Passacaglia and Fugue

We agreed last year, that this year we would holiday in northern Europe, ideally in a location reachable by Eurostar. So it was inevitable that instead we would spend a week in Malta.

Monday 2nd: Our flight departs from Heathrow Terminal 4. We arrive at our usual parking provider, only to be told we have in fact booked the "Meet and Greet" service, and need to go to the terminal instead. Fortunately we have allowed plenty of time. I feel they could have accepted the car there anyway, as it is probably stored in the same place for the week. I always find Heathrow a bit of a nightmare, but once we are through security everything progresses smoothly. It is a 3 1/2 hour flight. The first bus from the airport terminal is already pretty full and we can't get on, not helped by another bus occupying the expected space and a French party usurping any semblance of a queue. Anyhow, once we arrive in Valetta it's fairly straightforward to find our hotel - just as well, given the heat and humidity. We explore a little of Valetta, including the Upper and Lower Barrakka gardens. There seem to be a plethora of commemorative stones erected by military colleagues to the fallen over the centuries, and more recent memorials expressing solidarity with the people of the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian uprisings in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Grand Harbour from Valetta

Tuesday 3rd: We begin at St John's Co-Cathedral. For some time there is concern about R's camera lens; it turns out that the contrast between the aggressive air conditioning in the hotel and the ambient conditions has caused some condensation, which take a while to clear. We move on to the Grand Master's Palace, and then the National Library. In the afternoon we visit the National Community Art Museum, which turns out to be larger and more impressive than might be expected. There are echoes of futurism and/or fascism in some of Antonio Sciortino's sculptures inspired by Charles Lindbergh. In contrast, the Archaeological museum is larger on the map and although interesting, it takes less time.

Futurism at MUZA, Valetta

Wednesday 4th: We take a trip on the fast ferry to Gozo. The Internet was not entirely clear about this, as vehicle ferry services were more prominent and require pre-booking, but the passenger ferry was quite straightforward. We visit the cathedral and citadella museums in the complex at Victoria / Rabat.

Cathedral and Citadella complex at Victoria / Rabat, Gozo

Thursday 5th: We take the bus to Mdina / Rabat. The Domus Romana is just across the road from the bus stop, and it's our first encounter with Sir Themisocles Zammit, surely a name one could not make up. It's not a huge site, but it is interesting nonetheless. We move on to St Paul's Catacombs, Cathedral, Palazzo Falson, Casa Gourgion (an interesting museum although I can't do justice to the animated TV screens in Old Master picture frames), and the Wignacourt Museum.

Mosaic at the Domus Romana, Mdina / Rabat


Boat in St Paul's Catacombs, Rabat

Friday 6th: The St Catherine's Monastery and Garden is a calm place to start the day. Later we're using the buses again, first to Mosta for the Rotunda, based on the Pantheon, and in the afternoon to the temples at Tarxien. Finally, with advance planning we have tickets to visit the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum at the end of the day. The audio guide is mandatory and has some irritating sound effects, but it doesn't detract from the visit, and has the honesty to say that we just don't know a lot of what went on at these truly ancient remains.

Mosta Rotunda


Tarxien Temples

7th: We begin our final day with the ferry to the Three Cities. In practice we have noticed that all of Malta is pretty much a continuum of settlement, and the naming is somewhat arbitrary. We visit the Inquisitor's Museum and admire the view across the Grand Harbour in the reverse direction, to Valetta. On our return we take in Casa Rocca Piccola. Ramiro Calì's painting Electricity fuses ancient and modern in its own curious way.

Valetta from The Three Cities


Electricity

Then it's back to the airport, and the return flight is straightforward, and although there is heavy traffic at Terminal 4 we're home at a civilised hour. Overnight the thunder in the UK reminds me of the regular gun battery firing in Valetta.

The Maltese were friendly and helpful; perhaps an advantage of English being an official language. The food was always served in generous portions - the quality varied but Aaron's Kitchen and Ambrosia were both particularly good. We discovered Kinnie and - by extension - Kinnie Spritz. If we had stayed longer, there were other things we could have done, but the heat and humidity really did discourage over-exertion.

After some debate and negotiation, we decided on Seville for a summer holiday location this year. The late positioning of the Max Richter Prom was awkward for scheduling, but frankly going to southern Europe earlier in the summer would have been madness.

Thurs 7th: After breakfast, we head off to Gatwick. Fortunately I did print my boarding pass as I struggle to get the self-service bag drop to accept my phone; later I find the auto-rotate setting which I think may have been causing the PDF to flip as I turned the phone upside-down. Everything else accepts the phone version, although my phone also needs to have the magic wand waved over it at security. The flight and arrival seem fairly straightforward, but it is early evening and so there isn't much to do other than adjust to the habit of eating late.

Fri 8th: We begin with the Alcazar at Seville. It is the first of a handful of destinations where the requirement to book specific time-slots is apparent, but we are only postponed by about an hour, so there is time for a bit of wandering around. The venue is impressive and the tiling is ubiquitous. Later in the afternoon we reach the monumental Plaza de España, built for one of the trade fairs that has been hosted in the city over the years. (This one was held months before the Wall Street crash of 1929). I notice that there is frequently an aroma of brackish water around the city.

