The travels of Tim and Megan: August 2010

Friday

On Friday night (27 August) we made our way out to Heathrow and met up with the rest of our travel crew to fly to Malta for the long weekend. We were most unimpressed with the poor selection of food on offer in Terminal 4 - the three restaurants there all had queues of people lining up out the door, despite there being loads of empty seats inside and numerous staff sitting on their thumbs. Typical customer service around these parts! We just avoided a Force 5 Tantrum from Tim, by finding a pretty average sandwich and coke combo at Boots - better than nothing.

Our flight to Malta was pretty painless - it actually left on time and arrived early!!! We got in to Malta about 12.45am local time and we were super impressed with their awesome airport. Our pre-booked airport transfer took the eight of us across the small island nation to the Riviera Resort and Spa hotel in Mellieha Bay, in the north-west corner of Malta. The shuttle ride took around 45 minutes. It was a balmy 26 degrees, not too bad for 1.00 in the morning! We were all pretty knackered and after checking in to the hotel, we were all out like a light.

Saturday

The Republic of Malta is a southern European country consisting of three islands (Malta, Gozo and Comino) situated in the Mediterranean Sea, 93 km south of Sicily and 288 km east of Tunisia. Malta covers just over 300 km² in land area, making it one of Europe's smallest and most densely populated countries. Its capital is Valletta. The population of Malta is approximately 410,000, most of whom live on the largest island of Malta, with only about 40,000 on the second island of Gozo and almost none on the tiny island of Comino. Maltese and English are the co-official languages.

Throughout history, Malta's location has given it great strategic importance, and a sequence of powers including the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Fatimids, Sicilians, Knights of St John, French and British have all ruled the islands. There are remnants from all of these peoples that remain in Malta today, making it a country of fantastic architecture, archaeological treasures, amazing food and wine, languages, passtimes and interests. Malta gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1964 and became a republic in 1974, whilst retaining membership in the Commonwealth. It is a member of the United Nations (since 1964) and a member of the European Union (since 2004).

The Riviera Resort and Spa in Mellieha Bay is a solid hotel in a good location on the island of Malta. It is close to Mellieha Bay, Malta's most popular sandy beach, and it is also situated right next to the ferry terminal to both Comino and Gozo (we say "ferry terminal" meaning a slab of concrete next to the sea, where a small boat pulls up and people leap on to it). The hotel has a restaurant and a bistro, a bar complete with cheesy live bands and old people dancing in the evenings, two outdoor swimming pools with a pool-side bar, an indoor swimming pool and spa complex, cafeteria, lobby shop, etc etc. It's a pretty good set-up.

We were greeted with amazing blue sky and sunshine when we woke on Saturday morning. The forecast high for the day was 34 degrees, but it felt like it got hotter than that. We met the others down in the breakfast hall and enjoyed an "interesting" buffet breakfast. The scrambled eggs were surprisingly white and tasteless and the delicious-looking chocolate fudge-type thing was neither delicious nor chocolatey. A very mean tricksy.

After breakfast, the girls visited the on-site spa complex and booked in for facials for Monday morning, which they were very excited about. The spa offered a "gentlemens facial" for just €25, but Jono and Tim declined... The aims of the trip were sun and relaxation - what had been a great summer had pretty much disappeared in London in mid-August, so this was a last chance to see the sun for about another 8 months. It was also a quasi-30th birthday celebration for all of us (we pretty much all turn 30 at some point this year). So the plan for Saturday was to catch some sun by the two outdoor pools at the hotel.

The heat from the sun was pretty intense and some of us got a little colour on our pastey white skin in no time. The pool was surprisingly warm considering it was outdoors, but it was still a brilliant way to cool off from the sun. A few of us decided that once it ticked over 12pm, we had earned a beer. The pool-side bar came in particularly handy.

At around 2pm, we headed down to the hotel bistro for lunch. We were on a half-board deal at the hotel (breakfast and dinner included), and the hotel had very kindly exchanged the dinner that we had missed on Friday night (due to arriving so late) for a lunch voucher for the bistro. So we cashed these in and paid the extra for a superb lunch - mainly of pizza, pasta and salads (and a sneaky few bottles of wine amongst the group). It was so relaxing taking a long lunch in the afternoon sun, with a view out to sea.

After lunch, we returned to the pool-side lazing in the sun that we had done in the morning. One or two drifted off to their hotel rooms for an afternoon nap, a few more hung out in the pool and a few sheltered from the sun in the hotel lobby, watching live premiership football...a super relaxing afternoon!

Megan had booked us in for dinner at a brilliant restaurant called Bouquet Garni in the town of Mellieha, so we all got ourselves washed and changed and caught a taxi to Mellieha. Bouquet Garni was superb. It is mainly a seafood restaurant (Malta has great seafood), but it also has great steak, pasta, and other delights. The manager was awesome - he really knew his stuff and his service was excellent. He brought us out a large tray with all of the seafood of the day on it for us to inspect and choose what we wanted. It was so fresh. All of the food was delicious and we managed to get through a fair bit of wine!

We got a taxi back to the hotel after dinner and the soft folk retired to bed, while a few of us hardy souls visited the hotel bar and enjoyed a late night drink in the outdoor courtyard. We were entertained by stories of humans taking horse tranquilizers and also by the disco boat that appeared to be being "doughnuts" down by the ferry terminal with its flashing lights and boom-boom sounds dominating the otherwise peaceful night.

Sunday

Unsurprisingly, things were slow to get going on Sunday morning. Half of us made the breakfast hall before the 10am cut-off, while the rest had a little sleep-in. We gathered the troops in time to catch the 11am ferry to the small island of Comino.

