Category Archives: southern europe

Dubrovnik: Saturday

No point in writing about Friday. I got to the airport via a big traffic jam – parking was before the worst of the jam but the airport bus wasn’t. Security was pretty painless and quicker than it looked from the jumble of people crammed in. The plane was delayed – flight information was pushed back about 20 minutes and when it was finally announced, it turned out the gate with a few empty seats where I’d spent those 20 minutes was the actual correct gate. We took a bus out to the plane and then had to wait on the bus for at least another ten minutes, staring at the plane in front of us that we weren’t allowed to get on. The flight was fine. I spotted Dubrovnik from the air – it’s actually surprisingly small.

The flight landed about half an hour late. All fine. It seems to be a pretty quiet airport, at least by evening. The official shuttle bus runs half an hour after each arrival – each scheduled arrival, it seems. We’d missed the bus for our arrival but the Munich flight was also delayed and so we got their official shuttle bus, all seven of us. Everyone else went off with cars or tour groups. It’s quite a long way from the airport to the town via what I suspect are some quite spectacular views if it’s not 10.30 at night and absolutely pitch black. Getting from the main road down to Dubrovnik old town is a bit of a mission, especially in a coach – those streets were not designed for coaches! Then up we went, back onto the coast road and down to the port. It was a 12-minute walk from the main bus station to my apartment, all uphill and I did start to wish I’d taken the private shuttle. Then I couldn’t get in. I’d picked it specifically because it has 24 hour reception but the door was shut and there wasn’t even any sign to say for sure that it was the right door. So I phoned them and Irina came down five minutes later to show me the way in via the garage. By this time, it was gone 11pm so I had a quick look around the apartment and went to bed. Had to be up early in the morning.

On Saturday morning, I had to be at the port for 9.30 for a day’s sea kayaking. That’s why I chose to stay here rather than in actual Dubrovnik. I didn’t want to be messing around figuring out buses at the crack of dawn on my first day with a strict deadline. But you can’t go kayaking all day on an empty stomach, so having arrived at gone 11pm, I had an alarm set for 8am so I could hop up to the next level to the nearest supermarket for bread and juice. This city – or at least this part of it – is all built on the side of a mountain, so everything is on “levels” and there are either steps between them or steep hills. In this case, it was steps. I got my bread and juice, had toast for breakfast, and hopped two levels down to the port. This was where I had my first real problem of the day. I would meet my guide “at the port”. Where at the port? It’s a pretty big place. I looked around for anyone in uniform but where were they likely to be? Where might they be expecting people to arrive? I lurked around the ticket kiosk and eventually decided the best thing would be to lurk by the boat. I’d looked at the boat info. I knew what boat it was and I could see it and surely I couldn’t miss the guide here. But by 9.45, just 15 minutes before the boat was due to depart, I was starting to panic. I got out my phone and was just starting to WhatsApp the company when I spotted two young men carrying two-part paddles which they put on the front of the boat. I stared. And then they stared back! This was my guide! I still don’t know exactly where he’d been waiting for me but I was found!

It was an hour’s ferry to Lopud, where we were starting our adventure and the ferry alone was worth the price of admission. The Adriatic is an amazing colour – bright turquoise in the shallows, deepening to teal and then to navy, and there are little rocky mini-mountainous islands poking out. We were actually only going two islands up and right up until we rounded the corner of Lopud’s harbour, we could still see the big bridge at the far end of the port that I can see from my apartment. We walked along the front to a kind of walled garden next to a church – was this once the graveyard? – and that was our base where we collected kayaks, got changed, put on spraydecks and buoyancy aids and then went across to the beach. We were actually two groups – the other group were kayaking and cycling but we were just kayaking. We went briefly through safety – not in the order I’d do it. I’d do “this is how to pop your spraydeck if you find yourself upside down under water” before “if you capsize, just hang on and I’ll sort you out”. The rest of the group were a family with two boys of roughly Guide age so they had two double kayaks, one parent and one child in each. I adjusted my footrests easily enough once I’d figured out how they move but the others struggled because there just isn’t room for a fully-grown man’s legs in the back seat of a double kayak and it didn’t seem possibly to extend the footrests enough with putting them halfway through the front seat. But eventually we got sorted out and headed straight into the harbour and across to Sipan, the next island. I’d measured this and from our beach to the little headland on the left-hand side is about a mile and a half. My legs went completely numb several times. They often do in a kayak. We had to dodge a lot of boats and bounced over some waves that would have terrified me just a couple of years ago – well, maybe three years ago.

