Malta Trip #3 – Day 1 – Landing in Malta

 

 

We left at 0725, our flight was only 3 hours long but we still landed there at 1125, how?

 

It’s simple really Europe time zone is one hour ahead of UK time so when you travel East  you lose that time. Coming back you gain that much time. We were two of the first few passengers out so we got to the immigration desk quickly. Then we waited near the top of the queue while we could see immigration officers in their little glass cages, also waiting. After about twenty-five minutes one guy came around and handed each of the officers a print-out. Then they were ready for business. Paperwork even before our paperwork. Fun, right?

 

I have this weird habit of wishing “Good morning” or “Hello” to the immigration officers. I want to see their reaction, if they acknowledge with a smile or say it back or just ignore it. This lady gave a slight smile so that started my impression of Maltese people on a positive note. The paperwork didn’t take time. One benefit of Brexit that Roberta pointed out later is that you get stamps on your passport.

 

There are two things you should always look for when you arrive at an airport – where the toilets are and is there public wifi. After collecting our suitcases we went on search for both. The toilets were clean enough and the wifi was free. Score on both points. I use a VPN when connecting to public networks like that so I fired up my SurfShark mobile app and found that they don’t have a server in Malta. But they had a server in France and in Italy. The app connected through the Paris server and I checked the speed – 25 Mbps. I could live with that.

 

In case you are curious why I use Surfshark
when there are so many choices of VPN providers, consider this a lazy choice. I have tried several before and this is the one that’s the cheapest, keeps no logs, works on PC, tablet and smartphone and basically is totally hassle-free. If you decide to check them out, use my referral link, this will get us both free time on the Surfshark account.

 

https://surfshark.club/friend/uHhT78zz

 

Once I had the VPN connected my first task was to search for an electronics store. I usually have a project when I go on a trip. Last time the project was to find a spanner in Copenhagen (long story, another time.) This time the project was to buy a keyboard in Malta. Recently I have started fancying myself as a kind of writer and I wanted to keep doing some writing while in Malta. I had my Samsung tablet with me and I planned to buy a keyboard to use with it just while I was in Malta and then discard it before going home. I found a few stores online, one of them had a good selection of keyboards as well.

 

But we first took time to feed ourselves. Thanks to the KFC and Burger King in the basement of the airport that part was easy to accomplish. I remember my food was about 8 Euros for a burger, soft drink and a bottle of water. Not bad for airport prices. Generally, we found the prices normal in Malta. Good restaurants had London-equivalent pries or sometimes cheaper.

 

Roberta had done a lot of research and even made a call while we were in the Immigration queue to find out how to buy a travel card. By the way, our UK phones worked in Malta, both of us had mobile plans that gave us free roaming in Malta and 12GB of data roaming. It sufficed for our stay and we had WIFI in most indoor locations. There was a Public Transport counter in the airport so we stopped there to buy a travel card. There were many options and we chose the one that gave us full access to all buses and ferries. I had read online that in Malta buses you need to have either the travel card or exact change in cash, you can’t pay by bank card on the bus. It did not prove to be true. The buses now have contactless readers and you can pay how you want.

 

I am sorry to we did not get our money’s worth from the travel card for which we paid 21 Euros each. We found that the buses were a little too crowded and we did not enjoy standing for long journeys. So, we often ended up using the Bolt taxi app for such journeys. But at that time, we wanted to have the travel cards to have the freedom of choice and 21 Euros was not a bad price to pay for that.

 

The card were fast and easy to acquire on the spot. We paid with contactless payment and went out into the sun to find how to get to the electronics store I had found.

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.