On Saturday morning we set out to find the Farmer’s Market and ended up spending the entire day away from home exploring the market and other fun things in the area.
The market is located near Ta’ Qali National Park, about a 45 minute bus ride from our flat. The market sells only Maltese grown vegetables, fruit, fish, mushrooms, honey and baked goods. This is the biggest and best market in Malta and the one closest to our home. The market runs on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
We got off the bus near the National Park so we walked through the park on our way to the market. There is not an entrance fee and you cannot drive through the park. It is small by US standards, but then again, this country is smaller than Winneshiek county!
I love the palm tree berries. And I can’t get over all the blooming flowers. There are annuals all over that I can only grow for 3 months in Iowa – calendula, lantana, African daisy and dianthus, to name a few.
There is a farm yard petting zoo in the park. The girls loved seeing the animals. Chickens, ducks, geese, goats, sheep, a horse and donkey. It made us miss home! But we were glad that the Maltese city kids have a chance to interact with the animals.
The girls loved the rabbits. So did I. There may be a rabbit in our future…
On our walk from the park to the market, we had a chance to take in the lovely Maltese countryside. We don’t see very much of this from our flat in Sliema! It really is quite beautiful. In front is a winery that we’ll have to go back and visit.
The city on the hill is Rabat, the former capital of Malta. We haven’t been there yet, but it sure was inviting. The big lights are at the National Football Stadium.
The Farmer’s Market. Lots of wonderful, delicious things to look at. We loved being at the market. It was very similar to our market in Decorah, everything was just in a different language! There was nothing too unusual, unless you count that we bought tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and green beans in February. 🙂
Strawberries! In season now until about May or June. And delicious. The farmer is the one on the right but he wanted his friend in the photo. 🙂
We bought lots of flowers – calla lilies, daffodils and these fragrant beauties. I’m not sure what they are but I love them.
We ate lunch at the market at a stand that was selling traditional Maltese food. The menu was all in Maltese so we just ordered what the person in front of us ordered – rabbit! Rabbit is a traditional Maltese food but this was the first we’ve tried. It was very tasty. The girls got a whole chicken and they had a lot of fun digging into it.
After lunch, we walked back to the park. There are huge prickly pear bushes like this growing all over the country side. They are amazing!
Last stop of the day, a huge playground at the National Park. The girls played for a couple hours. Behind them is a high ropes course.
Lily is showing off her Kinnie, a Maltese soda that none of us really like, and her imqaret, a fig filled pastry reminiscent of a fig pop tart – yum!
Jon and I sat here drinking our cappuccino while the girls played. Notice the planters full of blooming rosemary plants – I wanted to break off a few branches to take home and cook with!
On our way out to catch the bus. Oh, the bus woes. The first bus was early (we watched it fly by as we walked to the stop), the second bus didn’t stop for us (we’re not exactly sure why), we were standing at the wrong stop for the 3rd bus and the 4th bus also sped on by (it looked like a full bus). Jon’s phone was dead so we decided to go straight to the top – the US Embassy. Luckily, it is right across the street from the bus stop and we kindly asked the guards to call a taxi. They did and we were home in 20 minutes after waiting for 2 hours for the bus.
SylLy Acres 
February 25, 2014 at 11:23 pm
I love reading about your day at the market, Rachel, and seeing your wonderful pictures. (And your other posts as well.) Your Malta is both familiar and unfamiliar to me. Malta has more “attractions” than when I was there. I don’t think they had big farmer’s markets or the aquarium or a national park and no big football field. Wow! But I remember being awed by the perennial poinsettias growing huge and tall, planted in the ground near some doorways.
I’m glad you got out into the country, but what a bummer about the buses. I think that I told you that back in 1976 we resorted to hitchhiking, and usually the first car would pick us up, even if they were going the other direction, and take us right where we wanted to go. It worked well in Malta, but a friend and I had a little bit of a scare in Sicily (we thought we were kidnapped because the car we were in went the opposite direction of the car with our friends, but actually the guys were very nice and trying to show us the sights, we just couldn’t understand them and didn’t trust them.)
I loved the rural areas of Malta, and trips to Rabat where we visited lace makers. It was a very quiet place then. Do you know about the cart tracks? At the time we were there nobody knew who or what made them, but there are deep grooves in the stone where carts delivered something very heavy off the edge of cliffs, presumably. It’s called Misrah Ghar il-Kbir and it’s near the Dingli Cliffs, which I have mentioned before, because I still dream of it. It’s the closest thing to wilderness in Malta, at least it was, and we visited the cart tracks on the same excursion. You have to go there for me, okay? (And go to Gozo for me, and go to St. John’s CoCathedral for me, and go to Manoel Theater for me, and. . .)
What a great experience for you and your family. Have you had octopus yet?
Love, Beth
February 28, 2014 at 6:14 am
Hi Beth,
I would love to see the Malta of 40 years ago! I’m sure it has changed so much – especially the urban areas. And since Malta joined the EU 10 years ago, there has been quite bit of money coming in for special projects. Like the aquarium – there is a big sign that says funded with money from the EU something or other fund. I think maybe the National Park is the same story. Uwe Rudolph said the roads have improved so much since Malta joined the EU and one Maltese student told me that Malta gets twice as much money from the EU as Malta gives the EU. The whole EU system is so interesting! And the Malta government as well. Jon brings home bits and pieces from the University lectures so I’m starting to get a better sense of how Malta works and its role in Europe.
