After two brave days for Little A, we had promised her that she had this fifth day in Malta to enjoy the many playgrounds around Marsaskala. Our focus was on the Sant’Antnin Family Park, right on the outskirts of the town. The park has multiple playgrounds and other activities. It turned out to be a day of challenging boundaries for Little A. Well, more for us as parents. How large a slide should she try?
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Breakfast in Marsaskala
We started the day with breakfast in a small restaurant in the center of Marsaskala. Toast for Susann and me and a waffle for Little A. It didn’t take long before Little A wanted to start playing at the playground right in front of us. Well, she got to run off to play under the watching eye of Susann while I set off to purchase the necessary refreshments for a day playing in the park. It would even be hard to convince Little A that there were more playgrounds to explore as she didn’t want to leave this one.
Sant’Antnin Family Park
Sant’Antnin Family Park is a large park just a few minutes’ walk from the center of Marsaskala. It consists of several areas of playgrounds and playing fields, but also the Marsaskala Football stadium and the old St. Anthony’s Chapel. In an area with small cages, there are also farm animals for visitors to say hi to. This was earlier a landfill that with the help of funds from the EU has been developed into what is most likely the largest park of its kind in Malta.
Little A started with an exploration of the area for smaller kids. Well, above the age of a toddler that is. She could, however, not stop looking at the large climbing tower that we had walked by on our way in. The tower has two larger slides and is for older kids. Well, not that a 4-year-old cares about that. Susann and I were a bit worried about how steep the slides were and if Little A would be scared or not. Well, no matter what, once she had explored all the parts of the smaller playground she only had the tower in her mind.
So there we stood. For some reason, the parents are many times more worried than the kids in the playgrounds. We had told her that she should start at the lowest slide and leave the top one for another day. That was no problem, but she did eventually get worried and Susann decided to climb up and assist her with finding her way to the correct slide. Little A soon came flying down the slide screaming “otroligt“, which is Swedish for incredible. She was so happy and climbed up many more times before we could continue looking around in the park.
Once we had left the big slide we could finally continue to explore Sant’Antnin Family Park. It is really a huge playground in itself and Little A had a lot more places to climb in. There were also a few other smaller slides. She had no interest in seeing the animals and we could understand that. In the end, we spent some hours playing before it was time to head back and rest for a while.
An Evening in Marsaskala
It was evening again before we got back out and headed back towards the center of Marsaskala. The hours playing at Sant’Antnin Family Park had taken its toll, but Little A was now ready to play some more. We had decided to first find a place to eat dinner and then let Little A play some at the central playground.
We walked along the waterfront promenade all the way down to the center. The moon was shining and the water of the bay had calmed down a lot during the day. We were once more surprised about Little A and her food habits. She has many times rejected spicy food, so we had little hope in her liking Indian cuisine. I took a fairly spicy Chicken Tikka Masala to introduce her to some new tastes. Our backup plan was that she could always at least eat some rice and naan. Well, let’s just say that I did not get to have the chicken all for myself. She liked the chicken and seemed to enjoy the whole procedure with dipping the naan bread in the spicy sauce.
The dinner gave us some extra energy. Well, both Susann and I had eaten too much and would rather have just laid down to rest somewhere. For Little A the food had a different effect, she was now in play-mood and started to climb around in the playground directly when we let her. She played for some time but was soon so tired that we had to carry her back to the apartment. Well, we all slept quite deeply that night.
