At 11am (how early!) we landed in Malta and the adventure began! Me and Hallis pissed Meist right off by insisting on going to the loo before passport control so we were the last ones through, ha ha! But we eventually did get through, wheeling our little bags like champs. No waiting around at the baggage carosel for us, oh no! We hopped in a taxi and headed to St Julien's, where we would be staying at the Intercontinental, beaut! We arrived and checked in in the executive lounge, a splendid addition to our room rate! It was massive, with big sofas and a terrace overlooking the pool and the sea where you could soak up the sun. Best of all they wheeled out shed loads of free booze every night at 6pm...it was to be our downfall! But that comes later.
My pana of the view from the terrace - who knows why it's so small!
So we settled on the terrace and waited for our room to be ready...and waited...and waited....then we got bored and headed to the beach! It was beautiful! The hotel had a private beach club so we got some loungers and me and Shirls splashed around in the sea and even got Meist in for a bit, even though she was scared of sharks. There were tons of rowdy Italian women who kept trying to go topless (illegal in Malta!) and a greasy European in a very tight pair of Speedos. Plenty to keep us entertained! After our sunbathe/swim/perve we headed back to the hotel for afternoon tea, splendid! We had lovely silver trays of mini cakes and sandwiches out on the terrace, and lots of water as it was really too hot for actual tea. After tea our room was ready, huzzah! It was lush, good size with comfy beds (if not a bit unstable...more on that later!) and a balcony for hanging out on. And a throne! Most prosperous.
The pool looked lush and we decided that we would go for an afternoon dip! So we threw our stuff down, put our bikinis on, Meist shut the balcony door and we were ready to leave. Or were we. Suddenly I realised our room keys were in my skirt pocket, the skirt drying out on the balcony that i'd hung up when we got back from the beach. I went to open the balcony door and couldn't.....after waiting all day to get into our room we now couldn't leave! Nooo! To make matters worse we were defeated by a CHILD LOCK! Oh the humanity.
Luckily we could get some spare towel tokens (which were also locked out on the balcony) so we called maintenance and then skipped down to the pool, cursing thorough Maltese child safety measures. The pool was great! We had a good swim, took tons of stupid underwater pictures and watched our balcony to see if it could be fixed....eventually the pot boiled! Hooray! After our swim we got back into our room and retrieved our keys, phew, and got ready for the evening. We headed to the exec lounge for drinks and snacks and sat on the terrace watching the sunset, very quaint! We went for a wander round the hotel, explored the weird gardens, climbed into the hotel through a window (?!) and then out again, and took more ridiculous photos for the chronic. We went for dinner at Mozzarella's and got a massive pizza and pina coladas, sang along with a band that randomly started playing, decided we wanted to do karaoke, failed to find a karaoke bar, went back to the hotel and had a mega sleep!
Sunday started with breakfast upstairs in the lounge, they were inexplicably serving fizzy wine which I had a few glasses of for novelty value even though it made me feel a bit sick and I would rather have had juice. But I was on my holidays so thought it was the done thing! We stuffed our faces with applewood cheese (boots with the fur....) and bread and eggs and then headed to the pool for sunbathing and splashing about. I read more of my book, "We Need To Talk About Kevin" and became gradually more and more disturbed as the day went on and the horrible book progressed. We took some good movie themed pics in the pool, including Jaws...
Haha! CHOMP! After the pool we went to the beach, stopping for pizza on the way. Found the best place ever, HUGE slices for 1.80 euro! Beaut! We grabbed loungers at the beach and me and Shirls went for a swim to the buoys, waving at Meist every minute to check she was still watching! She is just like a mum. Then we sunbathed and read more of my horrid book. Unfortunately my ye olde favourite bikini top circa 2003 chose that afternoon to snap, luckily didn't flash innocent Maltese folk but had to tie it up real tight and then later on it started to REALLY hurt so Meist had to undo it. Wouldn't budge so she had to use her teeth! haha! She was so repulsed, but she is a very good sister! Thank god I still had the trusty horse bikini.
