fajrdrako | Valletta, first day

Last night, Lyn, Beulah and I arrived in Valletta after twenty-some hours without sleep on various airplanes by way of Frankfurt. The taxi driver sent by the hotel to pick us up took my suitcase and said, "Did you pack all of Canada?" Huh. It wasn't so bad. Only 17 km, but that doesn't include the books I took to read on the plane. I ended up not reading them - I read Lyn's copy of "Monstrous Regiment" by Terry Pratchett instead.

We napped. We walked to the nearby Lower Barrakka gardens, with lovely ficus trees and a naked statue of Aeneas (put up by the Dante Alighieri society) and a view of the Mediterranean.

We ate at the hotel, and slept to 3 a.m., and went back to sleep and slept some more. Now we are human again.

The first thing we saw in wandering the city this morning was a historical re-enactment of Grand Master jean de la Vallette investing Knight Romegas with the Order of the Grand Cross for heroism. He didn't look in the least like Gabriel, so he must be okay. I whispered to Beulah, "Do you think we've ever seen anyone who knew Lymond in person before?"

This place is so beautiful I want to take photos everywhere I look. The icon here is very like the view from our hotel window - from the 'gallerija', where we can sit and look over the harbour, by the Victoria Gate. The streets outside our hotel are a fascinating knot of many levels - the same sort of principle as modern freeways, but hundreds of years old.

The language is descended from that of the Phoenicians. Fascinating.