Photography

A Photo a Day: Week 23 of 2026

An attempt to document one moment of every day

Newly elected politicians “parade” through the streets of Valletta — photo by author.

June 1st

Elections would be a news item in Belgium, often with interviews and analysis, but that would be it. In Malta, the victory of a party — in this case labour, if I’m not mistaken — is celebrated. Streets are actually fenced to allow a sort of parade. In some streets, like ours, business owners have to clear the street, costing them a lot of customers, just so a few new crooks can gloat about their questionable victory.

And people go see these “new people in charge”, cheering for them, as if anything is going to change — the naivety is mind-boggling. The newly elected politicians are greeting the public, shaking hands, and some — like the woman with the hat — are actually waving at the crowd as if they were royalty!

The next day, it’s business as usual: politicians get rich, hardly doing anything to improve the country, which is the case in most countries.

Merchants Street at night — photo by author.

June 2nd

As the election celebrations faded, life returned to normal, whatever that means here. For us, it means going out for a drink sometime during the day. Today, that was after dinner, as our afternoon shopping had been exhausting — we went to a different supermarket than usual and driving there, we missed an exit, which can be downright catastrophic here. The navigation system desperately tries to get you back on track, but road blocks, detours and miscommunicated traffic situations lead you through backstreets that seem to go on forever. We lost about half an hour that way.

At some point, my wife said: Let’s just go home. I said: I’m OK with that, IF we can get out of here. Eventually, we ended up at an intersection, right around the corner of the supermarket where we were going.

I reckon after a day like that, a drink was well-deserved.

Jesus in a wall — photo by author.

June 3rd

Malta is religious, or it seems to be at least. There are over 300 churches on Malta and a few dozen on its small neighbor, Gozo. Many street corners have statues of saints in the facades, and not small ones like in the photo. Especially the older population has crosses on balconies and windows, often with lights around them, as if they were a fairground attraction, but also small statues and sometimes even images of Jesus behind windows.

I could probably fill a book with photos of all the saints, but I reckon that’s already been done.

Do not feed the pigeons — photo by author.

June 4th

Overall, I am quite law-abiding. Not because I think the law is always right or if it even makes sense, but I simply don’t want trouble I can easily avoid. Yet this is a sign that I ignore. I feed the pigeons and other birds, like sparrows. And I’m not alone; some locals even put big plates of food outside.

In Malta dealers have shops — photo by author.

June 5th

There are quite a few shops like this in Malta and to most tourists it’s surprising. Weed is legal here, though I’m not sure non-Maltese can buy it — we never tried to. The result of it being available like that is that in some parts of town and around a few bars in particular, there’s a strong smell of the stuff. Just standing there for too long will get you stoned.

Tourists are welcome… but for what? — photo by author.

June 6th

We spotted this on a side street. At first, you think “aww, that’s nice”, but then you start wondering what the hell is behind that grungy door…

The Maltese decorate their homes with all kinds of crap — photo by author.

June 7th

We went for a morning walk to the only area we hadn’t visited here in Valletta. To get there, we walked along the waterfront road on the south-eastern side of the peninsula. Not only was it a Sunday, it was also a national holiday, so the streets were rather quiet, at least to Maltese standards.

I spotted this house with flags hanging from the window and balcony. No idea if they had anything to do with the national holiday. What’s striking is that people here will put money in things like that but not in the actual care of their property.

[embed]List: A photo a day | Curated by Iban Van der Zeyp | Medium A photo a day · With this series I try to create a habit of taking more photos. I often miss special moments or places…medium.com