Wednesday: Fort St. Elmo and Valleto

I took a bus to Fort St. Elmo today and walked back ~8km through the solid row houses. 

It turns out Malta has been in the middle of a couple big world conflicts being a key locale for trade routes between Europe over to the middle east and later india/china.  The first big conflict was when the Ottomans were trying to push to Europe in 1565.  The Ottomans had a huge 200 ship navy and 40,000 soldiers and were turned away by a 6000, of which 900 english knights and the rest mostly native Maltese.
These are quotes from the Ottoman leader and the Malta leader right before the battle.  It turned out Fort St. Elma fell to the Turks, but at a large cost and they ran out of energy to take the island.  Soon later the Turks imploded.

 Knights armor:

turks Amor, much less substantial.  They used 100-175 pound rocks for cannon balls to break up the walls.

Then in WWII Italy claimed Malta and sent some navy and later germany sent +3000 bombing raids, they said the most bombed area of WWII per square territory (I'm not sure how they are counting this).  Malta never fell.

These are the same guards that have been guarding the palace since 1940.

US president Roosevelt sent this nice letter to the Maltese people after the tide of WWII turned for the Allies.

 Since WWII Malta was a never combative part of NATO and then turned neutral like Switzerland and then joined the EU.  I've noticed more than a dozen of these signs on different major rennovation projects around the island.  Apparently Germany is paying for rebuilding/renovations.

 About a third of the Fort St. Elmo grounds are covered with old barracks that are now home to local squatters.  The guard said I could go look through there, but expect to get yeld at by the squatters.

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Looking over the battlements of one of the walls.  The ocean breaker on the left was partially blown up by Italian submarine during WWII.

I have a hard time remembering the cars drive on the wrong side of the road here.  I've got some honks but I'm getting better at looking the right way.

I was really tempted to purchase one these earring sets for Sally.  They looks quite cool close up, the store owner told me they are handmade right there in the store.  When I aske how fast the silver tarnishes he said dont' worry just rub it off with some clothe.  I never buy the first time I see something so I told him I would return.  I saw no fewer than 3 other shops selling what I can tell the exact same earrings.  It reminds me of Jerusalem where the shop owners swear the olive wood nativity scenes are hand carved by them but mysteriously most of the shops nativity figures look exactly the same.  They must all be trained by the same carving master.  :)

I found this splendid little store!

And this is Friar Tuck's place:

Lots of shops next to the tourist places.

 Here is an example of a really run down place. I'm guessing this was built during or just before WWII time.  Soon after WWII England gave the Maltese their independence from English rule and the navy left.  I guess half of the row houses I saw were this same age/shape.  Totally run down and vacated.  Close to the bay and tourist places the houses have been renovated kept up.

 On my walk home I found a botanical garden: