Day 27 - Thursday, 12/05/24 - Valetta, Malta

After leaving on a nice smooth night of sailing from Alexandria we woke up for what it turned out to be another sea day. We enjoyed the inter-denominational devotional time before Nick's coffee chat with Leanne the entertainment host. Howard Krug then followed with a presentation on Lincoln and the problem of emancipation and quality. This talk was put together by him on board the ship as they needed a lecture to fill the time. Nick was then back on stage with his second tech for travelers presentation on sharing your journey. It was a basic presentation. But it was actually pretty good and he has a charming way of presenting technology, in a non-threatening way.

After lunch, we went up to the Crows Nest to watch the sail in to Valetta.  The weather was relatively dry, although windy and they opened up the bow so that one could go outside and watch the sail in from the very front of the ship. The harbor at Valetta has a very interesting entrance that involves taking the ship through an S turn going in with breakwaters on either side and steep cliffs and ancient stone forts and other structures on either side. But the staff captain did a perfect arrival and we were soon at our birth at the cruise ship terminal.

Our little group of eight met in the third floor atrium, and we scanned off the ship as a group and walked through the terminal and found our guide, Rita, who led us to our Ford Transit van that would be our transportation that evening and the next day. With a 4:00 PM arrival we did not have much daylight as darkness comes around 5 o'clock to 530 and so we drove a small loop around the city of Valetta with stops at various points to take pictures and view the sites. We also had the opportunity to do a little bit of walking in the city, which is well decorated for the Christmas season with bright lights and garland and all measure of the normal Christmas decorations you would find in any European city. We reboarded our van and we were driven to the Harbor Club, which is a very nice restaurant quite near the ship. There we enjoyed a very niceI and expensive dinner and chatted about our day and what we had been experiencing. The restaurant had an interesting convention of naming their dishes after local places in Valetta and they produced a little card that described the history of the place associated with a particular menu item. We were able to take those cards home as a remembrance of the item that we chose.  While we're eating dinner an another cruise ship arrived and docked near us. It was the Viking Saturn. I looked up the itinerary for the Saturn and saw that it's got a very interesting itinerary with a two night stop in Valetta. It's a two week cruise round-trip from Barcelona, Spain, and hits many of the same ports as.we have stopped at and adds Algeria and France into the itinerary. The itinerary is interesting enough that we may take a look at doing it again next year to experience these ports for a second time as we are really enjoying them.

We made it back to the ship about 9:45 in the evening; and since there was no real entertainment, only movies, we adjourned to our stateroom and prepared to go to bed a bit earlier as we will be getting up early in the morning and heading out once again with our guide, Rita, and driver, John, in the van.