Day 66 - What's that smell?

Today was a travelling day as we checked out of our apartment in Malta and headed for the airport to fly to Cyprus. We had originally booked Cyprus as our stopover between Lebanon and Israel, so we are now back onto our original itinerary.

The flight was with Emirates on a plane heading for Dubai, it was a large plane with not many passengers, in fact we have never been on a plane with so few passengers - which made us wonder why we had been seated in a row of three with another passenger.

It was dark by the time we walked out of Larnaca airport into a strong smell of cattle. One of the locals said its because "there are lots of cattles around, but it is a beautiful island". We collected our hire car and drove the hour and a half to Paphos along a pretty good highway most of the way, which made the night drive in a strange place (but on the left side of the road) more tolerable.

Day 65 - View from the water

During the night we woke to hear the rain lashing, and considering we are in a closely built up area it had to be severe for us to hear it. In the morning it was still steadily raining so K decided to head for a hairdressers for a long over due tint while M went for a walk around the Sliema peninsula.

By the time we'd had lunch the rain had cleared to the point that we decided to brave a 90 minute harbour cruise that had very good reviews. From the boat we were able to see a totally different view of Malta and learn about its interesting fortress history. All around the various bays and points there are sandstone walls and fortresses, while the marinas in each bay are full of luxury boats along with  local vessels. The tour was well worth it and gave us a better overview of the area that we would have had just sticking to the land.

We finished up with a walk to see the other side of Sliema that M had walked by earlier, it was more attractive than our side and had a great promenade along the coast with lots of swimming areas cut into the coastal sandstone, as well as some nice bars and restaurants.

Day 64 - Drenched

We caught the ferry from our side of the bay in Silema to the beautiful old city of Valleta and followed the other tourists to the centre of the old town. We then walked down to the water's edge to Fort St Elmo and the War Siege memorial, all built from solid standstone.

 By the time we reached the Upper Barrakka gardens we could see very dark storm clouds gathering. We started hurrying back to the ferry port but ended up getting caught in a torrential downpour. We didn't have anything in the way of rain protection so we took shelter in a doorway. The rain eased slightly so we made a run for it, but still ended up drenched.

When we finally made it back across the bay the roads were flooded, so we waded through ankle deep water to our apartment to dry off.

Day 63 - Beware overconfidence!

We had been to Rome airport a few times now so felt pretty relaxed about finding our way around especially as we had spent the night less than 10 minutes drive away. We had an early flight and thought we had plenty of time, but things started going wrong when K realised that she had left her good water bottle in the fridge of the hotel, the doors were all closed and reception wasn't open until 8am. After no response from anyone in the hotel (we couldn't even get back in through the front door at this point) we decided to sacrifice the water bottle and drive to the service station to fill up the rental car before we dropped it back. 

The first petrol station we drove to was closed, as it was Sunday nothing local was open yet. We drove to the airport expecting to find something along the way. We found a place, a guy was there so M asked him to fill it up and then went with the card to pay, that was when the confusion started. The machine wouldn't accept the card, the guy kept telling him to check the fuel gauge in the car, it wasn't registering any petrol, M was waving a €50 note around, there was a huge language barrier, and the guy was saying something along the lines of I don't work here, I'm just helping out. Totally confused we drove off, having not paid and not received any petrol. 

We then found another station, and tried to fill up only to find it's also not open yet. By now we have had enough and decide that we will just give the car back empty as we are running out of time. We then missed the turn off to the rental car return and end up on a freeway, having to drive 5km in the wrong direction before we can turn the car around. We finally made it back to the airport, speeding all the way but then entered the limousine drop off by mistake, we have to reverse out then have to do another lap of the airport before we find the right entrance and get rid of the car! That's what happens when you decide you know your way around Rome airport. New rule we have: always fill up the rental car the night before drop off!

The flight to Malta was a breeze and it's was good to find that the taxis were a set price so we didn't need to worry about haggling and being ripped off. There was a slight hassle finding our apartment as the Airbnb host hadn't supplied all the info we needed but we are used to that by now. We are at the point of giving up on Airbnbs because of all the hassle related to check in, some times, hotels are just so much easier. 

Malta wasn't really a formal part of out plans so we hadn't dome any research and didn't know what to expect. It was a pretty easy place to visit, English is one of it's official languages so no language issues at least.

We stayed in Sliema across the harbour from the capital Valetta. We walked around the point seeing the "baths" which were swimming holes carved out of the natural sandstone. M was pretty happy to find an Indian takeaway opposite our apartment run by Indians so that was dinner taken care of.