Malta trip #13 – Malta Nightlife

Dinner time was again challenging, especially as I was bored with Italian. After a lot of browsing, physical and digital, we agreed on an Indian restaurant for tonight. It was a little distance away from the clubbing precinct and was called “Emperor of India”. It was quite popular and we actually had to wait for a table which I hate doing. I would rather go and eat in some other place if one is busy. To me, waiting for a table is a very bourgeois thing to do. I think it comes from my Indian upbringing where you can get great food even in a cheap, roadside restaurant (they are called dhaba’s and even in them some are better than others.)

Our wait was only about 10 minutes though, and we had something to keep us busy. Tell you later about that. When we got our table, I thought I recognised the couple at the next table. I asked them if they were staying in Corinthia. They were. They asked if we were as well and that told me that they were not the people from the swimming pool which I had earlier thought them to be. It was only coincidence that they were staying at Corinthia.

 

They were from Germany, the lady spoke a little more English than the gentleman. I see non-native people and I immediately assume they speak English. So stupid. The gent was from Garmisch in Germany which excited me because I have been there. I opened my blog on my phone and showed him the blog header image. 

 

“This was taken at Garmisch.” I told him.

 

He nodded and let it go. Two days later when I opened my blog I saw that I had changed the blog header image a while back. In my excitement I had not noticed it in the restaurant but the Garmisch image that I kept on my blog for about 15 years had been replaced by a more recent photo from Rohtang Pass in the Himalayas. The German tourist was just too polite to say “Are you shitting me, bro? This ain’t no Garmisch!”

 

Anyway, the food was good as we had hoped. The restaurant owner was also a great character. On the way back, we had to walk through the clubbing area so we decided to stop at one place to have a drink. The amusing thing there was that one of the bouncers at the door asked us for our “Proof of Vaccination”. He had to repeat it four times before I got it even though his pronunciation was perfect because I had never been asked this at a club in my life and I am too old to be id’ed. In some malls, we had had occasion that someone pointed something at us. After my first shocked step-back, I realised it was a thermometer. But this was the first time after the airport that anyone asked for our PoV.

 

Both of us opened the NHS app on our phones to show the NHS Pass as proof of vaccination but the signal wasn’t good and the app just kept showing the spinner. After a while he just said thank you and let us in. We do have trustworthy faces, Roberta and I.

 

As for the drink inside the less said the better. The drinks were not great and the party was kind of DOA. The drinks were not overpriced if you assume that they would have alcohol. We finished the drinks and came back to the hotel. Admittedly, it was Sunday night but in a tourist place like Malta I had expected it to have more of a buzz.

 

Our main topic of conversation this evening was the arrangements for return travel. We had our flights booked but there were other arrangement that needed to be made in view of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The UK government had set requirements that everybody coming in had to take a Covid-19 test within 0-2 days of arrival. The way they were enforcing that was to make all passengers book a test online with a test provider company, get a booking reference and enter that booking reference in a “Passenger Locator Form”. Remember, we had to fill a similar form for travelling to Malta? It was the same going back with his additional wrinkle. I sorted out my test booking and form at night, Roberta did hers the next morning in the taxi. I chose to have my test kit sent to my home.

 

Apropos nothing, one thing I hate is the hotel hand wash soap. This was a 5-star hotel but this practice never changes. They always give you this round bar (circle?) of soap which you put in a soap dish and use it every time you need to wash your hands. It always smells horrible, always makes your skin dry and the worst thing is that it gets disgustingly wet and melty. Why can’t they put a small bottle of liquid handwash there? This time with the pandemic still a concern, the hotel toiletries included two tiny bottles of sanitizer. I am sure they can do the same for liquid handwash in a way that’s cost-effective, if they want. I was carrying my own sanitizer and sanitising wipes but I still swiped those tiny bottles because they were perfect for bringing through airport security.

 

The next day we were planning to check-out and see the city before going to the airport so I made sure to put all my devices on charge before going to bed. I also made sure all my media was backed up including this morning’s great sunrise photos. Then I went to bed to dream of Covid-19 tests. Just kidding, my dreams are more cinematic.

