We chose to go back to Qawra as it's a place we're familiar with, central for where we wanted to visit (St Julian's, Valletta and Gozo) plus much easier to hop on a bus as the one's going through St Julian's and Sliema are often full when continuing on to Valletta.
We arrived on Friday afternoon and were very pleased to see the changes along the seafront at Qawra and Bugibba since our last visit. The lido by the Aquarium is quite fabulous. I managed to grab a couple of photos on my mobile when we wandered down there at around 5pm.
It rained heavily on Sunday after we arrived in Mdina so although we managed to grab one of those famous cakes at Fontanella Gardens we did head off back there again the following Wednesday in glorious sunshine but as it was full, we went next door to Palazzo de Piro instead which has the same, if not better views and the prices are similar to the Fontanella. (Nicer toilet facilities too!)
Monday, we went on an organised excursion to Gozo (€12 EUR pp) which included mini-bus transfer from our hotel to the ferry and collected, driven around with timed stops at various places on Gozo and return mini-bus back to our hotel. We paid separately for the ferry (4.65 EUR pp) for the round trip.
My hubby and several other gentlemen had an altercation with a rather large Maltese tour guide on our return ferry crossing as we were trying to get through the turnstile.... Bear in mind we were all part of an organised tour, she decided that she and her 40 passengers were far more important than the rest of us who had all queued some 20 minutes to get into the terminal building and tried to jump the queue. Unfortunately, not the right thing to do in front of a pile of British folks who had waited patiently. She was pushing, shoving and swearing at 3 men - she didn't take on any of the women but obviously thought the men wouldn't turn on her.
Hmmm, welll we all know what thought did
The Maltese guy in charge of the turnstile pulled my hubby and the other men to one side and popped them and their partners through and forced big "Malta Lady" to wait!On Thursday we did the 2 harbours / 10 creeks Latini boat cruise around Valletta harbours in the afternoon and then headed off to Valletta to explore and to experience it in darkness. We took the bus from Sliema ferries and arrived at around 5.00pm. As we walked along the first part of Republic Street by the Theatre I spied a yellow handbag on the steps opposite the Tommy Hilfiger shop and we sort of stopped, kept an eye on it whilst looking to see if anyone was frantically looking around.... but it wasn't to be. Hmmmm, what to do was the initial thought?
Suddenly our mind was made up for us.... a man walked by just in front of us, saw the bag and stooped to grab it as he passed it and turned up St John Street. Immediately, I shouted at him and my hubby went after him (the guy wasn't running - just walking quickly) and said to him "that bag doesn't belong to you". Luckily, the guy saw all 4 of us standing looking at him and apologised and handed the bag over to my hubby. Hopefully, he thought the bag belonged to me and thought better of it seeing that 4 of us were looking at him and in a position to make lots of noise.
So now what? Finding the nearest police station was a small problem but we located it on Archbishop Street which was exactly where we wanted to be as we were on our way to The Pub to visit the place where Oliver Read passed away whilst filming Gladiator. Thirty minutes later, we had finally handed the bag over, given my details and the police had managed to locate from the contents of the bag that the lady was British and was staying at the Corinthia Palace.
About an hour or so later, I received a phone call to my mobile from an unknown number from the lady whose bag it was! A very happy ending for us all. She was ever so pleased to get her bag back all intact as we had visions of her going crazy thinking she had lost everything. The best thing was knowing there was an end result!
We didn't look in the bag before we handed it over but when the policeman was looking through the purse my hubby saw several 50 EUR notes as well as a number of large English pound notes so we gathered that perhaps she hadn't long arrived in Malta. Luckily, there was something in her bag which indicated where she was staying and so the bag got back to its' owner very quickly.
So the only things we missed out on were a visit to Marsaxlokk as we chose to go back to repeat our visit to Mdina and my hubby wanted to go to Golden Bay but we were thwarted on our last day by the bus service only being one every hour and we didn't want to be pushing our luck to get back in time for our taxi transfer to the airport. Looks like those will be saved for another time....
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Admin, I couldn't find the hotel we stayed at listed in the section so I'm posting it here.
Feel free to copy and paste it if you add the Il Palazzin Hotel to the Qawra section:
We stayed one week at the beginning of October 2014 with friends. We had a twin room on the 3rd floor (Room 316) which was fine.
Our friends had to change rooms as they found Room 511 was too noisy due to the A/C units on the roof above the room. They moved to Room 502 which had views over the Salina Wharf Hotel to the salt farms of Salina Bay and got views of the sunrise and sunset. The mini-fridge was noisy though...
Free safety deposit box, mini-fridge is supplied in the room and you can request tea/coffee making facilities free of charge at Reception or in advance (also pool towels can be requested). A bottle of water and a bottle of red wine was waiting in our rooms on arrival. Tip: the bottle requires a corkscrew but the bar man opened it for us and provided us with 2 glasses to drink it from too!
If you book direct with the hotel each person receives a free Two Harbour and 10 Creek cruise around Valletta harbours (approx €10 per person) from Sliema.
Interaction with the staff was a little mixed from friendly and helpful to the opposite end of the scale by telling untruths about staff going off-shift when they were still there 2hrs later when requesting keys for the safety deposit box. All a bit weird...
Breakfast: fruit juice, cereals, tinned fruit (with a daily offering of one of the following: fresh melon, banana or pineapple), yoghurt (plain/flavoured), cold meats, salads, mixed breads, croissants, cakes, toast machine. Hot food: eggs (scrambled or hard boiled on alternate days), mini-sausages, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, tea, coffee and cold water.
No bacon is offered at this hotel and only the type of eggs change so if a cooked breakfast is a "must" for your holiday - you may want to give this one a miss. A boring choice of food for my week which consisted of: fruit juice, muesli, fruit & yoghurt plus a bread roll with jam and a cup of coffee. (The breakfast is the only thing which would possibly put me off returning to this hotel).
The Il Palazzin is in an excellent location to walk to the bus station in Bugibba or down to the seafront at Qawra (it's a couple of streets back from the seafront of the Qawra Palace Hotel) and the Aquarium/Cafe del Mar.
