Next Stop: Malta

We pack the night before and there’s not much to say in our travel

day except that we were incredibly early to the airport, and yet not.  We planned it American style, get there two hours early because you never know with security….but we breeze through getting on the bus at the placa, getting the boarding passes from Vueling, getting through security, and then sit in front of duty free which makes O’Hare’s duty free look pathetic to wait for them to

set our boarding gate.  We had bought a checked bag with this flight and put all the heavy stuff and all the dirty clothes in that bag.  They didn’t balk at our carry ons and when we got to the boarding gate, they asked if anyone wanted to gate check their bags for free….so, score one for us.  Boarding was fast even with seat numbers assigned which means they have some zone system that works better than American flight systems.  We have to pay for

  any drinks and food, but we’re flying a family of 3 from Spain to Malta direct for $128 and that’s $28 to check the bag.  After paying what we pay in the US for flights, we were fine with paying 2 euros for a coke if we wanted it.  Got to deplane from the stairs again in Malta and man that’s fun.  It goes so quick when they open two doors at each end and no bus this time, we walked straight into the terminal and no customs because we’re still in the EU.  We got to walk in the line that said “Schengen Zone passengers” and at least knew what it

meant after all of our research for this trip.  All of our traveling, we never knew that we couldn’t spend more than 90 days in 33 EU countries in a 6 month period.  So, our idea of 6 months in the EU didn’t pan out.  It made us add things like Turkey, Egypt, and more of the UK because they’re all outside the Schengen Zone.  This was all news to us, but now we know.  So, we just missed the bus that would have gone to the place we’re staying after we spend time figuring out what bus pass we want from the transportation desk and then decide on a taxi.  All the taxis are run from a central place

 and you pay there with fees listed on the board, and our taxi driver went above and beyond.  We couldn’t find our “resort”.  He stopped in the little village that we were going to be in and asked several people around the bus stop that we knew we were supposed to get off at and no one knew what he was talking about.  The police at the corner didn’t know what he was talking about….that’s not good.  We have GPS coordinates, but no connection and the driver doesn’t want to use that, so we get the address and go looking for the numbers on the street that go up and down and side to side and don’t seem to have any logical sequence, but finally find our place.  There’s a keypad and we let ourselves in to find that all the things I thought I knew about it are wrong.  There’s no washer and dryer that I thought was here, there’s no second room that is set off like I thought.  We have a studio with a tiny couch, one bed, a kitchenette, a bathroom and a balcony.  Now, the balcony does overlook the coolest harbor and makes up for almost everything else that is wrong with the “resort”.  Flexibility is our family’s middle name this trip.