Magellan Trip : Getting Started and Getting Lost

Unfortunately it looks tacky posting twice in one day, around the same time, but I assure you the first one today would have been written sooner if my laptop had not been rendered inoperable. Yes, the first adversity I faced during my trip is one of the worst things a traveler could experience, a broken laptop. Essentially my screen was cracked by a rising bezel when the laptop was closed. The result was three massive cracks along my LCD screen, and being a touchscreen, a continuous clicking along one of the cracks made doing any task impossible. Luckily I held my screen in such a way to briefly cease the touchscreen's adversarial attempts to foil my trip, and found a way to disable the touchscreen. So my triumph is a moderately usable laptop with three massive cracks in the screen, hardly a victory to commemorate. Anyways, I felt the need to explain my behavior and gloat of my brilliance in finding out how to turn off the touchscreen and in turn, create a salvageable piece of technology for hopefully the remaining time in Malta (unless I break it more).

Yesterday was my first adventure to Valletta, Malta, the focal point of my trip. It started by me taking a ferry from Sliema to Valletta. My plan was to visit the St Johns Co-Cathedral, but to be frank: I completely and utterly failed. Instead of finding my chartered destination, I merely wandered the seafront of the Grand Harbor until I stumbled upon Fort St. Elmo. Since Fort St. Elmo hosts reenactments on Sundays, I felt that was better to leave for later...so more wandering the seafront. Eventually I saw a sign for something I had recognized from researching Valletta on tripadvisor.com: The Malta Experience. I figured, why not? After following two more signs indicating the location of this elusive destination, I thought I was lost again, yet I was graced by one more turn and a woman handing out flyers for the very thing I was looking for. After buying a ticket that was discounted for some reason (not complaining about saving three Euros), I found out that the ticket price also included a tour of La Sacra Infermeria. The forty-five minute video detailing the basic history of the island's origins to today was extremely interesting, including a great deal of information with the motif of "change from the sea," as Malta was conquered repeatedly by naval powers.
After that ended, I got lost attempting to find the catacomb-like tunnel in which the tour of La Sacra Infermeria began, and the woman who originally sold me the tickets for both actually walked me this intricate back way to catch the tour which had started only moments ago. The tourguide happily explained what I had missed so far, and the first of three misfortunes befell that tour. Firstly, shortly after explaining what I had missed the lights went out in the deep tunnel we were in. The lights were returned after about five minutes during which a German man held his phone's flashlight to the tour guide and she continued the tour. Secondly, the guide had to beg security to allow us into part of the infirmary of the site, the room that made it the longest, largest hospital ward in Europe for hundreds of years due to a private event. Thirdly, Manoel Theater one of Europe's oldest theaters was also closed due to a private event. After those tours I decided I was finished in Valletta for the day so I headed back across the harbor to Valletta. On my way to the ferry from Valletta was the second time I got lost that day. I traveled the wrong way and nearly ended up on the wrong side of the city, after I corrected myself and returned to Fort St. Elmo, I took another wrong path. I actually ended up trespassing into the fort without a ticket, became lost within the fort, being asked for a ticket, and then when she gave me directions to get out- it still took me two tries to find the right gate.

After the arduous journey to find my ferry (and some more trespassing through someone's alleyway) I arrived back in Sliema. I then was approached by a woman selling harbor cruises and found out one was leaving in five minutes, so being uncharacteristically spontaneous I agreed. I must have taken fifty beautiful photos on that cruise, and I even got a nice older gentleman to take a couple with me in them. When I got back from the cruise I went to dinner (to save myself the walk later), and unsurprisingly enough: I got lost, again! I mistook a foreign hotel as one of my landmarks and foolishly walked almost all the way to it before realizing I must have made a mistake. Then I walked the opposite way until I convinced myself I was wrong again and returned to my moronic path to nowhere. Again I got the feeling this was not correct, and began to backtrack until I found the ferry again. From there I looked for the Puma store which signals the street my hostel is on. When I found it, I was so relived you could have shot me and I would not have noticed (wait, this is Europe, so no guns...stabbed me?). My adventure was definitely over for the night, and I learned persistence and a refusal to give up will always overcome lack of direction and confusion.

I apologize for the disgusting amount of photos, but if you get to the end you get to see me. This is a blog not a box of cereal, so there is no precedent of having a prize at the bottom. :)