Our first stop on Sipan was an arch which our guide – I never got his name! – assured us was absolutely safe and wouldn’t fall down on us. No, it probably wouldn’t but you never know, and I’m not trusting the geological opinions of someone who not only doesn’t know what kind of rock it is but has apparently never even considered that that’s a thing to know. Next we paddled back along the shore of Sipan, with Lopud looking across at us as if it wasn’t a mile and a half, and down to a cave. Here, we tied up the kayaks and jumped in the water. I wasn’t expecting this. They’d said swimming and snorkelling but I thought we’d land somewhere on a beach or shore and have a hour or two of free time, not “right, paddle up to me, jump out, swim away”. I opted to keep my buoyancy aid on which was a good idea because even in blazing hot sun, even the Med is cold enough to give me cold water shock at first. Once I could breathe properly, I began to realise that the buoyancy aid was making it really hard to swim so I took it off and actually, I worried for a minute that I wasn’t going to be able to stay afloat without it. I can swim. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t swim. And apart from the few times I’ve capsized, either deliberately or because I’ve leaned away from waves and helped them tip me over, I’ve never been in the water with a buoyancy aid since I was a very small child with the otter suit. I declined to go into the cave, though. The entrance is basically a wild open version of Swildon’s sump 1 – a very short section of cave where you have to stick your head under water. I’ll bob in the cave entrance and assume it’s not going to fall on me but I don’t do sumps and if there’s one thing my caver brain has held onto for a very long time, it’s “cave diving is the most dangerous sport in the world”.

We got back in the kayaks somehow, minus the spraydecks, and paddled round the next headland to the little town of Sudurud where we had a reservation at a small fish restaurant overlooking the jetty. The adults had squid or tuna steak, the kids had spaghetti and grilled chicken escalope and I had bread and butter. More importantly, we had drinks. Our guide had suggested putting our bottles under the decklines where we could reach them during the paddle rather than sealing them in dry bags in the hatches but what that meant was that I ended up with warm pineapple tea rather than the juice by the time we reached Sipan. Fresh cold Fanta was wonderful.

By now the day was getting on. It was about 3.30 by the time we left the restaurant and we had to be back on Lopud to catch the 18.10 ferry. So we paddled across to Ruda, a small uninhabited island (mini mountain) just across from Sipan, paddled into a large sea cave with a huge hole in its roof, and then straight back across to Lopud. The weather was deteriorating by now. The channel betweeen Lopud and Sipan tends to be choppy but the wind was picking up and it remained choppy all the way in to the beach. It was a bit of a struggle. I didn’t see it myself but apparently our guide towed one of the doubles back the last bit. I knew they’d fallen behind and I knew towing was a possibility but every time I looked back, they weren’t being towed so I have no idea when it happened, especially as our guide was also towing an empty kayak from the cycling group. No idea what happened there either. We came across their guide trying to tie up three empty kayaks on a beach on Sipan, so ours helped out by taking one of us them with us. Where did the people go? We saw them coming back later, when we were all on Lopud, and they were carrying their kayaks into the base, so there goes my working theory that they took the boat home directly from Sipan.

Anyway, we got back with an hour to spare, and that was after we’d brought the boats in and got dressed. I went and got another cold drink and some chocolate and sat on a bench to do nothing in particular. By the time we got on the ferry, it was cold and windy and I began to wish I’d brough my hoodie with me after all. It had seemed unimaginable that I could want it when I set out in the morning and I hadn’t wanted it at 11pm the night before. But actually, the wind was blowing across from the Elafite Islands and as soon as the ferry turned parallel to the coast, the wind dropped and it was quite pleasant.

I made a stop at the big supermarket on the port (where I had to leave my backpack in the lockers!) because everything is closed in Dubrovnik on Sundays. Need enough food to get through to Monday. Then I came home, ate toast, had a bath and went to bed. At 11pm almost on the dot, a massive thunderstorm started. One rumble was so loud it had to be directly overhead but the next rumble turned into an enormous bang. The building had to be hit. Some building had to be hit, anyway. I went out on the balcony and looked but there was no sign of anything. I can only assume maybe someone was so startled by either the thunder or the lightning that they crashed their car into something? But I saw no sign of that either. Both BBC Weather and the Met Office were predicting at least 24 hours of thunder and lightning by that point and one of them was saying it would go on until at least Friday but this morning, it’s back to just rain and cloud and actually, although the sky is fairly white rather than blue today, it seems nice enough. Which is why I’m still sitting inside with all the doors and shutters open appreciating a cold breeze. I’m being lazy today. It’s been a long and busy couple of days and I’m on holiday.