After the beach we headed back to the room to get dressed and wash all the salt out of our hair, then headed to the exec lounge for drinks! God bless the free booze. I concocted buckets of lethal Malta specials (Kaluha, Vodka and milk!) and we had plenty of champs. Hallis was on the Bud, classy. Now, here is where it all started to fall apart. Unfortunately we had not had tea and the pizza slice was a distant memory, so we got pretty pissed pretty quickly. Back to the room for a room disco! We found a Maltese radio station which was playing the r&b top 20 including Malta favourite 'Taking Back My Love' by Enrique! Tune! We got our fancy frocks on, jumped around, jumped on the bed and had a reet good time.
Eventually we decided to hit Paceville, and headed into the party district, conveniently about 100 meters from our hotel! On arrival in Paceville we instantly were seduced into a bar called Hugo's which was dishing out vouchers for free cocktails, why on earth not we thought.
Now, the plan was to go somewhere to eat first, but after the first free cocktail we thought we would just drink on through. ERROR. What felt like hundreds of free shooters later (do the Maltese pay for anything?) we ended up in a freaky Eurotrash bar where the drinks were ridiculously cheap and they played amazing music! We had a good dance to Jai Ho and went crazy for Boom Boom Powww! (gotta get that...gotta get that) and the DJ said we were lesbians. Odd and slanderous! Seems as though every bar in Malta has numerous poles, something which Hallis made good use of! Haha! We had more free shooters and then decided to head to a different bar, as our current one had got mighty sleazy. Also seemed to have picked up a couple of Maltese admirers who we couldn't get rid of, so resorted to literally running away from them. Smooth! We went to a bar where I made friends with some guys from Aberyswyth, but had to leave soon after as I spilt a whole pina colada on the floor (and in my shoes) and wasn't sure what to do, so we just ran away! (theme of the evening!) We tried to get into a student night foam party at a club but they wouldn't let us in, despite our protestations of, "BUT WE'RE ENGLISH STUDENTS!" (lies). Went to another bar where I had a go on the pole and did a very sexual pole dance to none other than Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega. Another shout out from the dj but I didn't really hear what they said...I can only assume it was massively complimentary though. Eventually we decided enough was enough and got some late night foods and headed back to the hotel. We wanted to make sure the 5* reception staff didn't kick us out for being drunken loutish Brits abroad so walked in trying to be as nonchalent as possible. Sure we weren't fooling anybody with our staggering and me trailing pina colada from my shoe! We got back to the room and me and Hallis celebrated by jumping on the bed some more which promptly broke....shiiiiit!
Woke up on Monday feeling ROUGH. Went for breakfast (no sparkly wine today) and then went for a walk up the beach to try and fix ourselves. Didn't really work, so we went to the pool instead which was the perfect cure! We sunbathed/napped for ages and soon we were all back to normal, hooray! We went for afternoon tea which was spectacular, the guy in the exec lounge was obviously bored because there were double the amount of cakes we had the first time! Beaut! We went to the room after and on looking at our decrepid bed (one leg had SNAPPED OFF and one was bent!) decided we better call maintenance. I called and said my sister had sat on it and it had buckled...they must have though Meist was a right heffer! With maintenance called and on the way to fix our sabotaged furniture we headed to the beach, today with a lilo to play with! Much fun had, I was most ungraceful getting onto the lilo but kept my boobs in my bikini so everyone was happy. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and got ready to go to Eastern Breeze for Asian fusion cuisine, we were so excited! But then it was closed....nooo! Hopes dashed. So we went to a restaurant by the beach instead and then to a hotel restaurant in the gardens for ice cream after :)
Tuesday was an epic day for us - catamaran trip to the Blue Lagoon! We got up super early and got picked up and taken to the harbour. The crew was HOT! Oh my! We were most excited by the on board talent and perved on them for a large part of the day.
