Saturday, October 31, 2009

Malta trip

We spent 5 days in Malta at the end of October. We stayed at the Intercontinental hotel which had a fabulous breakfast.

Malta was a neat place. It is only 55 miles from Sicily in Italy and about 160 miles from Tunisia in North Africa. Maltese is a hybrid language that is a mixture of Italian (55%), North African Arabic dialect (35%) and English (10%). There is so much history there since the island was invaded by so many nations that include England, France, the Ottoman Empire, the Arabs, the Romans, etc...

They seem to be content with their heritage. Malta is poorer than Cyprus but is much more interesting from an architectural and historical perspective. Above is a picture taken in Gozo. Below is a picture of Laith with Popeye. Hollywood created the set for the Popeye movie that was shot in 1980 here in Malta. We were on the set and were part of a short movie. We have a copy of the movie on a CD. We all were part of the movie and we had fun doing it. Dawn and I carried the twins the whole time.