Georgia day 3: flying to Georgia

I knew today I wanted to get my walk out of the way while I was still in Cyprus. My flight is 13:40, arriving in Tbilisi 17:30 and I knew by the time I reached Georgia and got in from the airport, I wouldn’t want to go out for half an hour in the cold, whereas I had plenty of time in the morning. So I set my alarm for 8am (highly aware that 8am in Cyprus is 10am in Tbilisi and this time tomorrow I wouldn’t be waking up, I’d be getting on a minibus two metro stops away from home) and went for breakfast. It went better than yesterday. I found the butter so I made two slices of toast and while I waited for the slow but brilliant conveyor toaster I collected up mugs of apple juice, mini croissants, things of jam and a big spoonful of chocolate spread on a plate. I am fed! I am ready to go out for a walk, get a bus and go to Georgia!

I walked. I went back to the prom and walked all the way up to Larnaca beach. It was sunny and I was in a t-shirt but there was a chilly breeze that made me suspect I wouldn’t have had much of a problem with bringing my jumper with me. I got back to the hotel in plenty of time to pack up and then went down the road to the bus stop. I’m irrationally proud of managing to get on the bus – the bus stop sign was only on the other side of the road and although the map said this was the bus stop, I wasn’t certain whether it would actually stop here. I saw it coming. I stepped out past the cars and held out my arm until I saw it indicate and then I boarded!

Airport was easy enough with one snag. I had to check in for my flight at the desk instead of at a machine and then I had to go through the weird passport control with the machines. Got another police receipt. Waited in the queue. Two border guards very slowly checking passports. Then a third arrived and began collecting the receipts and waving people through. I guess everything they need to scan for is on those receipts and someone can sit and process them later? But I wasn’t sure whether that was enough. I have a Cyprus entry stamp. Surely I need a matching exit stamp? Sometimes you can “hope for the best” and take your chances. I tend to believe that’s not the right approach when it comes to borders and passports. I went back and asked “don’t I need a stamp?” He seemed to think I wanted one rather than needed one but stamped without protest and that felt better. Through security and I was sitting at my gate by about 11:20, for a flight scheduled to take off at 13:40. Yes, I could definitely have dithered longer in Larnaca this morning.

I watched the incoming flight online and it arrived about 15m late. Oddly, ten or fifteen minutes later, it still hasn’t arrived at the gate. Boarding was supposed to begin 10 minutes ago and people keep going up to the staff and asking. No, it hasn’t started. No, the plane isn’t here. Boarding will start in about 5 minutes. It’s not looking like an overly full flight at the moment but it has more than its fair share of people who don’t seem to understand how airports work. There’s a woman who’s just sat next to me who can’t figure out how the handle on her case work and there’s a man who dumped his luggage about 45 minutes ago and is walking huge circles of the terminal staring at his phone and passing by every 15 or 20 minutes so I know he’s at least still here somewhere.

The flight was uneventful but very scenic. If you want a fairly short sightseeing flight, I can recommend Larnaca to Tbilisi – two hours of white snowy mountains, ridges and valleys that my inner geologist enjoys but doesn’t have enough training to properly understand.

I was nervous about getting through passport control – I’ve checked and double checked and then checked again just in case and I do not need a visa to enter Georgia but I still worry as I approach the desk. I was a bit suspicious about how quiet and empty the airport was. We were not a full flight but I’d been among the last to disembark and yes, there was a sizeable group around the transfer desk but not 3/4 of a plane-load sort of sizeable. A handful of people ahead of me at passport control and then one single person sitting at baggage reclaim. Of course, the world sprang to life out in arrivals. Everyone is either collecting or they want you in their taxi. “Taxi?” “Nope.” “In a few minutes?” “Nope.” “Ok, in maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.” “Nope”. I knew what I was doing. I’d read this in detail. Go to the orange Bank of Georgia kiosk and buy a blue transport ticket. Go to the orange machine that looks like an ATM and add a week’s subscription to it. Could have done with the addendums “the Bank of Georgia kiosk is to the right when exiting, by the door, and they only take cash” and “it’s add a subscription, not top up transport” but other than that it went smoothly. The bus was where I expected it to be and I boarded it by the back door and scanned my new ticket. The drivers want nothing to do with the money aspect of the bus. Good.

