Thursday 18th May - Birmingham to Malta
We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning in Birmingham. We were so impressed with our meal at Manor Farm last night that we decided to return there for our breakfast this morning. The only problem was that it took us longer to drive the 3/4 mile in the rush hour traffic, than it did to walk there last night. But it was worth it and we were full after our Traditional Breakfast. We again ran the gauntlet of Birmingham rush hour to find Airparks, where our car was going to live for the next two weeks. The extremely efficient service saw us whisked off to the airport in no time at all, checked in and ready for our 3 hour flight.
We arrived in sunny Malta after a very pleasant flight. The 'Firman Charm' had worked well at Birmingham airport check in, and we had seats with extra legroom in the centre of the plane. But this meant that we were some of the last passengers to disembark. However, considering the age group it did not take us long to "overtake" lots of passengers on the walk to immigration. When we got to immigration most of the passengers were forming one queue, we noticed that there was one immigration officer with just a small queue, we joined that queue and got through very quickly and were on one of the first coaches to leave the airport heading for the Port of Valletta and our P & O cruise ship Oceana. We were soon onboard and found our stateroom. We poured ourselves a G&T and sat on our private balcony admiring the view across the bay.
It was soon time to attend the compulsory lecture on safety procedures. As our cases had not yet arrived, for the first time ever, we went to dinner in jeans and trainers!! What delightful dishes were presented to us. There were so many wonderful culinary delights to choose from. Just the starters were a problem. So we ordered three!! Smoked trout - prawn cocktail - game terrain. We then demolished lamb shanks and thick cut loin pork, sticky toffee pudding, a deconstructed pavlova, cheese and biscuits all accompanied by a very acceptable bottle of Chenin Blanc. It was then time to return to our stateroom, we were pleased to see our cases had arrived, and proceeded to find a home for everything and then we were ready for bed.
A very enjoyable, if at times a bit stressful, day. Now we look forward to a relaxing two weeks.
