Full house at Grand Harbour

More than 8,000 tourists visited Malta on seven cruise liners that called at Grand Harbour yesterday, making both the harbour and the streets of Valletta busier than usual.

The mv Arielle and the Insigna (with 500 and 674 passengers respectively) berthed at Laboratory Wharf. The mv Costa Concordia, with its 3,292 passengers, and the mv MSC Opera, which carried 1,585 tourists, were at Pinto Wharf.

The mv Athena, at Wine Wharf, brought in 538 passengers. At Deep Water Quay were the mv Deutschland (468 passengers) and the mv Grand Mistral (1,158 passengers), Viset operations manager Charles Mizzi told The Times yesterday.

Ben Stuart, coordinator of the Malta Cruise Network, said the arrival of the cruise liners was very well organised by the Malta Transport Authority, adding that because the police did a good job and taxi and horse-drawn carriage drivers cooperated, congestion was down to the minimum.