We had a lazy start to the morning and walked to the other side of town to have breakfast in The Street Café.

I was hoping to have the ‘tomatoes on bruschetta with herbs and balsamic vinegar’ that I had in November last year when we had breakfast there. It wasn’t on the menu this time so it took me a while to choose from the menu. Eventually I settled for a chicken schnitzel and fried egg waffle with a drizzle of maple syrup. I thought that it would be smaller than a full English breakfast. I was wrong, the portion was enormous!

After breakfast we slowly wound our way to the Cathedral, browsing around shops along the way. We picked up a bargain £1 cook book from W H Smiths; Sirocco Fabulous Flavours from the East by Sabrina Ghayour. Its pages promise some tasty food adventures.

Mr C returned to the hotel to drop off his rucksack along with the cookbook and other purchases he had made whilst I waited in the Cathedral Garden. Before visiting the Cathedral, we shared a tuna and cucumber baguette in the Cathedral café.

Due to it being Easter, the cathedral wasn’t as tranquil as it had been on our previous visit. People everywhere caused Mr C to nearly knock me over near to the altar in the Lady Chapel. Thankfully the altar rail saved me from falling over backwards.

Before leaving the cathedral, I browsed the gift shop thinking to buy a gift for mum but I wasn’t sure I could choose a gift that she wouldn’t reject due to her current state of mind so I left empty handed.

We were unsure of the difference between the two Easter morning services so we asked one of the guides who referred to the Easter service leaflet as I had done. She was as puzzled as I was and went to seek the advice of a Verger who clarified that the earlier service was the one to attend if you were seeking a more spiritual experience.

We wandered back through town to have afternoon tea and cake in Café Roma where I chose blueberry bakewell and elderflower presse. The sunshine was so lovely we decided to visit Wetherspoons for a drink which we enjoyed in a sunny window, chilling out before returning to the hotel to chill out some more.

We dined in L’Italiana where I chose chicken in tomato sauce with olives. The food was just as good as our previous visit; we were even served by the same waiter.

We decided to have a post dinner drink in Wetherspoons. When we arrived, we were informed by one of several bouncers that there was a queue to get in. The queue was not obvious as is it snaked around the venue and away from outside gate which is the main entrance to the venue. The queue was ‘very’ long and we were not prepared to wait to get into a pub.

We walked the short distance to The Cock which we had visited on our previous stay in St Albans. The same few seats as last time were vacant so it felt like home from home.

Mdina is a fortified medieval town enclosed in bastions, located on a large hill in the centre of Malta. The town was the old capital of Malta, and with its narrow streets, few inhabitants and beatuful views over the Island it is truly a magical town. Mdina is referred to as the “Silent City” by Maltese and visitors alike – no cars (except those of a limited number of residents) have permission to enter Mdina and the town provides a relaxing atmosphere among the visitors walking its narrow streets and alleyways.

Mdina was first inhabited and fortified around 700 BC by the Phoenicians and was at that time called Maleth. Mdina benefits from its good location on the island’s highest point, far away from the sea. Under the Roman Empire the Roman governor built his palace in Mdina and it is said that even St. Paul stayed there after he was shipwrecked in Malta.

It was the Normans who surrounded the city with its thick defensive fortifications and they also widened the moat around Mdina. After an earthquake in 1693, there was the need to redesign parts of the city. This introduced Baroque designs within the city, and the Knights of Malta rebuilt the cathedral as well as the Magisterial Palace and Palazzo Falzon.

The medieval church of St Michael and All Angels stands within the grounds of Croft Castle, a historic medieval castle and stately home (National Trust). The church was constructed around the year 1300. To this earlier building was later added a 17th-century clock tower and interior gallery, as well as a set of box pews.

Originally built as St Johns’ Almshouse, the modern day St Johns’ House benefits from the unique surroundings of the original Almshouse buildings but residents now enjoy contemporary and comfortable accommodation in a relaxed and friendly environment. Applications are welcomed from all who wish to enjoy what life at St Johns’ has to offer, without many of the somewhat daunting constraints of the original Foundation Deed

The original Almshouse of S. John The Baptist and S. John The Evangelist is the best surviving example of a medieval Almshouse in Wessex. Its Foundation Deed is dated 10th January 1437 and provided for ‘Twelve pore feeble and ympotent old men and four old women’ to be cared for by a housewife whose duty was to ‘feeche in and dyght to the victaill wash wrying make beddys and al other things do’.

The Licence of King Henry VI to found the Almshouse is dated 11th July, 1437. The building was completed in 1448 and consisted of a Chapel (1442) and a hall with dormitories above. A fine doorway with niches and statues of the two Saints John provided the main entrance from Trendle Street.

Important to the street scene here are the Victorian iron posts and rails lining the kerb. Here the Almsmen would lean, smoke a pipe and chat to passers-by. The finials to the posts are a Bishop’s mitre, the badge of the Almshouse.

Through the Victorian gateway, noting the symbols of a lamb and flag for S. John the Baptist and an eagle for S.John the Evangelist, the present front door can be found tucked into a corner of the cloister. A brass plate declares ‘For the House’. Above the Chapel a bell rings to mark the various events in the life of this ancient community.

St Johns’ House and the original Almshouse buildings are governed, to this day, by the Master and Brethren who continue a body established in 1437.

A colouring book and pencils in the room was just too hard to resist

On 30 December 1348, Bishop Ralph made over to the vicars ‘the dwellings newly built and to be erected by us for the use of the vicars, and ‘quarters with appurtenances built and to be built’. The houses were built in two rows running north from the Hall, and were completed by the time of Bishop Ralph’s death in 1363. The quadrangle was finally completed with the building of the Chapel at the north end in the early fifteenth century. The Chapel was dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Katherine, and it is first mentioned in a charter of 1479, but shields on the Chapel door carry the arms of Bishops Bubwith and Stafford, suggesting that the chapel was begun in the episcopate of the former and finished under the latter, giving it a date of c.1424-30. A room over the Chapel served as the Vicars’ Library.

Bishop Ralph made it quite clear in his original deed that each house in the quadrangle was designed to accommodate one vicar. The original houses numbered forty-two (22 on the east side and 20 on the west) and were more or less identical. Each had a ground floor room, measuring 20 feet by13 feet (6 x 4 metres) with large windows, one facing east and the other west, so that shutters could be closed on the windward side in the days before windows were glazed. Here the vicar read and studied. A wide, low arch led to the newel staircase, which opened into the upper room where he slept, and outside the back door into the yard there were washing facilities and a latrine, possibly under the projecting stair wing. There were wells at the top and bottom of the Close.

Despite the fine new buildings, about a century later when Bishop Bekynton held a visitation of the Close in 1459, he found much amiss. The hall and houses were dilapidated and he insisted that the Vicars must keep their houses in good repair.

The towering chimney shafts, which are such a delightful feature of the Close, were built to extend the original chimneys (possibly because the Vicars were beginning to burn coal instead of wood and taller chimneys were needed to carry away the more pungent smoke) and each carry two heraldic shields, one adorned with the arms of Bishop Bekynton, who died in 1465, or that of the bishopric alternately, the other with the arms of his executors, Hugh Sugar, a vicar, and John Pope and Richard Swann who were canons in turn. In about the mid-fifteenth century the Vicars also asked for, and were given, gardens nineteen or so feet long at the front of each house; each was walled, with an arched gateway, and it was this that changed the appearance of the Close from that of a college quadrangle to the street as it appears today.

This ‘historic chalet’ was built in 1874 and is the former residence of the  Amrein-Troller family.  It is now a musem displaying many interesting historical facts (in particular the historical geology) of the region.