Our travel on Friday and Saturday was relatively uneventful. My brother Grant arrived at 10:00 to drive us to Newark airport, about a 3 hour drive. Neither Christine or I slept well Thursday night and we were up at 4:00 a.m. puttering around. We arrived at Newark very early and so had plenty of time to hang around the airport waiting to check in to our flight. Interestingly, I saw Dr. Doug Kerr at Newark airport. I had spoken with him on Thursday at a meeting and learned that he was off for his 11th medical mission to Kenya and he was booked on the same flight to Heathrow. During our bag drop wait on line, we talked with Dough for about 30 minutes about his orthopedic work at 2 hospitals in Kenya. He is really passionate about this work and this now is the only orthopedic surgical practice that he does now that he retired from active practice in Binghamton.
The flight to London was fine. We each watched programming on the inflight system. I can never sleep on a plane as just when I do fall asleep my head snaps down or sideways and I wake myself up. Christine is a better sleeper sitting up since she has so much experience sleeping in front of the TV at home. We arrived at Heathrow at about 6:00 a.m., so that would be 1:00 a.m. our time, so by then we had been awake about 19 hours. Our wait for the next flight was about 4 hours. We had coffee and I fiddled with our mobile wi-fi. I had purchased a European SIM card and was figuring out its installation and whether it was working. We did seem to have secure wi-fi as a result and hopefully that will work well in our other locations when we’re not at our Sliema flat.
We left Heathrow for Malta at 10:50 and had a nice flight. For some reason we were re-seated to the emergency exit aisle and enjoyed the extra leg room. We had great views of the French Riviera and the Alps, really beautiful sights from the air. We saw lots of Italy and then the captain said we were flying over Sicily and would be landing in Malta in 20 minutes. That really perked us up. We flew right over Gozo and Comino, the 2 smaller Maltese islands. We pointed at some of the locations we knew. Then over Malta we were thrilled to be flying low in our landing path over areas we were really familiar with. It was great fun to feel like we were coming home.
Other than the immigration queue, everything went fine with retrieving our luggage. And then when we were supposed to have a driver standing in the arrivals hall with our name on a card, we didn’t find one. We wandered up and down the arrivals area looking for him, but to no avail. We were directed to the tourist information office where the receptionist was nice enough to call our flat manager, but he didn’t answer his phone. We decided to take a taxi to the flat and so we loaded all our stuff into the taxi and we were off. We talked with the driver about all the construction going on everywhere. Malta is improving its roadways. I’ve been reading about that in the Malta Times, which I read every morning.
In short order we were pulling up in front of the hotel across the street from our flat. We rang the intercom to our flat, and thankfully, Ed, the flat manager answered and let us in. And certainly entering the flat was like coming home. We stayed in this flat for 3 months in 2016.
Ed was very nice. The flat had had some good improvements. It’s a very comfortable little flat. The new mattress will make a world of different and the AC is working! Best yet, the sliding door to the balcony and the main room window have been replaced so we won’t have to contend with rattling doors and windows when the wind picks up. It also buffers the street noise when the doors and window are closed.
After unpacking, by now we had been awake for 30 hours, and I thought we might take a nap, but Christine suggested we go for a dip in the sea. I was a little reluctant, but I’m so glad she wanted to because I thoroughly loved being in the Mediterranean again.
After our dip, we cleaned up and decided to treat ourselves to dinner across the street at Peppi’s, a favorite spot. We sat outside and enjoyed a mussel salad and a margherita pizza, yum!
We were back in the flat by 9:30 p.m., so now we’ve been awake for a very long time. We did go to bed then, but didn’t sleep long. At about 2:30 a.m. Christine was up trying to get herself set up with her computer. I got up to help her. I had neglected to remember that Malta does not use the European power socket type. We were limited in accessing power for all our devices as we only found one adapter. But we got things set up okay for now. Christine then fiddled with receipts and recording our expenses to date. She’s a stickler about all that. By 5:30 a.m. we were ready to try and sleep, which we did until mid-morning Sunday. And now we’re ready to start our day.
Great! Enjoy. Its great to follow your trip. I got to NY uneventfully & am staying with my sister Charlene. Eran & his family arvd today & we’ll meet them & go to Coney Is.
Regards, Carol
Yay! Sounds like the perfect settling in. Welcome “home.” So excited to follow along on yet another adventure!
Hi Linda and Christene thanks for the update on the start of your adventure i am so excited for you and look forward to further updates as you progress with your holiday.
I have been invited by Gloria and Alex to join them on a list to malta Rome and the Greek islands were Alex will be hiring a sailing boat to cruise the islands . we are going in mid May next year as this is the only time Alex can take off. I will tell you more about it later in the meantime keep safe and enjoy your holiday
Hi Louis, great to hear from you and your plans to travel with Gloria and Alex. Sounds like a wonderful idea. Last night we had dinner with Carol and Joe Farrugia and John and Rosalind Tabone. Rosalind is Joe’s sister and John and Alex are cousins. Joe remembers when you came to Malta with your Mum and Dad.you might recall that Carol is a second cousin of ours because our grandmother Rosina was the sister of her grandma, I think Caroline. Isn’t it amazing how many overlapping connections we have. Please give our love to Margaret and Gloria and Alex.