Malta Trip #9 – Day 3 - Mind is Blown

If you haven’t already got it from this story let me repeat it here that Roberta is a whiz at planning a busy day. I won’t tell you the plan in advance, but keep watching to see how many things we did in this one day. That was mostly Roberta’s planning.

 

Our day started early with the Segway tour. Roberta had arranged it for 0945 and we took a taxi there to save time. We met our host Sam in Nadur. We were the only ones in this tour because I don’t think many people like to get started this early when on holiday. We met very few other tourists in the next two hours. Sam was waiting for us when we arrived.

 

When you do something day in day out you become really good at it with practice. But only if you like doing what you do. Having been a teacher for many years, I know how easy it becomes to teach the same thing over and over again to different people. Sam was a good example of that. He had been teaching newbies to ride a Segway for a long time and he was so good at it that he took only fifteen minutes to teach both of us in turns. I had never ridden a Segway before but I knew I would like it and I was right. It was a hoot!

 

After teaching us the basics, Sam took us around the neighbourhood for a practice run then led us out for the actual Gozo tour. We rode on all different kind of roads, more on that later. Sam said hello to pretty much every driver, farmer and pedestrian on the way. He told us that Gozo is a small place and everybody knows everybody. I think it is to do with his personality and the people. He was a very friendly, sociable person. All through the tour he managed to keep three conversations going, one with me, one with Roberta and one with both of us. The people also were very friendly and we got smiles and “good morning” from the native people whenever we rode past them.

 

Every so often Sam stopped and gave us a tour of the local flora as well as the buildings around. He also gave us a good background of the Maltese culture. The first sight we saw which was photo-worthy was “Ramla Bay”. 

It was a beautiful beach way down from where we were and got a great view of it for the cameras. 

Then he took us to a cave called “Mixta cave” (pronounced Mishta cave) which looked down on Ramla Bay. 

It was great for photos. 

 I think it was on the way back from there that I had my first, and only, Segway accident.

It was totally my fault, of course. I had been loving riding the Segway and was getting so confident that on the smooth roads I could ride hands-free. I could not yet steer it with my body like Sam could but I would get there. No, I did not get overconfident, I got underconfident which caused the accident.

 Not sure if you know how a Segway works but basically it’s a very easy to ride transport because it balances itself. Now, to be fair, we were travelling some very challenging roads right after a ten-minute training, like rally level roads. So many of them had very steep up or down slopes, most were narrow and almost all had rocky hurdles to a varying degree. Still, the Segway was doing fine and it would have carried on doing fine if I hadn’t applied my own mind to it.

 

You drive the Segway, back and forward by leaning in that direction. It’s that simple. But the way the Segway was leaning to compensate for the steep down slope did not compute in my little brain. I thought I was about to topple over (I wasn’t) and instead of working on my balance I tried to get off the Segway. That also I managed without injury but then I turned the Segway towards the wall to avoid it running into the other two riders. There was no chance of that anyway. The final genius move I made was that I kept the Segway handle in my grip even after turning it towards the wall.

 

 

It should not be a surprise to anyone then that my left hand got squashed between the Segway handle and the wall. I don’t know what word to use here, squashed, crushed, squeezed, they all sound too drastic. It was not that bad. The worst that I suffered was that the skin on my middle knuckle split and you could see blood. That was the extent of it. My hand was working fine and continued working fine. Mere scratches. I just screamed like a little girl every time I washed my hands for the next two days because the soap would get into the cut and that hurt much worse than the original injury.

 

The biggest damage was to my confidence and pride because I thought I was doing great on the Segway. Anyway, I got back on my Segway and we carried on. Cancel the air ambulance. I forgot to mention that Sam was taking photos with his phone here and there when we were on level stretches of roads. He was good. Not only could he balance well enough to go low on his Segway, I could see that he was composing the shots well. They were nice shots when we got them.

 

Our final stop was a bakery where Sam had already placed an order for our “Cheese things.” We didn’t have time to eat them then so he put them in a front bag on one of the Segways.