Last, I knew I needed to take this bus to Central Station and then take the metro 4 stops south to Avlabari or jump off at Liberty Square and take the metro 1 stop south to Avlabari if I spotted it. I had my map open and watched the little blue dot and the closer we got to the city centre, the more I began to think “I don’t see any way to get from here to Liberty Square without driving through Avlabari”. And it did. So, jump off at Avlabari, don’t get on the metro and walk 300m down the road to the hotel! Could not have been easier! Good bus!

The room is pleasant enough. There’s a building on my street – next to the hotel – that looks like a bomb hit it. It might be semi-demolished and then abandoned but it’s definitely got something of the look of having been hit by a bomb a couple of decades ago. The moment I saw it, I knew my room would overlook it and it does but you kind of have to peer over the high balcony wall and if you look to right or left, you see the lights of Tbilisi. I’m looking forward to seeing this city by daylight – from the highway on the bus, it looks like a city of lights spilling down a narrow valley in a mountain and maybe that’s what it is. Find out tomorrow. It’s a big room with a big shower tiled in interesting patterned/textured tiles and it has a full-size fridge but it also has a huge step up and then back down into the bathroom and I will fall over it and smash my head in during the next week. There’s another big step out to the balcony and the room itself is up a step from the door. I’m a little nervous that there are sofas and a TV right outside my door – I don’t want to listen to people socialising out there! – but on the other hand, I’ve seen nor heard no evidence that there’s anyone else in the building so far. Not that I’ve been here long. I left my luggage and went straight back to Avlabari to figure out the metro on my way to the big shopping centre and the big supermarket at Liberty Square. Familiar Soviet-style metro, complete with brown plastic-looking escalators, a babushka in a glass box at the bottom and an LCD countdown telling you when the next train is coming. Easy peasy. Irrationally glad my travel ticket working on the bus wasn’t just a fluke too.

I bought bread rolls and butter and juice and chocolate and plastic cheese slices for sandwiches and an actual block of cheese to eat with a baguette (had to stop off at the Carrefour City up the road; Goodwill is a pretty good supermarket but by 7.30pm, it was out of fresh bread) and then I came home and ate my body weight in bread and cheese, unpacked so I could be sure everything had made it after taking three days to get here and now… I think I’m going to not do much until bedtime.

Georgia day 2: in Cyprus

It’s been a mixed day. It started with some good apple juice and some good toast, made with a conveyor toaster – but no butter. Dry toast, apple juice, a bowl of cereal and then out to see Larnaca’s famous salt lake, which the guidebook said looks white. It doesn’t. It looks like an ordinary lake. It’s a great sight, with mountains in the distance and Larnaca on its edge and a mosque at the other edge and if you zoom in with your camera, the white speckles you assumed to be seagulls turned out to be actual pink flamingos. But it was hot. It’s January and based on the temperature of the open walls I found while attempting to depart the fourth floor via the stairs instead of the lift, I thought I’d want my hoodie. I did not. I definitely didn’t want my big boots but that’s all I brought with me. I’m expecting Georgia to be cold. I was expecting Cyprus to be warmer but I wasn’t expecting it to be hot. I spent a while admiring the lake but my plan to stroll some of the way round it wasn’t going to happen. Back to the hotel. Maybe spend the afternoon in the pool.

