As I drew back the curtains, I was met with a familiar sight. The rainbow colours of Maltese boat houses greeted me, their burnished red, blue and daffodil-yellow doors bursting out of Valletta’s sun-spattered limestone dockside. They’re familiar because I live in Gozo, Malta’s smaller sister island, a place where these pretty wooden doorways are a regular feature of the isle’s rugged, sea-scoured coastline.
But I’ve never seen these particular, pristinely painted apertures before, and certainly not from the seven-metre-high vantage point courtesy of the balcony of my stateroom aboard the Viking Vestacruise ship.