 

By the time we rolled back (literally) into Nadur, Phyl was already waiting for us in her taxi. We said farewell to Sam, he handed us the cheese things and two bottles of water. We had to pay him in cash which we knew already. The whole two hour tour of Gozo on Segway cost us €70 total. It included everything from Segway use to water bottles. Considering we got a private tour, I think it was a great deal. It was a memorable tour and worth the money as well as getting up early.

 

But the mind-blowing part of Malta was just starting. Let’s save the next part for the next chapter as it is quite long.

 

 

Malta Trip #7 – The Bridge of Disharmony

 

 The English lady Barbara was a lovely person who was retired and had been living in Gozo for many years. She was going to Malta for a couple of weeks to live in a flat a friend of hers had offered her. While she was waiting for her bus, she stopped us and started chatting with us. We were only too happy to chat because....well, we usually are.

 

While she was telling us about public transport and which ferry to take back to Malta, she casually mentioned that there is a ferry that goes from Malta to Sicily (an Island of Italy). It takes 90 minutes to get there and if one wants, they can take a ferry back at night after spending the day in Sicily. I have never been to Italy and this sort of thing really appeals to me. Roberta could see the mad gleam in my eye and she immediately put a stop to it.

 

“Sunny! No! We don’t have time.” Those were her exact words.

 

And I responded “Roberta, this is my bridge this time!”

 

Ok, the bridge, that was from our Copenhag

en trip. That’s a long story in itself but in short, there is a bridge that goes from Copenhagen in Denmark to Malmo in Sweden. Half an hour by train and you are in a different country. Roberta told me about it and I went crazy for it. That created lots of debate between us but ultimately we took the train that goes over that bridge. Both of us enjoyed it but Roberta had to do a lot of “Beautiful Mind” type calculations to make that fit in our plans. The Copenhagen trip was only two days. Later, in the lockdown days we were both glad we had been to Sweden even if for a few hours before all travel got stopped.

 

But this was different. We really didn’t have enough time even to see Malta properly and Sicily would be a big complication but come on, imagine one ferry, a ninety minute ride, and you are in a different country! I grew up in the central city of Delhi which is completely landlocked and even if you travel for four hours you would still be in India. Europe just drives me crazy that way.

 

Even after we left Barbara, we talked about it a little bit. I didn’t tell Roberta this because I like pulling her leg but I dropped that idea very quickly after I did some research on it and found that while the trip is all that Barbara indicated, in the current climate Sicily had more formalities and processes for Covid-19 precautions. I didn’t want to go through that hassle and I also knew we were short on time.

 

That afternoon, we went back to the Mgarr harbour and took a Hop-On-Hop-Off tour bus for Gozo sightseeing. Because it was only for the afternoon, the nice lady selling the tickets only charged us €10 each. She did want it in cash though. There was an ATM there so cash was no problem. I saw a lot of free ATMs in Malta that didn’t charge us for withdrawals and I was using my Monzo card so I didn’t have to worry about currency conversation rates or non-sterling transaction charges. Monzo is fantastic if you travel.

 

If I am completely honest, the HOHO bus was a bit of a snoozefest. Later we agreed that it was kind of a slow way to go sightseeing. I don’t have any data for a comparison that was just a feeling. One big problem is that although you can see a lot from the open deck of the bus, you can’t actually take any good pictures. I have tried that before in Glasgow and it didn’t really work. Here are a couple of examples of photos taken from the moving bus in Gozo, you can decide for yourself if they are any good.

 

We drove through Victoria and passed the remnants of a big, historical viaduct. Then we left the bus at Dwejra (pronounced: dwayraa). This was the site of the old Azure Window. I didn’t know about the Azure Window until Roberta told me before the trip. It was on her list of things to see and when I read about it, I was fascinated as well.

The Azure Window was a natural rock formation that looked like a window (hence the name) which was a unique natural feature. I am using past tense because unfortunately the window collapsed in 2017 in a storm. Now it’s a site for people to take photos of the hillside that remains while braver souls go scuba diving there to look at the ruins of the window in the water. Nevertheless, it was a nice spot, very pretty.