Actually, the hotel is quite cool and so is the balcony, mostly because it’s not facing into the sun. I was quite chilly, in fact. So I forgot how hot it is outside and decided to go back out into Larnaca. It was a lot more tolerable. I don’t know if that’s because I headed south and walked along the seafront, cooled by a sea breeze or if the temperature really did drop. I walked along the same prom I did last night, saw the sea sparkling in the sun, saw how shallow it is and how clear and wished I could put my feet in it and walked up until I found Larnaca town. I had a quick visit to the castle, which is mostly interesting in that you can go up on the ramparts and look out at the beach and the sea from up there. Then I went looking for a supermarket. Google Maps and Reddit between them seem to suggest there are only two decent supermarkets in all Larnaca. One is just around the corner from my hotel – but closed on Sundays. The other is Lidl, just out of the north of the town. I’m staying just out of the south of the town. The mini supermarket in the centre of Larnaca didn’t have bread. Fine. I still have Pringles and half a bar of orange Rittersport that I picked up at the airport. I can live off that (I can’t live off that). But there was a Burger King. I shouldn’t go in Burger King when I’m away adventuring but I was hungry. I ordered chips & Sprite and then was punished for going in Burger King by having to wait forever because the drink machine had broken. Orders were piling up, trays were piling up, burgers and chips were put on their trays and then taken away and put on the warming tray because the machine wouldn’t work. The audacity of one customer – when it finally began spitting out liquid, two staff began making the drinks to go with about ten orders, getting them out as quick as possible, and this moron looked at this drink that he’d been waiting at least 20 minutes for, at the staff trying to pour as many drinks as humanly possibly from a malfunctioning machine and went “… I don’t want ice in it”. I think I would have said quite firmly “Today you do”. I was out in a t-shirt because it’s warm but you can spot the tourists, they’re the only ones who think it’s warm. The locals are all in jumpers and most of them with coats or jackets over the top. It was cooler than first thing in the morning, or cooler than it was by the lake maybe, but if I had three layer on, I’d probably die. I have no idea how I”m going to get all my warm clothes to the airport in the morning if I can’t wear them.

Anyway, by the time I’d eaten my chips, there was a big black cloud forming over Larnaca. The sky was still blue over the Med and further down the prom but there was a coolish breeze and I began to feel like I’d better get home because it was going to end up as a race between me and the rain. I won, and I took a few minutes out of the race to make friends with a cat. There are hundreds of cats here and this one stared at me and meowed and then came over and rubbed itself on my legs and then nearly came home with me.

And that’s about all I’ve done today. I’ve planned breakfast, I’ve planned to do my walk in the morning and I’ve planned what bus I need to be at the airport on time. I’ve planned to go to either the Carrefour between the metro and my hotel in Tbilisi or the Spar across the river if I arrive after 8pm and I plan to eat my body weight in bread tomorrow.

Georgia day 1: flying to Cyprus

Here I am in Larnaca, most of the way to Georgia. I got up to Heathrow without any major problems – just when I got to short stay T4, I followed the Parking Meet & Greet lane only for the meet & greet barrier to be closed off, which meant I had to drive through the (ANPR-controlled) drop-off zone and go back round to go into the car park. Dropped off the car, strolled into T4 very happily, looked up at the departure board – and my flight wasn’t on there. It took a good moment for to realise that’s because I’m actually flying from T5 (I’m flying back into T4 at the end of this and I’d rather have the hassle of going between terminals when I’ve got plenty of time on the way than when I just want to get home afterwards). I found the trains – was expecting a Tube train or maybe a special Heathrow shuttle but in fact, I was having my first ride on the Elizabeth Line. That took me up to T1&2 (or is it 2&3?) and then I had to change onto the Heathrow Express (another first) to get to T5.

Security was no problem. Breakfast was. The only place that would do toast was Giraffe and that had a huge queue outside because it’s the first place you come to when you emerge from security. So I got a meal deal and sat at an empty gate for the best part of an hour. The board said my plane would be at the A Gates, which meant I didn’t have to jump on the transit across to one of the other buildings and when it finally came up, I was only sitting two gates away.

The flight was long but uneventful – long for someone who’s never done a flight longer than London to Moscow, anyway. There was a lady in my seat because assistance had plopped her there but actually, she was supposed to be in window seat on the other side. Then the man sitting in the aisle seat was asked if he’d swap so a girlfriend and boyfriend could sit together. He considered it, right up until he discovered he’d be swapping his aisle seat for a middle seat. Nope.

We flew over mountains. I thought I recognised Achensee and Pertisau and Flight Radar 24 says I was correct. I think Ljubljana was the place where the mountains unexpectedly stopped. Well, it happened somewhere, anyway. We also went over Skopje and Sarajevo and out into the Aegean near Thessaloniki. I guessed that one – I could see that the mountains had finally stopped and we were going over the sea. Google Maps obviously didnt work without signal but I could see a blurry part-loaded view of the Greek coast and the islands I could see below me seemed to match one off the coast east of Thessaloniki, with a second weird-shaped island seeming to confirm that. Flight Radar 24 confirmed it for definite. It very suddenly got dark over the Aegean. By the time we landed in Larnaca at just after 6.10pm, I was wishing I’d been able to find time earlier for my daily walk. Passport control was easy – UK passports were allowed in the machines, I scanned my own passport and received a kind of police receipt with my photo on it, which border control glanced at before stamping my passport and sending me on my way.

