Phew, its already almost August, and what better way to finish off July than to make a good trip to the old capital?
The parents took a couple of hours of leave and I... well I don't have school at the moment and Tuesdays are currently my free days...so we packed the car and drove to Valletta. Did I mention we left an hour late? It's quite a habit in the family...
To be honest, the main reason of our excursion was to visit the Floriana Public Library, which is near Belt is-Sebt, located right outside the main entrance to Valletta. We saw on the maltalibraries website online that they were selling old, second hand books and simply had to go and have a look! (It ended up being more than a look)
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| Central Public Library |
Apparently this book sale has been going on for the past 10 years, and come to think of it, when we visited last year I saw a section of random books sitting by themselves in a corridor but there was no sign whatsoever of 'books for sale'. Or maybe I didn't look well enough. Anyway, today we went to inspect.
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| Found a poster dating some years back on their FB page |
AND WHAT A FIND! There is a whole corridor of books, on shelves, in boxes... simply everywhere you look there are shelves of unwanted books, though why exactly they are unwanted, I wonder. I understand that some of them are outdated and not that popular, but other modern children's books like Jacqueline Wilson were also amongst the shelves. There were also a lot of classics, and Enid Blyton books too. I didn't really look at the adult section.
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| (Not the actual books) |
There were also a lot of foreign language books, mostly German. Amongst theses, was a very interesting looking guide to some canals in that region. What a pity I don't know a word of German!
But I haven't got to the best part... books are sold at the mere price of 25c. Unbelievable! Even in charity shops prices usually go from 1 or 2 euro to 5. We spent ages rummaging amongst the books and when we finally decided which we were going to get, (some would be duplicates of ones at home which were too classic of an edition to leave behind), the total price was just 5 euro. As books sold for 25c each, 4 books makes an euro, so we had 20 books to take with us back home! I also got a Chalet School book which are pretty expensive on the internet.
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| Chalet School |
So that was the library, a great start to the morning. If you haven't heard of the book sale, do give it a visit, you may find a treasure!
