Malta 2015 Holiday - Day 1

After months in the planning (most of a year in fact) the time for our holiday was upon us. Our flight to Malta was at 0710, which meant that we are waking up at 2am to get to the airport, that's because I know Ryanair check in for hold bags can easily take an hour, plus getting through security - as a result I aim to be at the airport nearly 3 hours before the flight. Oh yes, and I had to take a detour via Kincardine Bridge because demolition works were taking place around the Forth Road Bridge.

Interestingly on the drive to the airport, we saw two very large owls. The first one was flying above the motorway, the second we found on the slip road eating some road kill. I had just come off a roundabout, travelling down the slip road to rejoin a motorway when I saw it just sat there, I figured it would take off the moment it saw my headlights so I started braking, but it didn't take off. I had to come to a complete stop probably about 1 mm behind the owl before it moved on!

Upon arriving at the airport, I parked my car in the NCP car park, and caught the transfer straight to the airport.

Arriving in the terminal building I saw that Ryanair no longer had any check in desks at all. Instead there were self service baggage drop which is a good idea. Getting through security wasn't anything awkward, as per usual my carry on bag which contained my four sets of regulators, my harness and backplate, and my HID light with battery pack were pulled aside to be investigated, but it was painless.

Finally into the main terminal now, I made a bee line for the Weatherspoons where we all had a lovely big fry up and consumed vast amounts of coffee. A shocking observation was to see the sheer number of people drinking alcohol, it wasn't even 530 am! I wouldn't be surprised if it was groups of men on stag-dos, instead it was couples!

By 6am our flight was called, naturally Ryanair were using a gate at the far extreme end of the airport, and we were offered free check in of bags into the hold. It was a 3 hr 45 min flight to Malta, couple of patches of reasonable turbulence but otherwise uneventful.

I had pre-booked an airport transfer which took us straight to Techwise. Charlotte got to meet by best friend and dive buddy Rob for the first time in our (Charlotte and I) 4 year relationship. We then met Alan to discuss the plans for the next day - imperial eagle. We had planned to do a check dive, somewhere like the Faroud, but it wasn't viable because of the Sunday traffic.

I spent the next hour unloading my dive bags, building up a twinset and stage ready for the next day and putting all my accessories into the dive box.

We then walked home to the apartment, probably a bad idea being jet-lagged, exhausted and in the hottest day of the holiday whilst wearing all our "winter clothes".



On the final stretch of hill, we passed a garden with a spiders web between two bushes. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Other than the BBS - the Big Bastard of a Spider - that ruled it!

Man-eating spider (possibly)

Once in, we started to unpack and then went sun bathing on the balcony.

Chillaxing!

After lapping up some sun, the plan was to go shopping but everywhere was closed.Malta does have funny hours in general, which felt even more backward because in Scotland we don't have " Sunday Trading Hours" - it's just another normal day and makes things far more practical (listen up England! #welcometothe21stcentury).

For convenience, we went out to eat at Biancos. Charlotte and I had a Maltese platter for starter and then I had tagliatelle with prawns. Charlotte had seafood risotto. Whilst Charlotte and I have eaten here before on our previous trip, Charlotte wasn't impressed this time round.

Since waking up at 2 am with about 4 hours of sleep, I was exhausted and went to bed at 8 pm!