As it was dark when we got to the hotel, we had no idea what things looked like at all!! However, on getting up bright and early for breakfast and going into the dining room, the views looking over to Sliema were simply stunning. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and the water was sparkling like millions of diamonds!!
Breakfast was great with just loads to choose from and eggs cooked to order. We couldn't wait to get out to explore. However, although we knew there were stairs to climb to get us from the hotel up to the roadside, we hadn't banked on there being 88 of them!! Yes, I kid you not - 88 steps to climb up and, of course, 88 to get back down again!! And, once up to the roadside, you had a hill to walk up to get to the bus station - or you could walk downhill towards where the ferry and water taxis were that take you over to Sliema. In any case, we walked our socks off!! Prior to travelling we knew that you could buy a weekly bus ticket for 12EU each, so we duly done that.
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| 88 steps up ...... |
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| ...... and 88 back down again!! |
On our wanders, we took the ferry over to Sliema and that's where we met the sales touts for trips etc. However, I must say that they were very polite and would take no for an answer. However, we decided to take one of them up on a 'special offer' - two hop-on-hop-off bus tours (north route and south route) (HOHO for short), a harbour cruise and a vintage bus tour for 23EU each person. On looking at the brochures and the prices of each tour separately, it did seem like a good deal, so we booked (Prices advertised were15EU per person for both HOHO tours, 15EU per person for the harbour tour and 15EU per person for the vintage bus tour). The chap put it all on an 'open ticket' so we weren't restricted to certain days, and we went on our way quite happy with our purchase. We purchased an ice cream cone at this point, but that was a bit of a rip-off at around 6EU each!!
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| Expensive, but nice |
We found that there are not too many restaurants open in Valletta for dinner at night, and we ended up at a place called Margo's where we had an excellent pizza and lasagne. The lasagne served for one as a main meal could have almost been shared between the four of us!!
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| Sorry, I had started eating my pizza before I thought about taking a photo!! You can see the lasagne in the background. |
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After a leisurely walk back to the hotel and down the 88 steps, we finished off with a cocktail in the hotel bar then adjourned to our rooms where we had a nightcap on the balcony with our duty free and soft drinks that we bought from a stall up near the bus station.
It's our wedding anniversary the next day and we had booked the Hypogeum for the afternoon, so that was something to really look forward to seeing.
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