We had the best day. The boat anchored at different spots along the coast and we jumped off the edge of the boat and went snorkelling, and then as we sailed we sunbathed on the deck and read our books and listened to tunes. It was a bit of a party boat! Loved it. We had a seafood buffet for lunch which when she heard about it almost made Meist gag (as if being on a boat wasn't bad enough!) but she in fact loved it. Lucky! The Blue Lagoon was beautiful and the water was crystal clear. I wanted to swim out to a beach but Meist and Shirls were worried it would take ages and the boat would leave without me, but I decided to risk it....it took three minutes. Ha ha! Unfortunately while snorkelling Apes lost her gold pants, but it was ok because apparently they were old.
Back on the boat Hallis got WELL agitated by a big fat Scottish lady with a rubbish Simba tattoo who was well loud and lairy! I think they would secretly be best friends given the chance though, they seemed to be very similar personality-wise (haha!) I decided she looked a lot like Duncan's Toy Chest guy from Home Alone 2...but the girls didn't see the likeness. I promised that if Mambo No.5 came on I would do some more pole dancing on the mast...it did....I didn't. What a liar I am!
We arrived back at the harbour at 6pm and the sexy crew guy held Nat's hand as she disembarked, the highlight of her holiday! She almost got stranded with her new BFF though as after me and Apes got off the boat started drifting and they couldn't get it to stay still! In the taxi back we sat near a weirdo old couple who discussed their evening plans too loudly, "Get some sushi, go out to town, have a bit of sex." Shirls said that given the choice between spending the evening with the woman on the boat or them, she would pick them because even though they'd be having a bit of sex at least she could just put her Ipod in! Hahaha!
That night we finally got to go to Eastern Breeze! Went to the exec lounge first for drinks and I made a Malta special...but they had no milk! Wasn't sure what to do with my glass of milk-less booze so I topped it up with hot milk instead. ERROR. Anyway, we headed to Eastern Breeze later on. It was very tasty so worth the wait, I had chicken satay (continuing my foray into the meaty world) and some really spicy prawns that made my lips swell up like sausages. Oh, good! Afterwards we went for a walk and got some lemon fanta before going back to the balcony for chats et al. Nat still felt super giddy from the boat, and April did too, apparently even more than Hallis!
Wednesday was our last day, sob! We had our last celebratory breakfast and checked out, but the lovely lady (who blatantly knew of our holiday antics and bed breaking) let us have access to the exec lounge for the rest of the day! Result! We put our bags in the luggage room and boarded a bus into Valletta, the capital of Malta. The bus was fun and yellow and took us past lots of cute parts of Malta that we'll definitely visit next year. They even have Topshop over there! Definitely could move to Malta! When we got to Valletta we went to find our target: St John's Co-Cathedral, one of the most ornate Baroque cathedrals I've ever seen.
It was gorgeous, and we learnt tons about the Maltese knights that built it, was really fascinating! Also had original art by Caravaggio who was one of the knights back in the day but got kicked out for being naughty, they had no problems with keeping all his paintings though obviously! After a good look round the cathedral and museum we got some drinks then bussed back to St Julien's. We went back to our favourite giant pizza place for lunch and then went to the pool for a final laze. I had finished the horrible Kevin book and the girls made me read 'My Sister's Keeper' which was almost as traumatic for different reasons! We had afternoon tea and then went back to the pool for the rest of the afternoon, going back upstairs in time for drinks and snacks before we had to get a taxi to the airport. I was enjoying the sun on the terrace with my glass of wine when I looked down to see Meist cleaning her armpits with a facial wipe on the floor - classy! Ha ha! We hopped a taxi to the airport and flew back to Luton at 9.30. I finished the book and wept openly on the flight like a loser! Windsor came and picked us up and we went back to Redhill, knackered but jolly from the best holiday ever!
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