There’s a supermarket near my hotel but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get there before it closed so I got enough snacks for the evening at the airport and went looking for the bus. The signs said it was out the far side and there were buses there – the pre-booked shuttle bus, tour buses etc. No sign of an ordinary bus. Literally. No bus, no sign, no bus stop, no timetables, nothing. Undeterred, I looked up what bus I wanted to get and took a screenshot. Then I heard a bus! Up to my right, on a cliff! There was a glass walkway sticking out of the airport and crossing to the top of that cliff, which was apparently where the car park is. So back into the terminal, go upstairs, look for the walkway. Bus! I found the bus! I showed the driver my screenshot so he knew where I wanted to alight and I bought a ticket the old-fashioned way, with cash. 15 minutes later, I was jumping off into the Cypriot night and strolling 300m up the road to my hotel!

I didn’t particularly want to go out in the dark in a strange place on my own for my walk but I also didn’t want to break a streak that’s only three months off hitting four full years. So I strolled down the road towards the beach and discovered a well-lit promenade with just enough people walking on it to feel happy. Lots of fish restaurants, a full moon reflecting perfectly on the water, just cool enough that you want the hoodie but don’t feel the need to take it off, perfectly flat and I was back, 2km and 28 minutes later. Now I could actually look at my room, discover that I have a balcony and that the pool is closed and covered right outside. The photos make it look like it’s on the roof but it’s absolutely not. I have white towels for the shower and blue towels for the pool, which suggests it’s open. Whether it’s a suitable temperature to swim in, considering it’s January, I may find out tomorrow.

Malta day 4

Another thunderstorm tumbled at about 5am, the breakfast room (which is mostly a conservatory & is probably the pool room in the summer) leaked a bit and it was kind of raining, right up until I went outside.

I successfully found the bus stop for the fast bus to Valletta, we manoeuvred around a prang between a Mercedes and a bus and then the hop-on-hop-off bus man said the words “harbour cruise”. So I did. As I walked away with a handwritten paper ticket for a boat leaving in an hour and a half from a different peninsula, it occurred to me that maybe it was a fake ticket. Well, if it was, never mind. I’ve never been caught out before and once in 10+ years isn’t bad. I didn’t opt for the quick Sliema ferry. I had time to kill and a card full of bus journeys to use up. I took the bus to the headland at the bottom of St Julian and walked back to Sliema.

The boat was real and the ticket was real. And it was the pretty boat, not the functional one, the one in the style and paint job of a traditional Maltese luzzi. Boarding it as soon as it got in from its previous trip saved me sitting on the seafront in the boiling sun but if I was going to be first on a boat, I was going to take my choice of seat, not shelter under the deck, so I sat in the full glare of the boiling sun on a seat that bobbed gently up & down. I could see my left arm getting sunburnt so I hid it inside my t-shirt and draped my jacket over my head. Yes, I looked ludicrous. But I was avoiding the worst of the sun

It got cold once we were out on the water. Once we were moving, I decided to sit along the side of the boat in the shade instead of at the front and that worked quite well until we were sailing up the creeks between the Three Cities, when it got very cold indeed. I moved back to my seat at the front for the return journey, right in the sun.

Now what? I had two or three hours. That’s not time to do anything. I returned to Valletta and used the bus wifi to look up airport bus timetables. Ah ha! The X4 would take me to a place called Pretty Bay, 15 or 20 minutes beyond the airport. I could look at the view and catch the earlier bus back to the airport on its return loop.

Pretty Bay is pretty but it does have a big container porr at the south end. But the water is proper blue, there are rock pools and a stretch of yellow sand and if you want a quiet bit of beach,this probably isn’t a bad choice. Then I got the bus back to the airport where I sit right now, finishing up orange juice and eating the first meal-like thing since breakfast.

Malta day 3

Today, after breakfast (someone burnt the toast & then retrieved it from the toaster with her knife!) I wrote Thursday & Friday’s blog and then went out. It had rained a little bit in the morning but by the time I got to the bus stop, the sun was out. I hid down the road in the shade to figure which bus I should be getting – the info said only one was going to Valletta but I know that every bus that came to the other stop yesterday was going there. As it turns out, they are, but they’re marked for the far end of the loop they’re making before they all finish up back in Valletta. The one I got on went to San Gwann and the back streets of Sliema before ending up at the main bus station. It was hot, I had to lean against the cold window but it had free wifi – Malta’s very good at that.