 

After we were done taking the photos we had to wait for the next HOHO bus to pick us up. In the meantime, we had ice creams, well, I had a milkshake. It was ok. The HOHO bus in Gozo has two routes - purple and blue. The funny thing is where they meet, in Victoria, nothing changes. You stay on the same bus and it starts driving on the Blue route. Yep. It must make sense to somebody somewhere.

 We stopped at a big church, Ta’Pinu, just for 10 minutes to take photos. Then back to Victoria. 

Victoria is the capital of Gozo, a small city. I can’t say whether it’s great or not great because, well, it’s just a city. It has the famous Citadella (or Citadel, if you wanna be English about it.) Roberta wanted to get there but she was not ready for the bus to become Blue route and carry on before we could get off. We left that behind and stayed with the bus as far as Marsalforn (pronounced: Marsaal-forn) which is a seafront. I don’t want to be disparaging about it but it was just a seafront. There were some kids learning to dive there so it was more for doing than looking. Actually, I changed my mind the next day but we will get to that.

 

From Marsalforn, we took a Bolt taxi to Wied-il-Mielah (I am leaving out accents in my laziness) which is another natural window like the Azure Window except that it’s still standing. Well, we tried to get there. Remember I told you there’s always work going on everywhere in Malta? That’s what happened to us here. Our taxi could not take us to the window because the road was blocked. The taxi driver dumped us there saying it was just a ten minutes walk from there.

 

We didn’t have any choice except to get out but neither of us is the doe-eyed innocent bumpkin that we used to be. Roberta checked on Google Maps and it was showing 23 minutes to walk down. We started walking down and it was all downhill. But before going much further we asked the road workers how far down was the window. Have I mentioned that the Maltese people were really easy to talk to? You could ask directions from anybody, you could chat with anybody, you could ask stupid questions, they were always friendly and responsive. One of the best things that I liked about Malta was the people.

 

One of the road workers told us that it was straight down on that road about 15 minutes walk. His colleague said it was more like 30 minutes. We raised this point with the first guy.

 

“Yess...fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, like that.” He said.

 

What? There’s a huge different between 15 and 30. We talked about it. Roberta raised the point that going down was all downhill but a 30 minute walk uphill to come back? We had been doing a lot of walking, climbing etc. all day today so that was not a good prospect. My objection was that the light was already fading. In 30 minutes it would fade even more. I had seen the photos of the window, it needed good light for photography. You will see what I mean. But given our tour plan, if we didn’t go to see the window today, we wouldn’t be able to fit it in our itinerary again because we were leaving Gozo the next day at noon.

 

Have you heard the expression “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”?

 

Retreating gracefully, we walked back to the road closure and called a taxi. And that taxi changed the course of history! Ok, I am exaggerating so you would read the next post but honestly, that taxi ride did have a big impact on our Gozo trip the next day.

 

Malta trip #6 – Day 2: The Gift of Sunrise

 

I slept well but also woke up easily at 0530 by the alarm. The sunrise was scheduled for about 0715 but you always need to be there a little before to capture the colours in the sky. I peeked out of the balcony but everywhere was dark so I waited and used that new keyboard to do some more writing. Not wanting to miss the boat like I had done in Bangkok (that story some other time) I gathered my equipment and got ready to go about 0630 while it was still a little dark. Here is the beauty of this apartment, I didn’t have to go anywhere out to greet the sunrise. I simply walked out of the apartment, went down to the pool area and just there beyond the pool was the big Mediterranean sea promising all kinds of golden hour glory. The weather was nice but I had put on a jacket because, you know, morning hour.

 

Roberta joined me there shortly. Before leaving I had said good morning to her through her bedroom door and she had said she would come down later. We loved that sunrise! For one thing, there was the ocean, then there were ferries adding another beautiful subject and motion if you wanted to capture a video. There was an island, my guess is the Comino island, and well, it was just amazing in every way. Down below we could even see waves crashing on rocks. I used my Panasonic GH5 mirrorless camera for the photos and my smartphone Samsung Note 20 Ultra for the videos because the phone has a better form factor and more advanced optical image stabilisation for videos.

