Malta Dive Holiday–Day 1

Introduction

So I’ve decided I need a diving holiday. Ever since my last true holiday in 2007 to Florida, I’ve not been away since because of university and life generally getting in the way of things. Even with buying a house and all the new responsibilities, I’ve managed to scrimp and scrape to get together a holiday to Malta. I have a very specific window of time when I am able to take this holiday, October 25th 2013 for a week. I’m flying out with Ryanair from Edinburgh airport. Booking 20kg of extra luggage, picking front-row seats for the legroom, insurance and all the taxes and charges, the flights came to £270. http://www.ryanair.com/en .
I went on LastMinute (http://www.lastminute.com/) to book a hotel. I’m staying at the Alfonso hotel in St Julian's. Despite booking the hotel in June, so not exactly last minute, I still got a weeks accommodation with breakfast for about £105. Granted, I’ve scrimped on the bed and it’s only a single. But saving £30 means more diving money! The hotel is also about 200 yards from the dive centre that I will be using: TechWise (http://www.techwise.com.mt/)

Day 1 – October 25th 2013

09:00 – Alarm goes off. I’m not a morning person, but thankfully the 10 hours sleep make up for it. The morning flew by in a haze of getting dressed, taking rubbish out, last minute house cleaning, packing the car and what have you. Before you know it, its 11:30 and I’m leaving for the airport. The weather is awful today and its pouring down with rain, but its not dampening my spirits because it is currently 24 degrees in Malta!
I’d got a week of parking in the long stay car park for about £55, certainly no more expensive than a taxi, but I also managed to get a fast pass through security for just £3.
First challenge, “checking in”. The boarding card says “FR6695”, OK, not a Ryanair prefix … it could be a shared flight, FR, that sounds France-ish to me, Air France just happens to have its own desk, so lets go there! So I go to the automated check-in, swipe my passport, “Good Morning Mr Alberto, can you confirm that you are flying to Amsterdam?”, Hmm no! The very tiny Air France helper eventually pointed me to the Ryanair stands at the FAR end of the check-in hall! So toddled over and got queuing.
I had weighed my checked bag about 200 times so I was confident it was below 20kg, only just. But then, how accurate are £3 scales from Morrison's? Well the scales said 18kg, and the proper electronic Ryanair ones said 19.1kg! Boshty, bag went in no bother. Next security.
The fast pass meant I got to use a queue with dedicated x-ray machine just for us. By the time I reached the machine the queue had gone, that's how few use it! I’m travelling with my canister light, that I think looks quite “explosive shaped”, so I had planned ahead and got some stickers made up to try and make it look less threatening. Put my stuff on trays and let it go on its way to EM heaven/hell! Funny, for most people, the bags just whizz, through, for mine, it was back and forth and lots of head shaking. Which I expected, so wasn’t shocked. In the end they went through all of my bags and rescanned things, wiped them and checked for explosives etc. The woman was friendly and it didn’t take too long, but this was why I booked the fast track, to have spent 30 minutes queuing plus 20 minutes of analysis… plus I’d spent at least 30 mins checking in my bags, so that's why I was worried about my nearly 3 hour early arrival getting chewed up!
Once through security I just found a spot and sat. I swear someone had a black hole in their handbag because time was going incredibly slow. I would send a couple of texts, that would surely burn up a few minutes, look up at the departures information board and it would STILL be on the same minute!
Well when they finally announced the gate, off I trotted, sprinted (with excitement!) more like, and of course, the gate was at the farthest possible end of the airport. So far I’d never even been this way and I’ve been through Edinburgh a lot over the last 5 years. I had reserved a seat so I was feeling posh in the Priority Queue! So we queued for about 15 minutes, then we went through the gate to then queue in the tunnel outside in front of the plane for about another 20 minutes! Now the tunnel is acrylic and the sun also decided to come out at that point so it was cooking in there, just inches from the plane.

Plane is in sight!

EVENTUALLY they let us on the plane, i had booked a seat on the very front row for the legroom, so I went up the steps and turned right straight away and plonked myself in. The seat looks a lot smaller than it felt. I still felt the sides of the seat pressing against me, but I was half expecting to have to force myself in, so that was a pleasant surprise. An unpleasant surprise was the price of food though! £1.35 for a Snickers!! I then got a Panini and a bottle of water for £8.30 (!!!) as I was dressed for Malta, I was actually cold with the air con!
After a very good 3 hours and 40 minutes of tender loving care from two of Ryanair's fine female staff we arrived. I’d been on a Ryanair flight before, to Dublin, but the flight arrived about 30 minutes late so I never heard this fanfare thing that they do, so whenever I heard people talk about it, I thought they were pulling my leg. But no, 30 seconds after touchdown, that stupid trumpet came on! Had to chuckle though!
I had arranged with Malta Transfer to have a return shuttle journey between the airport and my hotel. I arrived at the Al Fonso at about 8pm local time. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the hotel had Wi-Fi so whilst unpacking I gave the missus a surprise Skype call. It made me chuckle because I logged in and went straight to a video call, she accepted the call but didn’t put on her webcam because she thought my account had been hacked!
So I got my bags organised for diving and unpacked.
I went out for a walk around the local area to try and get my bearings and I found the marina, the first impression of the marina was that it was where the very wealthy moored their yachts!
This was one of the first :

A small yacht ...

And they just kept getting bigger and better!!!

A massive yacht!

Feet were starting to get very sore by this point, I was wearing my flip-flops and had blistered, even from walking through the airports! Not a good sign to start with. I stopped by a little shop of the way back and got some nibbles to eat for tea. Annnndddd bed time!