Malta-Day1

After a crazy travel day, well 36 hours, we finally arrived in Malta. I'm not counting that day.

Today we started off with brunch at a little restaurant called Cordina. I say brunch because it was about 11:30 when we ate. We met up with my Aunty Mary for a day wandering Valletta. At Cordina, it is a very fancy looking place on the inside. The pastries looked to die for, but we will partake in those later. We ordered pastizzi, which are a Maltese pastry filled with either meat/peas or ricotta cheese. They were with puff pastry, which isn't the traditional dough and the kind my mom does, but they were awesome nonetheless. Joe had an espresso, and my aunt and I had cappuccino. That was a great start to our day!

After walking around for about 4 hours, we found a stand that had a common Maltese treat called Imqarret. Imqarret are a traditional date square unlike what we think of as date squares. These are squares of pastry with a date filling that are deep fried. When we got ours, they were piping hot and not greasy at all! I don't ususally like the ones my mom makes, sorry mom, but these were really tasty! We'll have to stop there again!

For supper, we found this nice little place called Capistrano on Old Bakery Street. There were no more than 10 tables, and we were lucky enough to get the second last table. We had an antipasti platter with different salamis, prosciutto, ricotta salata, and brie. It was a nice starter. Then I ordered a penne dish with porcini mushrooms and Joe ordered a sea bass. I must say, the pasta was far from boring. With shaved Parmesan, how could you go wrong? The pasta stayed hot to the last piece, and I was taking my time. I sampled the sea bass, and it was pretty good. I'm not one for fish, but I could handle that one.

I can't wait to see what we find tomorrow!

Ciao!
Lisa