Bath & Stonehenge

A day trip to Bath and Stonehenge is a great way to spend a Saturday out of London to get away from all the chaos and rushing around, and also a great way to spend a mid-July summer’s day; it’s just a wee bit unfortunate that an English summer tends to consist of cold, grey, wet weather. The weather wasn’t going to dampen my spirits on this little trip out though. So on a rainy Saturday morning Neil and I were up early to make our way to Baker Street to be collected by our tour bus. The drive out to Stonehenge was nothing special, mainly due to the fact that the drive was along a big motorway.

I didn’t really have any expectations on what to expect from Stonehenge other than they were a ring of massive rocks that were made about 3000BC and no one knew how or why. And that’s pretty much all Stonehenge is, it wasn’t the nicest of days to be walking around taking a look as it was raining, but it was good to go and see and hear a little about the history behind Stonehenge.

After a short stop at Stonehenge, we were back in the bus and on our way to Bath via all the old back roads, which was lovely as it was really nice to see some country side and little towns for a change. Unfortunately once we’d made it to Bath we had a very limited amount of time to spend looking around due to the tour only being a day, fortunately I was lucky in that Bath is only a small town and you can get a good feel for what it’s like a have a good walk around in a few hours. So first stop was the Roman Baths, these were really nice though I did imagine them to be much more spectacular and much bigger, but I was still happy with what I saw. Once we’d seen the Roman Baths Neil and I decided to have a walk around grab some lunch and hope that the rain would stop.
After the rain had stopped and we were full on our lunch, we went for a walk through a lovely park and then along the river so I had a good chance to get all snap happy with my camera and take some lovely photos. To end the day in Bath we went to a little traditional English café for cream tea (tea and scones).

All in all, the day trip to Bath and Stonehenge was a great day out (rain aside), the highlight was just the small pleasure of walking around Bath and seeing the town the Abbey, Roman Baths and the lovely gardens. I would recommend Bath it is a lovely place to see for a day trip out of town.
Now I need to work on where the next stop will be…

Malta, the beach and the sun!

I have to confess that I'd actually never heard of the country Malta until about a year ago, I'm going to put that little bit of dumbness down to being from a small country at the bottom of the world, so that’s my excuse for being unaware of amazing places. I'd had a bit of annual leave left over at work and was a little unsure of where I was going to go with all this time off, I wanted to have an overseas escape with Neil so we put forward some ideas of where to spend an extra long weekend and Malta made the cut, mainly due to the fact that when you type in 'Malta' on a Google image search the pictures that come up are so pretty!

We embarked on our trip away at some ungodly hour of the morning, after about an hour and a half of sleep. As you can imagine after such little sleep we were extremely tired, though I think the excitement of a long weekend away in a warm, sunny place kept us going through the 1.20am start. We arrived in Malta just after 10am, collected our luggage and then made our way from the airport to our hotel. This journey took much longer than expected, not only due to the fact that the bus route was through every little side street in Malta, but we did also seem to be on the bus of death. The buses don't have air conditioning, so to help cool the bus down they drive around with the door open, and also the bus drivers are the craziest I’ve ever come across, I did start to have questions as to whether any driver in Malta actually held a drivers licence!

Once we'd made it to our hotel (safe and sound), it's was time for a bit of freshening up then off to explore the surrounding area. The sun was perfect, and it was so nice to go for a walk around the most amazingly blue water I've ever seen. So after having a lovely stroll and doing a small amount of exploring, we stopped off for a drink and a nice dinner at a beach front restaurant. On the menu and also what Neil ordered was the traditional Maltese meal, rabbit! Yes in Malta the national dish is rabbit, so naturally I ate Thumper and I have to admit he was rather tasty. After we had eaten Thumper we slowly made our way back to the hotel making a couple of stops via some pubs.

The plan for day two was to head out to the little island of Comino and soak up some sun. So after what was another early rise with togs and beach towels in hand we were collected from our hotel and taken to the boat which we would leave the main island on and make our way out for a little day tour. The boat took us out to Comino, were Neil and I decided to get on a smaller jet boat and go for a bit of a tour around some of the caves around the little island, as well as a bit of a high speed thrilling boat ride. Once we had our exciting jet boat ride, we made our way towards the Blue Lagoon, and blue it most certainly is! I couldn’t stop taking photos and even when I look at the photos now all I want to do is jump in. I have never seen such clear crystal blue water; it’s like something from a postcard. I was most happy that we got to spend the best part of 4 hours here, because it was perfect, this is what holidays should be all about, exploring small islands, swimming in crystal blue lagoons, and soaking up some amazing Mediterranean sun. This certainly turned out to be the highlight of the trip.

After making our way back to our hotel on mainland Malta, we were back out and heading towards St Julians where this is meant to be packed with restaurants, nightlife, and music. By this point I was starting to feel rather sunburnt and was turning red rather quickly, so much for ‘amazing’ Mediterranean sun. We stopped off for a lovely meal then headed towards the clubs and bars for a few drinks and a bit of a boogie, or does dance sound better? A few drinks and a couple of not so nice, cheap pina colada’s later we managed to talk a taxi driver into giving us a not so expensive cab ride back home. At some point during this taxi ride I’m sure my life flashed before my eyes and I do remember thinking on multiple occasions “thank Christ I have travel insurance”, the drivers in Malta I tell you, they are one of a kind and that kind is insane!

Day three I woke up in a world of hurt, no I wasn’t hungover if that’s what you’re thinking, I was sunburnt, burnt to a crisp would be more of an appropriate term to use, so the plan for the day was to stay out of the sun at all costs, which doesn’t work too successfully when you are on an Island that guarantee’s all day sunshine. This was our last day in Malta, so we thought we’d end it just strolling around seeing the last lot of sights in Valetta, Malta’s capital. Valetta is lovely and it was nice to have a walk around and see some cute side streets, old churches and stop at little gardens and café’s. Getting lost is very hard, even though this is a capital city, you really can’t compare it to a city as it’s so small, but that made it nice for just looking around and was what we both wanted to do on our last day. After spending a few hours in Valetta, we headed back to Qawra (the area that we were staying in) to go out for a nice dinner before making our way to a village feast. Now the nice dinner consisted of snails, yes that is right, snails! I ate two and they are different, definitely one of those foods that your imagination gets the better of you.

Village Feasts are something that go on all through the summer in Malta and is basically a big event, with food, stalls, bands, rides, and fireworks which are made by the locals of the village. The feasts are what the villages use to outdo each other and show each other that they are the best village in Malta, they are really fun, very busy, and most definitely a must see. We managed to score an open top bus tour on our way to and from the feast, which was great as we got to have a bit of a history lesson and understanding behind the whole shebang. When we arrived we just walked around, looking at all the different things going on. Managed to get an ice cream that came to 7 euros, we were the unknowing tourists that got picked on by the locals, so word of warning go to a feast and do not buy an ice cream! After watching the band play, we got in a good position ready to watch some fireworks. These fireworks I’ve never seen anything like them before, they are right in front of you and on these massive moving contraptions that turn into all different shapes. I couldn’t think of a better way to end our short but very sweet holiday.