Valletta - the Feast of St Augustine

The plan for Sunday 21 May was to take a look at the largest looking church in Valletta and then return to Birgu to see the Inquisitor’s Palace.

We found that every day that we took the ferry across to Valletta there was something new to see. Today’s excitement was a huge cruise ship, Celebrity Reflection, one of the largest we’d seen. Nicky looked it up on online later and discovered that it can take over 3600 passengers and has well over a thousand staff on board!

By this time we were well aware that the Maltese love flags and fireworks [Ed: although fireworks in the middle of the day when you can’t see them seems to be missing half of the fun] but clearly something was afoot in Valletta. All of the main streets had been adorned with bright red and gold banners, every flagpole seemed to be flying a Maltese flag, and every few seconds the sky reverberated to the sound of fireworks exploding.

As we were close, we went to the Tourist Information Office and asked what the celebrations were for. With a slightly puzzled look we were politely told that it was the Feast of St Augustine. What planet had we been on?  Of course, it was the Feast of St Augustine – really!?

Outside the Church of St Augustine

Following the sound of the explosions and the music of a band we turned a corner and found ourselves in front of the Church of St Augustine.

Here we could see that a statue of St Augustine was being paraded along the street accompanied by church officials (including the priest, of course) and a band.

Ticker-tape [Ed: well, finely shredded paper] swirled around us and, when we looked up, we saw that the chief ticker-tape men were lobbing the stuff out of the church tower by the armload.

It wasn’t quite clear what was happening other than the icon bearers taking a break. Then the band struck up again, the parade shuffled along a few more paces and then everything stopped again. It was all very reminiscent of the Easter parades we had seen in Malaga but on a much smaller scale.

The feasts of the various saints are celebrated over several days so we felt that we had been quite lucky to catch the first parade and the statue of St Augustine about to be carried back into the church.

Having seen enough we walked a little further though the streets of Valletta wondering just how long it had taken to put up all of the flags and decorations. It really was a spectacle.

Turning into the street for the Carmelite Church things didn’t seem quite right because all of the doors to the church were closed. Nicky had checked the opening times online but those timings didn’t match the sign we found by the entrance. A priest letting out the last of the morning’s visitors confirmed that we would need to come back another time.

So, we hot-footed it back to the ferry to go to visit the Inquisitor’s Palace in Birgu. It had not been a wasted trip though; we’d seen the parade for the Feast of St Augustine and we had also had an on-the-hoof lunch of pastizzi from a Valleta pastizzeria claiming to only sell gourmet pastizzi. They were very good but not, we felt, as good as the ones we could get in Dockyard Creek.

Valletta Malta