Let's get that tricky pronunciation out of the way first. Xemxija is pronounced 'shem-she-ya'. X's and Q's are just thrown into place-names in Malta to confuse the foreigners. The town is in the North of the island, just next to St Paul's Bay, so buses 11, 37, 41, 42, 49, 221, 222, 250 and X1 will all get you there.
Malta is a small and massively overcrowded country, so from time to time you may yearn for proximity with nature and open spaces. You may also feel that all this restaurant food and cheap wine is not doing much for your waistline. So to kill two birds with one stone, I recommend you take a morning to go and wander along the Xemxija Heritage Trail. There is a little bit of uphill to negotiate, and some scrabbly ground underfoot, but it's a nice little walk and you are tripping over ancient history at every turn. Here are just a few of the sights to be seen:
Roman Road:
Malta is a small and massively overcrowded country, so from time to time you may yearn for proximity with nature and open spaces. You may also feel that all this restaurant food and cheap wine is not doing much for your waistline. So to kill two birds with one stone, I recommend you take a morning to go and wander along the Xemxija Heritage Trail. There is a little bit of uphill to negotiate, and some scrabbly ground underfoot, but it's a nice little walk and you are tripping over ancient history at every turn. Here are just a few of the sights to be seen:
Roman Road:
So what were you expecting, the Appian Way? Considering people have been tramping along this road for the past two thousand years, it's really in surprisingly decent shape, especially at the edges. The ancient Romans used roads like this to transport salt and farm produce around the place, and this also forms part of the route taken by pilgrims on the way to Mellieha to worship at the shrine to Our Lady. You can see crosses carved into the rock walls where generations of pilgrims have made their mark.
