Arrived!

We arrived in Malta yesterday afternoon.  All of the travel arrangements went smoothly.  If our bags had been lost on the way to London we would have been in trouble!  For the first time in my life I arrived at an airport and there was somebody holding a sign with my name on it.  Malta International Airport is very much like Cork airport.  Its built along the same scale, you walk across the tarmac to your plane, 3 baggage collection points.  The University Residence is in Lija (pronounced Lee-yah).  Lija appears to be an upper middle class part of Malta.  The houses are quite large and well kept by the looks of things.  In some of the other suburbs we have passed through, we have seen very nicely restored old buildings next to  totally derelict ones.  We spent last evening getting settled in. There is a supermarket just down the road so we got a few bits and pieces there.  Then we went and had pizza in a restaurant that the guy at reception told us about.  The food was decent and it was at least Eur 10 cheaper than a similar meal for two in Ireland.  

After sleeping for 12 hours, we headed for Valletta this morning.  There isn’t really such a thing as a bus timetable, but if you know where to stand a bus is likely to come along pretty soon.  All buses travel on routes to and from Valletta anyway, so you’ll get there if you stay on the bus for long enough! The main terminus is just outside the city gate.  Its actually a giant roundabout where it appears that you can have at least 40 buses parked at any one time.  The main ticket office is a small wooden kiosk.  The drivers sell all of the tickets really, including the seven day passes.  Valletta is interesting.  It was teeming with people at about 11.  By 1.30 the locals had gone for a siesta and only the restaurants, main attractions and souvenir shops remained open.   There are lots of pretty old buildings.  The walk along the city wall gives a stunning view of the harbour.  We didn’t go into any museums of churches today.  I have 4 weeks, I don’t want to see it all in one day!  

We’ll probably spend the rest of the evening in the accommodation.  I might go for a swim.  There are lots of houses that all surround the pool. The bunk-beds are comfy, although it was so warm last night that I didn’t even use my sheet.  There are several Italian girls in our house.  We haven’t seen much of them.  I think they are going home next week.  Our room looks out on a primary school, where the Maltese were voting yesterday  (local and European).  It was the busiest polling station I have ever seen (Malta consistently has the second highest turnout in the world after Australia, where voting is compulsory). .  I got the sense that voting is a social occasion for the Maltese as there were people hanging around in the street chatting until the polls closed at 10.  Clearly the Labour Party must have won something, because there are people driving around noisily with red flags that say “Labour” hanging out of their cars for the last hour.

Elective starts tomorrow.  Agh!