Cruisin' V- Valletta, Malta

*This is a series of posts about our Christmas Cruise to the Mediterranean Sea. If you want to read them all, click on the "Cruise" tag on the right. If you don't care to watch AND read a slide show of "My Family Vacation" feel free to skip these posts. :)*

Have you ever been on vacation and then you get home and realize you took next to zero pictures?

Yeah, me neither.

Thursday morning we had a bit of confusion. We knew we were crossing time zones and needed to move our clocks ahead an hour, but we did it a day early and didn't figure it out until halfway through the day. This meant we had very little time in the tiny island country of Malta. I wish we'd had all day. Malta is a gorgeous, rocky, beachy island that is steeped in history. I would try to explain it but you can probably find better information elsewhere.

Views like this abound in Malta

Malta is a city largely built in to and out of stone. It was bombed 8x a day during WWII and still somehow managed to come out the "winner" of its battles. I had done a little research before we left and found a WWII something-or-other I really wanted to visit, but of course I didn't write it down or anything. I'm a planner like that, you know?

Luckily as soon as we exited the cruise terminal I saw signs for the Lascaris War Rooms. These are rooms chiseled slowly in to rock that housed Eisenhower's office for the planning and execution of the invasion and occupation of Sicily. It is completely preserved including original maps, office furniture, radar systems, and pieces of planes.

So. Cool.

I cannot recommend this highly enough, if you can find it. We walked for 1K uphill, through an office, up a staircase, through a stone tunnel, and into a secret passage. 

Past this.

I think we ended up on top of this wall

Tshirt weather!

We were given a private tour by the curator, who was a TALKER for sure, and kept restarting and retelling the story when more couples would join our tour.

Very unfortunately, we decided to forgo the stroller that day and carry Maggie in the carrier and she did not tolerate this outing at all. We eventually left the tour early, but I think I managed to see most of it.

Fine for now.

 We really thought we were pressed for time (we weren't, it turned out) so we quickly went back to the ship and had lunch and tried to nap.

This was the only day that was suitable t-shirt weather so we decided to try the pool. There were 2 indoor pools (that I knew of) and the first one did not allow children. We asked what pool did allow children and were told there was a kids' pool on the very top deck. The very top. Right next to the ship's smokestack. Which contains the ship's horn.

We mistakenly tried to go to the pool while the ship was leaving port. This was a huge mistake. First of all, it was not cold outside but it was hurricane-force-windy up on the tippy top deck of the ship. The pool was shallow enough for Maggie to stand in and heated so we thought we'd go ahead and get in and just stay under water.

It was f**king cold.

We lasted about five minutes, two of which the ship's horn blew right next to our heads to signal our departure and the other two of which the ship was turning hard to starboard (I have no idea actually, it could have been hard to port) to get out of the port so all the water was sloshing out one side of the pool. We gave it up. My plan was for Matt to get out, get a towel and pack all our stuff, and get a towel for Maggie. I would give him Maggie and he would run inside while I got a towel for myself and gathered all our belongings.

I lost an undershirt in this endeavor but don't worry- I saved both our half-drunk beers.

I put Maggie and myself in a hot shower and we napped and walked around until dinner. We did a lot of walking around because that's all Maggie wants to do these days.

After a delicious seafood dinner, Matt again graciously allowed me to go to the show with our friends while he took care of Maggie. I knew we were driving in to a storm, but I had no idea how much a ship could really rock. This giant ocean liner was actually coming up out of the water and slamming back down.

I was a complete wreck.

Not as much a wreck as the Chinese acrobats featured in that night's show must have been. Any time they missed a hat they were juggling or didn't nail a landing I would yell, "It's okay, it's the ship!" The people sitting around us moved. I felt REALLY bad for the poor girl balancing 20 crystal roses all over her body. I cannot even describe the motion of this boat. Think of being on a tiny fishing boat in the Pacific where people surf.

I got back to the room and stuff was literally falling off counters and any open doors were slamming. The ship was creaking like in Titanic when it's sinking and I kept thinking about that DAMN ship that hit a pier last year (a Costa ship, no less). I was so scared that I didn't sleep one wink and I had to make a list in my head of what exactly I was afraid of and whether the fear was rational or not. Here is the list. You decide:

*Ship tipping over (this was my absolute biggest fear no matter how many times multiple people told me that no cruise ship has ever tipped over in the history of ships)
*Ceiling collapsing and bringing 12 decks crashing down on top of us
*Hitting something
*Ship being bombed or hit with missiles (yeah, I don't know how my brain works)
*Fire on the ship (thanks to someone saying to me "One has never tipped over but fires do happen.")
*Captain is drunk/asleep/sick
*Waves breaking our window

Maggie slept peacefully through the whole thing. Matt didn't sleep either, and when we talked to anyone the next day they had not slept either. The good news is I did not feel sick at all so the first day I must have been really sick.