strand

One of the walk-on ferries.  Maltese boats come in many beautiful colours.

Sliema's other side near the Torri (an ancient watchtower).  The shore is solid rock tapering down to the water; no sand or  small stones like we have on the Washington coast.

The view today (while it rained a little) of the Spinola Bay at St. Julian's, just down the coast from Sliema.  This is more of a party area than Sliema - St. Julian's and Paceville and everything in between are the party areas.  The beautiful casino is on a jutting peninsula to the left.

We've been here about 5 days and now we are getting serious about finding a more permanent apartment, at least for a month, while we look into the legalities of staying longer.  We would like to get through until Spring, so we can hit a few more of our dream stops before coming home.  More to come...

Barcelona - Sagrada Familia Basilica

Staying another few days to make sure we saw the inside of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family, I believe) was such a good decision.  We missed our first chance when we bought tickets to enter during a strike and found all entrances to the Sagrada closed due to a sit-in.  Our accommodations noware not as nice as we had before (unfortunately, the Spain smell is back in force with this apartment), but the Sagrada Familia makes it all worthwhile.  This is the Catholic cathedral that Antoni Gaudi designed and did not live to see completed.  In fact, many of us will not live to see it completed, either.  Construction began in 1882 in the Eixample (ee-shampla) neighborhood, the working class extension of the city that connected Barcelona with some of the surrounding villages.  Gaudi was working with the original designer, but had to take over the project in 1883 when the designer died suddenly.  Gaudi significantly influenced the construction of this building until 1926 when he died after being hit by a tram in Barcelona.  Construction was expected to be completed in 2026, but we shall see.

Here is a pale imitation of what I saw yesterday.

The setting sun side

Then, the sun started to set and the light came through the stained glass and reflected splashes of the rainbow over every surface, including us.

Setting sun side

Morning sun side

Selfies just didn't seem to catch the colour; probably the angle

Then, after the sun was almost down, the alter (where the crucifix is hanging from a strange parachute arrangement) is the place of calm and focus.  The colours that Gaudi chose for the setting sun side of the sanctuary were red and yellow at the back and purple and blue toward the altar.  On the rising sun side, he had all the calm colours: green, blue, aqua.  The mornings must be another, soothing kind of colour experience.  But, afternoons, you went from fire and brimstone to calm and focused.  I'm really no Christian, but it is a moving and exhilarating experience and you must be there to feel it.  These photos don't do it justice.  I'm so glad we went.

Afterward, we walked out into the last rays of the sunset.

It was magical and I will never, ever forget it.  Now, we have one more day (well most of a day because I sat in bed and posted on my blog).  We'll do errands and see what we can.  Then, we fly out to Malta (where the Warm is) tomorrow morning at 11:45am on Veuling Airlines.  There are cheap flights available in Europe to Europe, but we are nervous.  That last EasyJet flight to Madrid did a wing wobble thing as we landed that made us both feel a little insecure.  I hope this one will be better.

Barcelona - Gaudi houses

We were more tired than we realized.  So, yesterday we just visited a couple of the Gaudi apartment buildings on Paseig de Garcia, a short walk from our current apartment.  Gaudi was so amazing.  We took the tour of the Casa Batllo and we learned so much about him and his work.  I had no idea that Gaudi was an early recycler.  All those mosaics that cover his sculptures and the rounded shapes of some of his walls are actually made from pieces from demolition sites.  Old houses, old ceramics and tiles, old metal - they are pieced together to create something new and beautiful.  He also intentionally looked at nature to create solutions to architectural problems and challenges.  His ventilation system had areas that looked like gills, solving an architectural challenge of the day.  He used the arches that looked like the ribs in a skeleton to replace timbers and other, more space hogging kinds of arches to give his walls the support they needed from the inside.  (This among other things, like the balconies that looked jaw bones, earned the house the nickname House of Bones.) He created calm by mimicking the color, reflections, rippling, and sound of water.  He made windows large in the lower floors, where the rays of the sun can't reach as well, and small at the top of the building, where the sun is most intense.  He took Spanish traditional building norms and made them more efficient - the internal light shaft (like a large elevator shaft) that opens to the sky creating that water effect inside the house, the roof terrace with mosaic trimmed pots attached to the walls,  the use of stained glass and curving staircases.  Yes, these buildings look kind of weird inside and out, but they are also comfortable, appealing, restful, and beautiful.

Casa Mila aka La Pedrera - named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984

The Casa Mila balconies have railings and decoration of twisted forged iron.  

Casa Batllo  (the building in the middle with green coloring on it) - this was a Gaudi remodel  in 1904 of a traditional Spanish house from the mid-nineteenth century.  It broke some of the bylaws of building in Barcelona, but was named one of its best buildings in 1906.

Notice the large windows at the bottom and comparatively small ones at the top.  It has been said that most homes of the wealthy of the time had small windows at the top because that's where the servants lived.  But, I have seen how dark it is at the bottom of these city buildings, especially with narrow streets.  It makes sense to catch as much light as possible at the bottom of a building with large windows and less at the top.

The living room with windows overlooking the main street

Living room ceiling

Living room from the other side

View from the lower stairway - Higher up, the stairs and landings go around the light shaft.

The dining room looking out at the terrace.  Notice the two columns (beautiful multicolored mosaic) within a few feet of the door.

The back wall of the terrace, with ceramic pots attached to the wall.  That arched shape is the shape of the wicker tunnel (which attached in that shape) that the family used in the summer for shade and privacy.  The opening was directly in front of the dining room door.

The tiled floor of the terrace, looking toward those two beautiful columns standing in front of the entrance to the dining room.

The fully tiled air/light shaft that run up through the middle of the house.  Can you sense a little that feeling of being underwater?  It really was soothing.  You had to use the stairs or the landings around this shaft to get anywhere in the building.

A view from the roof with those smooth almost-animal shaped edges

There were many chimneys.  Gaudi seemed to love to decorate chimneys and he would group them together, rather than line them up as was traditional.  All are covered in mosaic tiles pieces.  The pieces had to be broken into odd shapes in order to cover the curves and angles of his designs.

The door is to the stairway back down into the building and this styliszd cross crowns the front of the building.

The view straight down to the street from a front corner of the roof.

The opening of the ventilation system.  Those vents have been compared to fish gills, suggesting that is where Gaudi got his inspiration.

The skeletal arches I spoke of 

The place our official photo was taken.  It was scary because I am rather afraid of heights.

This is what it looks like at night.

Here's the photo that we had taken at the top of Casa Batllo!

We have decided to stay another 3 days and, of course, have to move to another AirBnb apartment (that makes 3 for Barcelona).  The new apartment is actually 2 blocks up from this one in the Eixample  district (pronounced ee-shampla; it means addition, because it was a new more consciously designed area of Barcelona).  I particularly like this district - lots of groceries, restaurants, bakeries, and shopping.  There are a several plazas and parks  nearby and we are within walking distance of many interesting sites, including these Gaudi-designed buildings and the Sagrada Familia (and only a few blocks from the Sants railroad station).

We still want to see the inside of the Sagrada Familia and there are a couple other Gaudi houses, the Magic Fountain, and a couple Plazas to see.  We'll see what we can pack into the next few days before we fly out to Malta to see if it is a warm spot we can settle in for a month or so.