Now I could understand how Valletta works – or at least, where it starts and finishes, which had been a mystery. Valletta is a walled city occupying the end of this peninsula. I entered through the City Gate, which is a combination of huge dry most, massive lumps of yellow limestone and a big stone doorway. Immediately on the other side is Parliament, more yellow limestone but this time very much of the future, and the new royal theatre, an open-air built in the bombed-out remains of the old one. It was hot. Really hot. I wandered a little way down the main street then spied a sign for the Sliema ferry. That meant a sea breeze so off I went. Valletta is very hilly. As I made my way down to the shore I found a 4×4 that was holding up traffic by not being able to get up a steep hill and another hill with grippy sttips cut into it.

At the bottom was the ferry – much more the size I’d imagined for the Gozo ferry, more like the Browner’s ferry. Sliema, on the other side, was very different to Valletta, all high-rise towers, no limestone at all. I got my return ferry ticket & sat at the front upstairs. The wind was cold as we sailed across, the sort of freezing cold I’d hoped for. And when we reached Sliema… it was like being in any town in Britain. M&S, Burger King, Zara, Matalan, an entire seafront of British high street shops. Great view of ancient Valletta, though. And right in the sun. I walked along the seafront and then decided it might be best to get the ferry back over to Valletta and hide in its narrow alleys.

So I did. I walked to the end of the peninsula looking over at St Elmo’s Fort and ate some lunch on the rocks. I walked round the fort via the narrow back streets of what is apparently the old red light district, round all the historical stuff, saw the Three Cities on the other side of the Grand Harbour, the Siege Bell and then walked back into the touristy streets where I got on the land train. It basically did the same route I’d just walked but it kept up a commentary and we went found a few places at the south end of the city that I hadn’t seen.

I finished off my tour of Valletta with St John’s Co-Cathedral – best on the inside but closed after 12:30, also I need to find out why “co”-cathedral – and the main square and armoury. That done, I bought some postcards and went to the bus station.

They don’t make it easy there. I eventually had to look up buses that would go to Qroqq 2 on the app and then go and look up the bay on the departure board and found my bus not in the main bus station but a separate set of bays at the bottom of the road. And then I discovered if you go a direct route, Qroqq is only 5-10 minutes on the bus, virtually in easy walking distance.

I thought I had plenty of good to last 24 hours but when I’d eaten pretty much everything within twenty minutes of getting home, I realised I needed to go shopping. I found a quicker way to Gala Center, this time via Gzira, more or less. This is why I’m confused about exactly where I am – all the town’s and villages I’ve ever heard of seem to overlap just here.

At 10:50 that night, there was a bright flash of light – not the notification light on my phone. Then what? Then a huge rumble of thunder, one of the biggest I’ve ever heard. Ah. Yes, it had been ridiculously hot ever since I’ve been here. A thunderstorm is always what follows excessively hot weather. It tumbled on and off all night and had a second go at a real thunderstorm about 4.30am. It’s now 9.17 on Sunday morning and although the thunder has finished, it’s still drizzly and grey – which suits me far better than the sun.

Malta 2019: days 1 & 2

Day One

I’ve never flown Ryanair before. It was fine, except that pretty much everyone on the plane had paid to upgrade to Priority to get a cabin-sized bag as well as their free small bag and there wasn’t room in the overhead lockers to put all the suitcases. The people opposite me were upset that their Priority bags didn’t get priority in the lockers and that they hadn’t been allowed to board early to get first use of the lockers. That’s not what Priority is on Ryanair and it definitely doesn’t work if there’s only one person on the entire plane (hello!) who hasn’t paid for it.

We took off over Poole Harbour & then went over Southampton and Portsmouth before flying across the Channel to France, at which case my geography dissolved and I settled down to my tablet. The lady at the end of my row was up & down, apparently not sure whether to take her designated seat in front of her husband, the empty seat next to him or the entire empty rows at the front. Well, when the cabin crew handed the lady directly in front of me a sick bag & turned on her fan, I thought I might make use of those empty rows.

