Disney Cruise - Day Three: Malta

I'm skipping day two since we spent it entirely on board the ship. I'll summarize by saying we hit the gym, we ate too much, and we watched "Up" in 3-D in the Buena Vista Theater on board. There! That's about it for that day! ;)

On the third day of the cruise, we awoke to views of Valletta, Malta from our verandah. It was gorgeous!

Since our shore excursion (or "Port Adventure" in Disney speak) didn't take place until the afternoon, and since it wouldn't involve Valletta at all, we decided to do a bit of exploring of Valletta on our own. Close to the port, there was a street lined with horse drawn carriages offering tours of the city. The first carriage asked for €140 for an hour long tour. We laughed and kept walking.

By the end of the road, a guy was offering a tour for €40. We weren't going to take it until we realized how much uphill walking we had to do just to get in to town. We were on a time crunch, so we decided to take him up on the €40 tour.

Towards the end of the tour, we ended up at a huge monument overlooking the harbor. It was an amazing view.

Here's a view of the beautiful Disney Magic! We saw a handful of other cruise ships in various ports, but none of them held a candle to the Magic!

We returned to the ship for lunch, and then got off again for our afternoon tours of Mdina and Mosta.

Mdina is a medieval, fortified town. We passed through the city gates and followed our tour guide around the narrow roads. We toured a church and passed along many of the homes owned by the town's aristocracy. You'll get tired of me saying this, but it was beautiful.

In Mosta, we had a chance to tour a cathedral inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. I'm glad we had a chance to see this one, since our tour in Rome a few days later didn't include the actual Pantheon.

This church had been struck by a bomb during World War II. The bomb pierced the domed ceiling that, incredibly, did not explode. This is my little weapon of mass destruction in front of a replica of the bomb.

We also had a chance to visit a craft village that was essentially an old military base converted into various craft shops and factories. We saw a glass blowing factory and a shop where they made silver filigree.

When we returned to the ship later that afternoon, Caleb had a chance to visit the toddler splash area. Since he isn't potty trained yet, he couldn't go in the kiddie pool, but he didn't seem to mind!

This day also happened to be Tommy's birthday! Our servers brought out a huge slab of birthday cake and sang him Happy Birthday. We were dining at Lumiere's that night.

It was a great day! We didn't make it to the evening's entertainment that night, which was a comedian. To be honest, I couldn't tell you what we did after dinner that night! But overall, it was a great day!