Well I
FINALLY managed to pack my bags and head to the airport for my next adventure.
I may have had to turn around and go back home to get the pre-paid card I’d
loaded my Euros onto…luckily I wasn’t too far from home when I realised! The
little fella got me to the airport with plenty of time to spare so we were able
to grab a bite to eat before I headed through customs. I met up with the rest
of the group at the terminal.
There are 13 of us, including Hannah who is the
tour manager from Academy Travel…and when Jess joins us in Malta there will be
14 of us for a few days.
We left
Sydney on Emirates Airlines flight EK413 to Dubai. The great thing (well in my
opinion) about a 9:45pm flight is that you are usually tired so the chances of
sleep are increased. I was not looking forward to the 15 hour flight at all,
and knowing I had an assignment due in two days that I had not started did not
help! I made the decision to watch one movie while they served dinner…I usually
marathon it to the destination, but knew with all the reading I had to do for
this assignment, that was just not going to be possible! There were lots of
good movies to choose from but tonight I chose ‘The Intern’…and it was pretty
good. Once dinner was done I decided to get some sleep, so on went the
headphones and the ‘sleep’ music. I find it works wonders in cancelling out the
noise in the plane and relaxing you enough for you to drift off to sleep. Sure
enough I managed about 5 hours of broken sleep. Knowing that that was not going
to be enough I tried for a bit more…and before I knew it another 3 hours had
passed….I was pretty impressed! I was feeling pretty good when we got off the
plane in Dubai…and yes, I started my readings!
We grabbed a
coffee and a snack in Dubai at ‘Pauls’…a French Patisserie at the airport, made
even more popular by its appearance on one of those airport programs. Then we
headed to our gate for our flight to Malta. Flight to Malta??? Well that’s what
we thought…turns out our flight to Malta was going via Tunisia!!!! So off we
went on a 5-6 hour flight to Tunisia where we then sat on the tarmac for 90
minutes while they off loaded passengers, then cleaned the plane around us,
counted the number of passengers still on the plane, then reloaded the plane with
new passengers, before finally taking off on the 45 minute flight to Malta!
That second plane journey felt sooooo much longer than the first!
We finally
arrived in Malta and were met by the representative from the travel company in
Malta…Renato. We are staying at the Hotel Cavalieri and have beautiful water
views from our hotel room. We had dinner in the hotel tonight and are looking
forward to showers and a bed…big day ahead tomorrow!