The front of the plane was basically empty. I helped myself to an entire row and enjoyed the freedom of leaving my stuff on the seat next to me for the next two and a bit hours. I saw an unidentified Mediterranean island, I saw spectacular mist and waves and I watched the Malta-Gozo ferries chugging across the Channel before we reached the airport. Being right at the front, I was 7th into the building, 6th past passport control & then 1st out into arrivals.

I decided the best way to deal with the bus was to get a 12-journey card rather than pay cash (and therefore keep enough small coins) for every journey. It would have been nice to hang around at the airport for five minutes – sunset and palm trees! Not a combination I generally see in Norway or Iceland – but the X2 was already about to depart. True, for the first five minutes the LCD display inside said X3 & I had to adjust my plans before realising i was on the right bus after all.

I got off at the wrong place. I thought Qroqq 4 came straight after University so I jumped off at the hospital. Still, my phone said it was only a 16 minute walk to the residence & I reached Qroqq roundabout in under ten minutes.

I knew my room was in student accommodation but I’m so glad I’m not a student here. All the windows look out over internal shafts. My room is quite luxurious – you’d have to jump to reach the other side rather than step and light comes down the shaft. There’s a perpetual rumbling noise a bit like a giant fridge, the lights aren’t quite bright enough & the fire alarms keep going off. It’s absolutely fine for £43 but I think it would be pretty grim to live here for a year.

Day two

I got up early for breakfast (toast good, juice bad, cereal worse) and then went out. Quick stop at the tiny shop near Qroqq for food supplies, then to the bus stop. 9:05 in Malta in January is not meant to be so hot. There was nowhere to shelter from the sun while I waited for the bus and by the time it turned up, I was about ready to collapse from heatstroke. The bus didn’t help by having its heating going. By the time I reached the Gozo ferry, I knew I’d be seeking out the shadiest breeziest spot on the deck and staying there. Maybe I’d stay there and go backwards and forwards all day until I’d cooled down enough to function. In fact, standing right at the front un just a t-shirt was freezing and then I finished the job by deciding the best way to explore Gozo was on the top deck of an open-topped hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus.

We went all over the island. There was an audio guide but mostly it crackled and only one ear worked. Gozo was not built for buses. We took some very tight corners & some very narrow streets and you could have stepped off the narrow balconies onto the top deck. It was windy and the sun kept going behind clouds so most people sat with winter coats and hats on.

The only place I actually hopped off was at Dwejra. That’s where the Azure Window used to be, a 50m high Durdle Door, before it collapsed in a storm in winter 2017. However, the guidebook mentioned “distorted crater-like topography” and of course I liked the sound of that. It’s limestone but in places it looks like pumice and in places it’s as much shells as rocks. Very weird to scramble on.

But what I enjoyed in Dwejra was the helicopter. A big chunky one, the kind that does search and rescue. It swooped over the beach twice, looked like it was going to land, then winched down two people. Yes, I went to see what was going on. No, I wasn’t the only one. It swooped away again and then returned and winched up two people, together. They both looked like they were in helicopter uniform. There was no sign of any rescue needed. I conclude that it was training. It was very interesting but also very noisy.

I got back on the next bus. The audio guide actually worked on this one but it was ten minutes behind where we were so we didn’t know what to look at until it was far too late. In Victoria/Rabat there’s a street leading to the bus station that’s one way except buses. I’m not convinced that’s a system that works very well.

We returned to the harbour & rather than rush for the next ferry, I found a table & had late lunch so I could get calmly on the following ferry. It seems to go so quickly – well, it doesn’t move quickly and it was a bit tougher on the way back but the journey was over do soon. I enjoyed the ferry.

I expected the bus back to be chaotic, what with an entire ferry-load trying to get on but they all went for the non-express buses with Valletta on the front. Ok, the X1 doesn’t technically go to Valletta but it doesn’t exclusively go from Gozo to the airport. But it meant I could sit at the front, where I could see where we were going and where the windows aren’t filtered to make sunset appear half an hour earlier (this was a problem on the X2 yesterday – from my seat it was pitch black outside). The driver went a little too fast – if he has to hang onto the side of his cabin when we go round a corner, he’s going too fast – but it was fun and we got back to Qroqq 4 far too soon. I nearly missed it. By the time I realised we were getting close, it was already the next stop.

I stopped at Gala Centre for food on the way back – it’s inside a Seat dealer, there’s no obvious entrance to the supermarket although there are two exits and there’s no obvious way out of the building either. Still, I got 2 litres of Happy Day orange juice and some food and then I went back to my room.