So on the flight over from Germany, Nicola got chatting to the people sitting next to her on the plane. One of these was a young man called Jacob. During the flight she found out that his mum owned a cafe in Malta. So on Sunday morning we decided to go and visit the cafe for breakfast in Marsaskala. This is a lovely sea side town in the South East of Malta.

We spoke to the lady at the cafe who was Jacob’s mum who originally came from East London. She phoned Jacob and he came and met us at the cafe. It was really lovely to meet him as the reason the cafe came into being was because of the trauma he and his family suffered. Jacob survived a near fatal illness that left him disabled in early 2013 and the family are now using their experience to support other survivors of trauma. It is the first social enterprise in Malta and more information can be found on their Facebook page.

The breakfast was delicious and set us up for the day and it was so nice chatting to Jacob and his Mum. After breakfast we caught the bus to Marsaxlokk which is a gorgeous traditional fishing village.

We walked along the colourful waterfront into the town, passing some really lovely buildings and fishing boats known as luzzus. These boats are said to owe their design to the ancient Phoenicians who were in Malta around 800 BC.

We walked a little way into the town to the Parish Church of Our Lady of Pompeii. This is a really impressive church which was built bear the sea coast to save the fishermen travelling to churches further away.  Unfortunately we couldn’t go in as there was a service going on.

We then decided to have a wander through the market. As it was a Sunday the fish market was in full flow.

The market stalls were selling a whole variety of things including other food, souvenirs and clothes and it went on for miles!

After a long wander around the market we decided to walk to St Peter’s Pool. It was a really hot day and the walk was around 2.5km and quite a lot was uphill! The initial part of the walk was in the direction of Delimara point. This was a lovely area but the views are now spoilt by a huge power plant.

As we walked away from Marsaxlokk we took some pictures looking back at the town.

Eventually we made it to St Peter’s Pool. This is a lovely natural swimming area and a lot of people also use it to jump off the cliffs into the water, we did see a couple of people doing this while we were there. There were a few people there but initially only 1 person was in the water. We did think about getting in as we were so hot but the water was really choppy and there didn’t seem to be any easy way to get out of the water once you were in there.

We had a little rest at the pool before heading back to Marsaxlokk. As it was only early afternoon we decided to get a bus over to the Ghar Dalam Cave. Initially we got on a bus going in the wrong direction so had to get off and find one going in the right direction, but luckily we didn’t have to wait long.

As we walked down to the cave we walked past an old pill box. This was part of the fortification system during the second world war and its purpose was to engage with the enemy should an invasion take place. It used to be armed with machine guns and manned by six soldiers.

Ghar Dalam cave is the oldest national monument found in Malta. A collection of 180,000 year old bones were found in the cave belonging to long extinct animals. The bones appear to have been deposited here at the end of the Ice Age. You can see a lot of the bones in the museum that is attached to the cave and they have made up whole skeletons of the some of the animals that used to exist. This cave is also where the earliest evidence of human settlement in Malta was found, some 7,400 years ago.

The cave is 15.5m above sea level and is 144m deep but only the first 70m are open to the public. There are five different layers to the cave; a clay layer, a hippopotamus layer, a deer layer, an ash layer and a cultural top layer. The cave was also used as an air raid shelter during WWII. The stalagmites and stalactites were pretty impressive.

Today the caves support a unique ecosystem for a variety of animal species. Ghar Dalam hosts over forty different species of life form including a unique endemic creature, a tiny woodlouse known to science as Armadillidum ghardalamensis. It has no sense of sight and is highly sensitive to light. This is why the inner part of the cave is kept in complete darkness.

We still had some time left before we wanted to head back to Valletta so Nicola went on the internet to see what else was nearby. Being in a cave exploration mood we decided to go and visit another cave called Ghar Hassan. This cave is so called because during the Great Seige it is believed that this is where a Turk called Saracen Hassan hid after he kidnapped a Maltese girl. When he was found by the Maltese people, rather than be captured, he jumped into the sea taking the Maltese girl with him and killing them both.

This cave was not easy to find. Firstly we stayed on the bus too long and missed our stop. This meant we had to walk back on ourselves for around 20 minutes, but we did pass a playmobile land!

Once we found the small car park you had to go through a gap in the fence to start the walk down some steps to the actual cave.

To get to the entrance you have to walk down some steep steps carved into the cliff face. The entrance itself is around 5m high and 6m wide and is 75m above sea level. You definitely need a torch as there isn’t much light when you start walking into the cave. The cave is around 400m long. As you walk down you come to some iron bars which are there to protect some rare mouse eared bats.

Just before the iron bars is an opening on the right and if you walk down this tunnel you come to a viewing point, and the views from here are gorgeous.

If you keep on going through the tunnel, past some fallen rocks you come to another viewing point.

Just beside this viewing point is a small door that leads into a small circular chamber. It is believed that this is where Hasan was hiding.

Now at this point you could turn round and go back the way you came but we had read a blog that said you could go down one of the side tunnels and end up back at the first viewing point – so we decided to give it a try. It was a bit narrow at times and a bit low so you had to be careful you didn’t bang your head.

You just had to keep going until you saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

As we came back up from the cave the sun was just starting to set behind the cliffs.

We walked back to the bus stop we should originally have got off of and got the bus back to Valletta. The bridge into the city was really colourful as we walked home.

In the evening we went to Luciano restaurant which was right by St John’s Cathedral in the city centre. Nicola had the traditional beef bragioli which were delicious and I had a very tasty vegetable risotto.

The restaurant the other side of the Cathedral had live music so when we finished dinner we went over there to have a look and they were all doing greek dancing.