The librarian yesterday told me that she’s Maltese but she’s never been to the Farmer’s Market. It is kind of a haul out there but I was kind of surprised. There were mostly Maltese at the market but I wonder how long it’s been happening. Again, when Malta joined the EU, more food was shipped here causing a some hard times for the farmers. I wonder if that’s when the market started – to really push local foods and supporting local farmers/economy. It’s hard to tell where the produce at the grocery stores comes from sometimes. Definitely some of the fruit is from all over, but I think more of the vegetables are local. There are also a couple farmers who sell veg boxes – you pay 20 euros for a box and get whatever they harvested that week!
I really enjoyed being out in the countryside. It’s what I miss the most (not like it’s green in Decorah, right now!) but I do miss the open spaces. There is some farmland, lots of wild places (aka weeds!) and some vineyards. I bet the wine business has really boomed since you were there! I guess a lot of the grapes for the cheap wine come from Italy and are made into wine here but the more expensive wine is all Maltese.
We have not been to Dingli cliffs – high on my list! And I just booked tickets to the Manoel theater for a kids production so that the whole family can enjoy the theater. It looks so cool! We will go to Rabat soon and Gozo for an overnight, just our family and then again with the students. I’ll put the Co-Cathedral on my list. 🙂 I really want to just explore the countryside so we are even talking about renting a car just to drive around the island and not have to rely on the buses! I haven’t seen much for hitch hikers – wonder if it’s still a common practice. There are so many cars – more per capita than most other EU countries, actually.
I have not had octopus yet. Some of our students tried it and gave me a mixed review. The little suckers on the legs kind of turned them off, as well as the texture. I’ll make Jon order it sometime and I’ll try just a little bite! I love the pastizzi and the pizza to go. We loved the rabbit and the pastries we got at the market. There’s a delicious local cheese, they just call it Gozo cheese or Maltese cheese, but it’s really tasty (I’ll try to find out more about it for you!). I want to try to cook more traditional foods as well. We made a chocolate chestnut drink that’s very common here, but it was not a big hit among our American taste buds! We love the Hal-wat tork, a Turkish dessert made with sesame seeds. And artichokes! In season here – they are everywhere and I cooked up a few the other night. It was really fun!
Thanks for sharing your stories. I would have been so scared in Sicily! And not really knowing the language and Sicily having the reputation it does! We are going to Sicily in 2 weeks but I think we will have transportation for all of us arranged ahead of time! 🙂 We are going to some agro-tourism sites. Stay tuned!
February 28, 2014 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for mentioning by e-mail that you replied to my post. I was not alerted that you replied because, and you other readers might like to know, you have to confirm that you want to see replies after each of your posts, not just the first one.
Wow! Thank you for your detailed replies. Would you mind if I shared your blog address with a couple of friends who were in our group in Malta? (It’s okay if you don’t.)
Simon Hanson and his family were with us, the first class of Luther students, in Malta. It was all a little confusing to us, concerning the University. I remember that we didn’t go there for a few days because the Labor party had just been elected for the first time ever (Mintoff) and there were demonstrations in Valetta which disrupted the country. We weren’t allowed to got to Valletta for a week or so. Each day Simon would walk up to the University to see if they knew when classes would start, and for a long time he came back with no answer. He started some classes for us in our flat, and sooner or later the University opened up. I think there were several who lectured to us. I made friends with Charles Camilleri, who was a composer and who arranged a piano for me to play in the back of an auditorium where it was stored. We also had Father Peter who came to Luther as a visiting scholar, but who I never knew too well. We had trouble getting to know a lot of the students, but eventually we made a handful of friends on our own, plus the few students who had been at Luther dutifully came by now and again. Our friends were friends-of-the-group really, I think we invited the few Maltese students who were in lectures with us to come on field trips. There were about five who ended up inviting us places or coming to our flats and cooking, that kind of thing. We also were friendly with a group of Chinese students who were studying at the University and went to their flat to play pingpong. One girl demonstrated acupuncture on my hand to show how to get rid of a headache. That was very exotic!
There were about a dozen Luther students in our group. We lived in three flats in Msida on Sawmill Street. We shared the building with men who were working in Malta from Tunisia. They were up and gone early and seemed to be a bit out of control on weekends, living in a country where drinking was permitted, I guess. They were occasionally drunk and sleeping on the stairs. They lived on the fourth floor and we lived on the third. One night there was angry banging on our door and yelling and carrying on. After huddling together on one bed and preparing for the worst, my brave roommate, went to the other side of the door and hollered, “Go AWAY!” There was a little pause, then the voice said quietly “sorry.” Then he went up one more flight where he was not locked out of his apartment.
They did not have Kinni when I was there. And we did not like Octopus, but it was a neat had had the chance. We only had it once, in spaghetti sauce, made and served to us in our flat by one of our Maltese friends, who MIGHT be a professor at the University now (Tano Role). I had one friend who was quite animated, she was called Bart. One of my other friends, Joyce, and I would sneak the scariest looking pieces of Octopus onto Bart’s plate and she would squirm and squeak because she didn’t want more/those, but Tano was eating with us and she didn’t want to make a scene. Poor Bart, we did things like that to her all the time. She was fun to tease, and she still is a good friend.
Gosh, I’d better get ready for work. It’s so much fun to reminisce. I’ll send a couple more photos soon.