 

 

You can see some examples of the photos we took and I am showing remarkable self-restraint not to upload the hundreds of photos I took because they are all gorgeous. It was easy photography because everywhere you pointed, there was beauty. If you could nail the exposure in your camera, you could take a great photo. That’s why the first and last hours of the day are called golden hour because the soft light makes everything look pretty. It would not be unfair to say that both of us revelled in that like kids in a candy store.

 

After we were finally done with the sunrise, we took our time getting ready and then went to a grocery store. It wasn’t far. It was near the extra bus stop where we had got off the bus last night. We easily walked there. And this time I was really like a kid in a candy store because their aisle of sugary treats was epic! I was so excited I took a picture. That picture shows only half of what was there on offer.

 

For the next one hour while Roberta went about carefully selecting what she wanted to get for herself and her family, I went about grabbing stuff off the shelves, then putting it back because it would be too much then grabbing something else...and so on. I think I spent about €30 there in that one visit, most of it was chocolates. But at the end of it, I feel that I had been smart because the two bags I had walked out with were not heavy. I could have easily carried them back to our apartment whic
h I ultimately did.

 

But first we stopped for coffee. The coffee shop was in a weird corner away from the main market, in front of this great building. Don’t ask me what it is, but it looked like a church. In Malta there are cranes everywhere because there is always work going on everywhere. One weird thing about coffee, or about me, is that I love Latte Macchiato which is a layered coffee – espresso, milk, foam – served in a tall, tapered glass. Don’t buy it in Costa, it’s not the same. You can’t anyway because you can only get it in Europe not in the UK. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with Brexit.

 

However, this coffeehouse did have it and they did it right. We sat on the patio, enjoyed the view and discussed our plans while we sipped the great coffee. This morning’s original plan was to go on a Segway tour of Gozo which I was very interested in because I have never ridden a Segway but it had been cancelled because the roads were closed. Roberta called the host and arranged it for the next day. That made me happy. It takes very little to make me happy. And there was lots of it in Malta.

 

When we were walking back from there to go back to our apartment, we were stopped by a woman at a bus stop. She was a chatty Cathy, actually her name was Barbara and she told us many interesting things about the islands. But then she said something that introduced a discordant note between I and Roberta. This is long, I better save it for the next chapter.

Malta Trip #5 – An Evening in Malta

Yeah, it was not as glamorous as the title makes it sound. We got off the ferry, the last passengers to get off because we were clicking and filming until the last possible moment. Then Roberta wanted to find our flat so we could try and capture the sunset from there. I was a bit more realistic, the time was gone. Still, we hurried and took a bus from Mgarr 

Harbour, Gozo where the Ferry had deposited us.

[Photo credit: Roberta] 

We only had to go 2 stops on the bus but we went three because we missed our stop. Then we had to trek back. Thankfully it was all downhill....until we came to our actual stop. Then it wa
s uphill. For our stay in Gozo, Roberta had found this great plate which was a two-bedroom flat within an honest-to-god fort called Fort Chambray. As a photo location that place was epic. But to climb up the hill to get to it....? I don’t know if you are keeping track but we still had our suitcases with us. Everything we had carried with us from UK plus whatever we bought in Malta, namely the keyboard, we were carrying with us. So, it was not a fun climb.

[Photo credit: Roberta] 

There was a big gate which was closed. Roberta called the flat owner and he opened the gate for us by an app on his mobile. Technology, huh? A little more climb then we hunted around for the actual flat. Didn’t find it. Walking up and down the dark corridors of the fort was not fun. Thankfully, the flat owner was available on phone for directions and after a couple of false starts we found the place.

 What a lovely place! The fort was old but the flat was new and fully furnished including dishwasher, fridge, microwave and anything you wanted. First thing we wanted was to rest our legs. So we plopped down on the sofas and talked about food options. The flat had a fully functioning kitchen but we were missing two things – groceries and the stamina to cook. We took the easy way out and ordered takeaway from Bolt Food. We had to walk down to the big metal gate to receive the food but now we had a remote to “Open Sesame” the big gate.

