three days away

It’s hard to believe, but in just three days I will be in Malta again. Strange to have a foreign vacation so soon after the Paris month, but the scheduling is dictated by the Eid al-Fitr, the long national feast marking the end of Ramadan. After that I’ll be returning to three months of grind (other than the quick Beirut appearance), so I have to seize the opportunity while it’s there.

Here is an image of part of the Sliema/St. Julian’s corniche, and this is primarily what I’m going for. I’ve rarely had clearer and more fertile thoughts than while walking this stretch endlessly in January. The air is perfect sea air.

This is obviously the innermost part of the corniche, right where St. Julian’s is about to give way to Paceville (these are all western suburbs of Valletta, the capital). If you go off further to the right of the photo, you get the sublimity of waves crashing beneath you at the bottom of the cliffs; they’re often quite forceful. The total route, at least the best part of it, probably takes 45-60 minutes to walk depending on how fast you’re moving. Once I did it 8 times in a day. There’s such an allure to that stretch of coastline. No place pleases everyone equally, but for me it led to a state approaching hypnosis.