My Travel Adventures

On my last half-day in Malta, I woke up early and made a solo trip to Valletta. Brent and Joel, who had arrived in Malta a day earlier than I did, had visited and recommended the archaeological museum in town, so they did not join me for the first few hours. I took the number one bus from Senglea to main gate of Valletta, joining the ranks of the immigrant community who make this whole island run on their morning commute. After finishing my breakfast, I walked to the eastern end of the island to take in the views and to kill some time before the museum’s opening hours. Unexpectedly, it opened a little before nine o’clock, and I slipped in as the first visitor of the day.

We began our second full day in Malta with a ride to the airport, where we picked up our rental car. In my mind, I had budgeted at least half an hour for the journeys between each of our stops, but this was a wild overestimate of Malta’s size. We made it to the eastern end of the island in fifteen minutes. As we strayed farther and farther from civilisation, the roads became narrower, and around farms they began to be flanked by stone walls. Quite a few times, I had to slow down and slowly tango with a car coming in the opposite direction, which on one occasion resulted in my rearview mirror being folded back by that of the other car. On another occasion, I almost collided with a local turning into a road that could only fit one car at a time. The narrow roads were much better suited to horse carts, which we saw a few times in the more rural areas.

I flew into Malta from Zurich Airport on Friday evening. I had originally intended to go with my dad, but he had to pull out a few weeks before the trip, so I reached out to at least a dozen of my friends asking them if they would be willing to drop everything and join me. As luck would have it, my friends Brent and Joel had just made it to Greece on their yearlong trip around the world, and being American, they thought nothing of the distance. They arrived in Malta a day before I did and had properly settled into our apartment by the time I got there.