 In the Bolt Food menu there were many different restaurants and we had ordered Italian because that’s one cuisine Roberta and I agree on. More on that later. I had ordered a plain Margarita pizza and garlic bread hoping that at least one of them would be good. Boy, was I wrong. The pizza was burnt and tasted like it. The garlic bread, let’s not talk about it or your stomach will turn. I had two slices of pizza from the non-burnt part then lost the determination to continue. I threw away the garlic bread then and the rest of the pizza next morning. Roberta was more forgiving and about finished her pizza. If you are keeping track, this had been a longass day and we were both tired so after the “dinner” we retired to our rooms.

 While I might not be a kickass professional photographer, I do try to cultivate good habits of the professionals. One of them is to put all my gadgets on charge before going to bed. Malta has the same electric sockets that we have in UK so we didn’t need to pack international adapters but I had packed one anyway just in case and also because it served as a multi-plug. I had also packed an extension board that gave me 3 electric sockets and 4 USB charging sockets. Using these two, I set all my stuff on charge – phone, camera battery, smartwatch etc.

 

The second good habit I follow is to copy all the media from a day’s shooting before going to bed no matter how tired I am. If I took photos in Malta and lost them through a mistake or accident, I would be kicking myself because they can’t be reproduced easily. My phone has a big storage and I was carrying a few solutions for the USB-C port that is offers. Using a USB-C card reader, I copied today’s photos and videos from the camera card on to the phone. From there they would automatically get sync’ed (I used an app called DriveSync) to my Google Drive. Two backup copies. The photos I take on my phone get sync’ed to the Google Drive instantly anyway.

 Once that was done, I had time to check the keyboard. It worked like magic. I was able to do all that I wanted to do on the tablet including writing fiction. Touch typing was possible at almost my full typing speed. Then it was time to sleep because sunrise was expected about 0730 and I wanted to be there to greet it.

 The next morning the disadvantage of living in an impractical, hard-to-reach fort paid off in full. 

Malta Trip #4 – Running, Walking, Ferrying

 

[Photo credit: Roberta]
 

From the internet I knew what the electronics store was called and even the stock of keyboards they had. Then Roberta used her navigation expertise (Google Maps) and found out which bus we needed and from which stop. We got out and took some photos but there was still about half an hour to the bus time so we came back into the airport to wait. This was the problem we found with the Malta buses that the services were about 45 minutes or an hour apart.

 

There was a taxi driver at the bus stop who offered to take us to the harbour for 15 euros which was very cheap and if we didn’t have to buy the keyboard first we could have taken his offer. But I wanted that keyboard on the first day so I could use it during my trip and Roberta never cribs about my projects even when they introduce more hassle. I think she goes into everything with a sense of adventure which is quite the right spirit for any trip. Anyhow, we declined the taxi driver’s offer and waited for the bus.

 

The buses are quite punctual we found and ours came right on time. Roberta knew which stop to get off at and I followed her. Then we had a jolly old time trying to find the store itself. We found the mall it was in and then shunted around until we saw the sign across a car park. They did have all those keyboards but no Bluetooth keyboard. Anyway I had brought a USB-C to USB-A adapter for my tablet so I could buy a USB keyboard as well. The staff was very nice and spoke excellent English. They showed me multiple keyboards and let me try them, but it was slow going until I realised I was trying to find a £100 quality in a £20 keyboard. That made the decision easy. I bought a Logitech USB keyboard-mouse set for €24.99. Honestly, it worked very well even for my touch typing. My tablet had a touch-screen so I ended up never using the mouse.

 

We needed the same bus to go ahead to the harbour and I had wasted so much time in picking out a keyboard that we didn’t have much time before the bus was due. We knew that the next one would be 45 minutes later and didn’t want to waste that much time. So, we ran, pushing our suitcases and carrying the backpacks plus a big bag containing the keyboard box. We made it to the bus stop with 4 minutes to spare.

 

Unfortunately, the bus was much crowded this time. We had to stand and you know it’s not fun to stand with a heavy backpack on your back and a suitcase that wants to roll around on the smooth bus floor. But when you travel by public transport you get an insight into the character of the place. You meet the real people on the bus, going about their normal daily activities. Even if I don’t want to, I would notice those things.