Inside the Seville Alcázar

Pomegranate tile at the Plaza de España

Sat 9th: We visit a few palaces, including that of the Countess of Lebrija. The ground floor is mostly covered with Roman mosaics lifted from nearby archaeological sites in the nineteenth century. I shall think of her as the mosaic-stealing Countess of Lebrija from now on. We have pre-booked for the Cathedral and the timing works quite well. In the afternoon we cross the river to the Triana district, where the old ceramic factory is disappointingly closed but the contemporary art museum is actually quite good. The site of the 1992 Expo is another graveyard to industrial development, with occasional business parks and lots of fenced-off wilderness, hampering our return to the city centre in the heat. We are finding that Seville is a bit bigger than it looked on the map, but the central district is mostly no-go for public transport, so there's nothing for it but a lot of walking.

The Palacio de la Condesa de Lebrija

Sun 10th: We catch a bus to Italica, north-west of the city. Apparently this was one of the largest cities in the Roman world. The site is quite large and what is visible is well-presented, but it seems there has been a lot of earlier removal (see above) or areas that remain unexcavated, or under the present-day settlement of Santiponce. In the afternoon we are back in Seville and see some of the city walls and other bits and pieces, but it is really too hot to do very much. We try a craft beer place quite close to our hotel, and rather like it.

Mosaic of the Planets, Italica

Mon 11th: An early start to catch the train to Granada. We have pre-booked for the Alhambra, but our timing is askew; access to the overall site is for the day, but we miss our slot for the Nasrid palaces. It's quite a hike from the train station, by whichever route; and the signage inside the complex is intermittent. So there's a bit of a downer, but the rest of the site is pleasant, and we also get to see a few other places in Granada later in the day. We find that sangria is available in cans at the station cafe. The aircon doesn't seem to be working on the return train, I have insect bites and a heat rash, and the taxi driver won't take card payments, so it hasn't been the best of days.

The Alhambra

Garden in the Generalife

Tues 12th: After a long day yesterday, we take it easy. The Museo de Bellas Artes is free to EU citizens, but we have to pay €3 as a Brexit benefit. The Archivo de Indias is an impressive building, but it is only a building; if you want to see artifacts, the Museum of the Americas in Madrid is the place to go.

Archivo de Indias

Wed 13th: The train to Cordoba is a shorter trip and leaves at a more civilised hour. We have timed our visit to the Mosque-Cathedral quite well, despite a nervous several minutes while Renfe delay the train shortly after departure. It's an interesting space and shows the heritage of being under various "management" over the years. Is it coincidence that the Christian sections are much lighter, with the dark wooden roof beams removed? I suspect not. After lunch we visit the Alcázar, and the Roman bridge. Again it is bakingly hot, but the return train is also at a civilised hour and has working aircon this time.

Mosque or Cathedral? - or maybe both

Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos

Thurs 14th: Although the train bookings were a little awkward, we've managed to get tickets to Cadíz, and it turns out to be a very welcome trip. The sea air is fresh and the heat feels more manageable. We get to see a few sights, decide to give up on the eating late thing and have paella and sangria in the late afternoon, leaving plenty of time to catch the return train.

Cadíz shoreline

Parque Genovés

Fri 15th: The last day of the holiday is a bit fragmented, but we find a few things that didn't have listings in the Rough Guide, such as the Palacio de las Dueñas. The main archaeological museum has a long-term closure, but we find some impressive excavations at the Antiquarium under the Setas de Sevilla.

House of Bacchus, Antiquarium

Getting to the airport in good time, check-in is straightforward, but it transpires our flight is going to be delayed. Information is minimal, and Seville Airport is quite small; in fact it's the only time I have seen multiple flights listed with the same gate number, as there are few gates in the non-Schengen area. So there's a bit of a pile-up of passengers and little information. It turns out that there are more air traffic control problems at Gatwick, and it's nearly midnight before we have even taken off. Of course, this means the baggage handlers at Gatwick have mostly gone home and it does seem to take a while for our luggage to return. To cap it all, there's an overnight closure on the M25 and the diversion is poorly signposted (and Google Maps offers a contradictory route). It is 4am by the time we get home, rather more mañana than we had intended. It was a mostly successful holiday, but I think we did leave things a bit to chance; it turns out that Spanish culture is sometimes more regimented than one might expect.

Book Review: Around the World in Eighty Wines - Exploring wine one country at a time, by Mike Veseth
Veseth begins his journey at the Reform Club in London, a stone's throw from the wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd, following notionally in the path of Phileas Fogg. But there's an immediate oddity, for the chapters on France, Italy and Spain are all quite short, though interesting. The book gives better value in visiting (at least conceptually) some more exotic wine locations - Georgia, Lebanon and Syria, Africa (north, south, and east), India and China. There's quite a lot of the book given over to Australia, New Zealand, and the US, perhaps a little less to South America, and I think that is revealing in terms of the intended audience; a few times the American background to the book comes through subconsciously in the writing - not in an especially annoying way, but nevertheless feeling a little provincial to a more international reader.

So we learn, inter alia, about the historic differences between Bordeaux and Burgundy; the origin of wine in Georgia; Richard Leakey's wine-making in Kenya; the development of a wine industry in India and China. Climate change becomes a theme in the discussion of wine-growing latitudes. But at the end of the book, there are only fifty-six selected wines. Veseth hurriedly makes some additions, and suggests the reader should consider their own favorites, which seems a little of a cop-out. I believe I've had one or two of the suggested wines, and I salute Veseth for trying to ensure his selection is applicable to a range of budgets, but most are significantly more expensive than I would consider spending on a bottle. This was a fun book to read, but perhaps a bit too superficial.