Today is our final day in Malta and as was forecast, it is a miserable, cool rainy day. We met Carol Farrugia for coffee this morning, which was nice of her to suggest. There is a place just down the street, Cara’s, where we have met Carol in the past. Because it was raining, the cafe was full with people skipping in out of the rain. Carol entertained us for quite a while, retelling family stories, and giving lessons on the family tree. When it was time to bid her farewell, it was pouring rain and so we stayed longer until we all could walk home without getting totally drenched. Eventually, the hard rain subsided a bit. For us, we had to take a detour because a street we had to cross was like a raging stream, with the water rushing down the hill. It was rather like the day we left Malta in September with the flooding down College Street. We walked uphill a couple of blocks to be able to cross the street without having to jump over the stream. Eventually, we made our way back to the flat with only one of my shoes and both lower legs of my pants soaked. I don’t know how Christine managed to stay dry.
We ate our final last yummy sandwiches of Maltese bread, tomatoes, turkey and cheese in the flat. The rest of the afternoon was spent lounging around, with Christine catching up on emails and personal things until she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She went off to lie down for a nap. I’m in the middle of a murder mystery and read for much of the afternoon.
We’re being picked up by taxi at 5:30 in the morning. Our flight to London departs at 7:55 a.m.. We have a 5-hour layover in London, and then its on to Newark. We get in at 7:55 p.m. Interesting that the departure and arrival times are the same. Because we will have been traveling about 18 hours, I didn’t want to drive home to Binghamton in the dark Thursday night, so we’re staying at a Hampton Inn. Then Friday we’ll make the drive home.
While we are both ready to be home, neither of us really wants to leave Malta. We do really love it here. Christine is having some re-entry anxiety because she has a new customer and things for the deployment of the software are very different. She’s been out of the loop on this and is feeling unsettled about it all. We also will be driving back to NYC the following Wednesday for a checkup with Dr. Gobin. Christine will have an MRA and then see Dr. Gobin in followup of her rupture and coiling. The MRA will also give us information about the still existing aneurysm and whether it remains stable, i.e., not getting bigger. Fingers and toes crossed! So we will plunge right back into life when we get home.
The rest of the day was spent getting ourselves and our stuff organized and trying to manage our flight bookings and getting checked in. For some reason, I was not able to select seats during the British Airways check in and we were assigned the worst seats on the plane, very last row, center section, right next to the bathroom, ugh! Hopefully, we’ll somehow talk a ticket agent into reassigning us. But as Christine says, at least our seats are together.
We had our farewell dinner at Peppi’s. Although we weren’t able to sit out on their balcony, we still enjoyed sitting next to the window and looking out at the bay. I drank my final Cisk and Christine had Sangria, a light variety that had passion fruit and cucumber peel in it. We shared a funghi (mushroom) pizza and it was all good. It is now 8:30 p.m. and we’re doing our last bit of packing.
This has been a fabulous trip. It’s hard to leave Malta, but we both are ready to be home. We’ll be home by early afternoon on Friday. What a fantastic time we’ve had!
Can’t wait to see you!!