 

For example, there were some other people there as well with big bags, bigger than ours. The bus was only one deck so it was quite busy. When somebody had to get off, people had to move around to give them space. It was quite awkward. But I didn’t see any scowls or frowns. People smiled when they made eye contact. It was good to see that and the rest of my experience with the Maltese people in the coming days confirmed my impression of them that I made in that bus journey. Or actually, even before that. There was a health desk at the airport where they were checking our vaccination records. I met with smiling officials with no hurry. If I take two extra minutes to find the PDF on my phone, why, that’s perfectly fine. I saw that relaxed attitude in most things there.

 

We got to the harbour which is called Cirkewwa with a circumflex on the C (that hat character like this ^?) . Did I mention that Malta the country is an archipelago which means a cluster of islands? Our stay for the first two nights was on the Gozo islands. There is a ferry that runs between the two islands which we now needed to board. It was due at 1630, if I remember right. The funny thing was that you don’t buy a ticket on the Ferry. You buy a ticket from Gozo to Malta. If you think about it, it makes sense, Malta is the main island. Everybody ultimately has to come back to Malta. I will tell you later how we cheated this system.

 

 

I love ferries because they are big enough that I don’t get motion sickness but also they are specious. It’s a very luxurious feeling. The best thing on this ferry though was that this 25 minutes ride was at the exact time when the sun was setting. Can you imagine, we were at the best spot to take photos of the sunset exactly when it was happening? We could not have planned it better. But it just worked out.

 

We just lugged our suitcases to the top deck and took out our cameras. Oh, man, was it glorious! I have hundreds of photos from that session but I will only share a few of them here to keep you from running away.

 

 

Malta Trip #2 - Day 1 - Journey Starts

 

Goes to show you what lengths I would go to for photography, I had slept a few hours in the evening so I could leave in the early hours of the morning. I am one of those people who can sleep at any time, you will hate me. The flight was at 0725 but as I live in Oxford I needed two hours to get to London Gatwick airport as well as some buffer time. Roberta and I agree on that, always get to the airport earlier than you need to. There is a bus that goes from Oxford to London airports called Oxford Airline. It's a nice, comfortable coach that costs between £23 and £28. It used to cost me much less when I was a student but...sigh. Moving on. I took the bus service that picked me up just before 0300 and deposited me at the London Gatwick airport North terminal just before 0500.

 

Roberta had deliberately not picked the cheapest flights this time. She had gone for the flights that could give us the maximum time in Malta for our travel dates and also worked with our accommodation choices. More on that later. We checked-in and dropped our suitcases then directly went to the security rather than hang around.

 

I was really nervous about airport security, I always am. Most of my worry is about holding up the queue behind me. Quick tip, when you get to security, turn left if you can, most people turn right as its their dominant side and as a result the queues are longer on that side. I carry a lot of electronics so I am worried about taking time to take them out of the backpack. No problem this time. I had packed my liquids (just lip balm) in a plastic bag already. My electronics were also packed in small travel boxes with transparent tops. My strategy is to put everything that I can, including my phone, in my jacket pockets before getting to the security conveyor belt. After putting the jacket in a separate tray I walked through the metal detector. I winced as I went through it as I remembered I was still wearing my smartwatch. Then I worried that my expression might trigger an alarm in the security lady watching me walk through the scanner. None of that happened. No beeps or alarms and she didn't pull me aside for personal manhandling. On the return journey, when I was taking my smartwatch off, the security agent there told me not to do it. So, I guess they don't trigger the alarm. My watch is a Ticwatch Pro 3 which is mostly a plastic body anyway.

 

After we went through the security and immigration checks, we still had about half an hour to hang out. So, we had a coffee and shared our Etsy shops with each other. Roberta and I are both new Etsy sellers and didn't know that about each other. Links for our shops in case you want to check them out:

 

Sunny: https://g7printables.etsy.com

Roberta: https://chromaticautomatic.etsy.com

 

The flight was almost full but we got lucky that we didn’t have anybody sitting in the third seat in our row so we had some extra space. Photos from the flight are hardly ever worth the trouble but the views are so amazing that you have to try. I think the ones I got this time were better than I have had before, partially because of my new phone Samsung Note 20 Ultra which has a great camera module, but I am also becoming a better photographer with practice. Some examples here from the airport and the flight.