
A coffee and a couple of pastizzi wil cost a couple of dollars. Pastizzeriji are all over, but the pastizzi institution is the Crystal Palace Bar in Rabat, a hole-in-the-wall that closes for only two hours each day during the week. Maltese cuisine is Mediterranean-oriented, but the essential Maltese snack is the simple pastizz: a lozenge-shaped, greasy, cholesterol-charged pastry filled with ricotta or peas. (Malta also has one of the densest road networks in the world.) Buses are a cheap alternative and cover almost everywhere, and there is a limited night service too. It’s smarter to use one of the cab companies that do online bookings.
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The white cabs at the airport are expensive, and the drivers are rude and slack about switching their meters on. Locals give these a wide berth, for good reason. Malta joined the European Union in 2004.ĭon’t follow the white taxis-they’re bad news. The Brits, sensing opportunity, obliged, and remained for 164 years until Malta became independent in 1964. After two turbulent years of anti-clerical French rule, the Catholic Maltese asked Britain for help kicking out the French. With the Knights’ power on the wane a couple of centuries later, Napoleon took the islands with little resistance. The noble Knights also, quite literally, furnished Malta with Europe’s finest art and architecture. John–originally hospitallers recruited from Europe’s noble families accompanying pilgrims during the Crusades–ruled Malta, pulling it culturally towards Europe and transforming it into a maritime power that gave the Ottomans a run for their money. Then for a couple of centuries from 1530, the Order of the Knights of St. An ancient temple-building civilization, later Phoenician, Roman, Arab, Norman, and Aragonese occupations all made some mark on Maltese culture and left an impressive collection of UNESCO-anointed sites. Malta is the navel of the Mediterranean, floating in the sea between Sicily and Libya. The fortified city of Senglea, which resisted an Ottoman invasion in 1565.
