Day 7 - Malta rain & turning 70

We awoke to the sound of heavy rainfall in Malta, but had a plan for a rain day. And that plan was to sleep. :-)

J/K. Although we did do plenty of that in the AM, we decided to go to on tour of a historic palace called Casa Rocca Piccola. The 16th century (very well preserved home, for being 430 years old) was/is owned by a wealthy Maltese noble family. I believe the current owner, who lives in the top floor apartment, is the son of only the second owner of the home. We lucked out, as the last tour of the day was so full (max 20 people), that a second tour was created for us and another couple from Israel. I want to say they were pleasant and fun people, but lordy...the wife was mean to our guide about us starting a few minutes later and nearly had a coronary over it. The husband was way too timid to calm her down and looked the other way, while we stared open-mouthed at her surprising irritation.

We started a tour of their private bomb shelter, which could accommodate 100 people. It was quite large and multi-storied.

Part of the bomb shelter can be seen from the museum-operated restaurant above through their glass floor, which we tried to dine at that night, but they're only open for lunch.

The home's private chapel

And just in case you had to hit the road and needed a mobile chapel, there was this:

This fresco was painted on the ceiling of the private chapel.

This library held all of the wealthy merchant's scrolls detailing their business. And if you notice that white chest behind the curator, she pointed out his picture of a very famous visitor who preceded us.

Perhaps you may recognize this person also standing at the white bureau in the picture above? Ah yes, it's our good friend Meg, as we like to call her. She's wearing a traditional Maltese outfit worn to protect a fair maidens skin from the sun.

Not to be confused with this young maiden, who struck his best Megan Markle pose.

The family had quite a collection of chess sets frim around the world.

I do love mosaic tiled flooring.

Although a hair creepy-looking, we had to laugh at this old baby walker. I suppose a child could have just said, "Forget this." and sat down, but it was kind of funny.

The dining room had gorgeous views of the courtyard below, which was filled with forbidden-at-the-time-and-therefore-deliberately-hidden citrus trees (banned due to water shortages).

You may recognize these two famous visitors...

...and this one as well..Meg keeps following us.

Since the rains had ended earlier than we'd anticipated, we had time after our tour to walk along the waterfront just outside our rented digs.

This was all literally steps away from our front door.

That night, we had to celebrate someone turning 70! We'd hunted around for a seafood restaurant on the water, but didn't have much luck, so we scouted out this place instead:

It wasn't fancy, but it was right by the Upper Barraka Gardens, about 5 minutes from our apartment, and right near this gorgeous building:

The food was Italian...we started off with a few appetizers, one was I'd like to call 'finely diced vegetable tempura with seaweed' (not the actual Italian name, believe it or not). The other one I'd like to call, "Ryan's favorite food on the road because there are no surprises and he's so worldly and classy."

The staff made a nice big to-do singing a very spirited Happy Birthday to my dad, and presented him with tiramisu birthday cake. We'd scoured every shop/bakery in Valletta the day prior and day of trying find a single candle and custard pie, and had had no luck finding either.

And the staff insisted, as a birthday gift, giving us all limoncello shots as a thank you. All but one lush declined, because our body is our temple.

The only one who accepted this shot, and another (orange liquor this time), was this future patron of AA:

All in all, despite the many drops of rain, we had a great almost last day in Malta!