Taste of Maltese Culture

We had our first set of cistern explorations at Gomerino Palace on Tuesday. While waiting to get into the area though, we got a chance to walk down the road and explore a little. In addition to the beautiful landscape and lots of old rock walls and structures, we met an elderly Maltese man who invited us into his garden to show us the statue of St. Paul we had seen from outside earlier.

Beautiful Maltese countryside. There were walls like this all over

Lots of beautiful flowers in bloom and no shortage of interesting buildings.

Shrine/statue of St. Paul in the Maltese persons garden. He saw some of us looking over the low, stone fence and he invited us into his garden to get a better look. Most of the group went to Gomerino to go look at the cisterns as we had just got access to the site, but Brig and I stayed behind briefly to see what the guy had to share.

Side of the shrine. There is a small door (can be seen here somewhat) which leads inside to a small circular room

Inside there were several shelves of religious items set up. It was very interesting to see and brought to mind the statistics we had learned about the large religious presence in Malta.

Talking to the Maltese man. He was very nice but spoke next to no Engligh (only Maltese). It made communication a little hard but with some hand gestures and a charades-like guessing of meanings, we were able to understand the general idea. It was great to meet some of the locals already and it was encouraging to be treated so nicely by someone who was a complete stranger not long before.