Sunday was also scorching hot, but was windy too, which meant that the sea was very choppy. Our ferry was rather small - it had a capacity of about 20 people, all of whom got soaked every time a wave crashed into the side of the boat. We were comforted by the fact that there was a sign pointing below the deck to where the life jackets were (apparently) stored... In the actually quite likely event of our boat tipping over, we surely could all have swum beneath the deck of the capsized boat and fitted our life jackets before coming up for air...nice. The 40-minute boat ride to Comino was not particularly enjoyable. Tim sat next to Neena, who was seriously considering her options of the best direction to vomit in...luckily she held it in.

Comino is about 2km long and 1.5km wide. No-one really lives on the island, although there is a small hotel there. The ferry docked at the hotel and we walked for 10 minutes to the other side of the island, where its main attraction, the Blue Lagoon, is situated. The Blue Lagoon is a sheltered bay with the most beautiful, clear, turquoise-blue water you have ever seen.

Unfortunately, there are only two or three small patches of sandy beach, which tend to get very crowded! We got there just in time to secure some beach chairs. It was scorching hot at the Blue Lagoon, so we sheltered under some beach umbrellas for a while before emerging to take a dip in the beautiful warm sea water. It was so warm that even Tim jumped straight in! It was so enjoyable, even with the large group of teenage boys having wrestling matches in the water and shouting out en masse to "Mario", who may or may not have been walking down the path alongside the bay. Kinda funny.

A couple of hours at Comino in the intense heat was enough and we all caught the ferry back to Malta. The trip back was interesting as the seas were even rougher than they had been earlier in the day. The boat was seriously close to tipping over a few times - there were massive swells. No life jackets though.

Back at the hotel, it was more of the same - lying by the pool, sipping beer, swimming in the pool and much hilarity. We treated ourselves to buffet dinner in the hotel restaurant that night. The food was OK - fairly predictable for a hotel buffet meal. The sunshine and beer/wine had clearly taken effect, as there were some awesome calls coming out at dinner, most of which cannot be repeated on the blog, which prides itself in upholding a savory tone. But let it be noted that whilst a lot of jibber jabber came out of Tim's mouth during the night, he could only manage the bronze medal, as Jono nailed the most outrageous call of the night and Kate followed closely in second. Had to be there.

After dinner, we ventured into the Charley Noble's bar at the hotel, where a few older couples were dancing up a storm. Unfortunately one of the gentlemen had sweat pouring off him and he stunk of BO, which was seeping throughout the bar to the extent that we had to get our drinks and retire outside to the courtyard. There was no disco boat tonight, but it was another balmy, still night and we had a lot of fun.

Monday

On Monday, the girls took turns getting their facials in the hotel spa, while the rest of us lay by the pool, enjoying another cracking sunny day of 35 degrees. At midday, with facials done, the group split in two, with Kate, Jono, Alex and Kristen heading for the capital city of Valletta for some culture and Natalie, Neena, Megan and Tim opting to laze on the golden sand beach of Mellieha Bay and by the pool at the hotel instead.

Mellieha Bay is about 300m long and the water is not only warm and clean and clear, but it is very shallow for about 50m out to sea. The four of us hired some beach chairs and umbrellas and relaxed on the beach for a while, trying to ignore the mad old woman having a yelling match with the beach officials who had informed her that it was against the law for her to have her dog on a sandy beach. She did not like this news and protested long and hard with anyone in the vicinity. Eventually mad woman, unfortunate husband and confused dog departed and all was peaceful again.

There was an enormous floating adventure playfround in the sea about 100-120m offshore, with fun looking floaty play things. Tim and Neena decided to check it out, thinking "that doesn't look too far away, we can swim there". What we hadn't taken into account was that we had started from about 100m to the left of the playground, which made our swim a lot longer. Once we got to the point where the water suddenly got really deep and we could no longer touch the bottom, we were still a decent distance from the playground. Being no Michael Phelps, it was actually a lot harder than expected to swim all the way to the playground (note that Tim is renowned for being a land mammal). By the time we made it there, we (read Tim) were pretty knackered and were delighted to be able to sling ourselves over the massive floating bhouys that formed a perimeter around the playground, where we could catch our breath and have a rest. The swim was made harder by the slightly choppy water that kept smacking us in the face. Salt water is not delicious.

Sadly the guy running the playground had two lots of bad news for us - firstly he informed us that we could not play in his playground, as you need to buy a ticket on shore and then get a boat ride out to the playground to use the equipment (of course!) and secondly, he informed us that we were not allowed to hang on to his bhouys. This was bad news, as Tim felt like he was going to die after swimming the furthest he had ever swum before, purely to play on the magical floating playground. It was bullshit. Stupid playground. So we defied his orders to get off his bhouys, rested for a few minutes and then used our combined smartness to Pythagorise that swimming directly from playground to shore in a straight line was more sensible than swimming diagonally back to our spot on the beach. Obviously we made it in one piece, but were pretty upset about not being able to play on the giant floaty things. To appease our disappointment, we got ice creams.

When done at the beach, we caught the iconic yellow Maltese bus back to the hotel and played silly buggers in the pool before rounding up our gear and catching a cab to the airport. FYI - the airport in Malta is amazing and embarrasses Heathrow's Terminal 4. Aside from the vast selection of food and shops, there is a fantastic Playmobil shop (I'm sure most of you will remember Playmobil from your youth), with massive Playmobil figurines outside the shop (see photo below).

The flight back to London was OK, aside from the ever-present Mr Elbows sitting next to Tim. Our flight took us directly over Monaco and then Paris before crossing the English Channel and landing at London Gatwick. We got an amazing view over Paris and we even picked out the Eiffel Tower, all lit up next to the river! We also got great views of two islands in the English Channel - presumably Jersey and Guernsey - as we flew into Eng-a-land.

Country tally:
Megan: 41
Tim and Bear: 38