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With summer coming to an abrupt end in London, the bank holiday long weekend in August was the perfect chance to get some sun in Malta, situated just south of Italy in the guts of the Mediterranean sea. 3 days of perfect 30 degree weather ensured and despite the efforts to apply sunscreen, the burns also prevailed.

The highlights of Malta are the two "Blues", the Blue Grotto, a series of caves on the south of the island with perfectly blue water, and the Blue Lagoon, turquoise blue water in a bay on the tiny island of Comino. Given the only blue you see in London these days is Chelsea football club, we were in awe of these 2 sights and loved every minute there.

We went to hit the capital Valetta on the first morning, with our hotel in Sliema, just accross the harbour, the perfect vantage point to take a ferry to the city, which is surrounded by 16th century city walls. The small cobblestone streets were nice to wander through and there were numerous churches in this very Roman Catholic town. We visited the bell which is a memorial to the town of Malta during the second World War when it was comprehensively bombed by the Germans given it was British land at the time. After walking around the city, we hit the west side of the island, golden bay, one of the few sandy beaches in Malta, in fact only 2% of Malta's coastline is sandy beaches, and it certainly makes you appreciate Australian beaches. Despite the previous amount of sand, the beach was littered with thousands of cigarette butts and the water was a bit to salty and full of seaweed for my liking. Back to the hotel pool to cool off, which was a great rooftop pool with a bar as well. What more could we ask for?

Day two was our cruise to the Blue Lagoon and surrounding bays and whilst it was quite impressive and nice to cool off in the water after baking on the boat, we were suckered into the story of good snorkeling of which there was some grey rocks and equally dull grey fish to look at. Unfortunately the ocean was quite choppy which made snorkelling harder. As if sensing our disappointment, the crew members through pieces of bread overboard to attract the fish, whilst it did work, it also meant being hit in the head with wet soggy bread as you were snorkelling!

After a full day on the boat and beach it was cocktail time and we hit the foreshore of St Julians for drinks on the harbour. It was St Julians festival which meant a crazy amount of fireworks were going off in the harbour, but it was still daylight! What a waste of fireworks. After an hour of so of being deafened we went away from the harbour for dinner and then onto Club 22 in the nightclub district of Paceville. The club was situated on the 22nd floor of the largest building in Malta. Despite its clientele of mostly sleazy middle aged Maltese men, it had amazing full 360 degree views of the lit up harbour and was cranking good tunes too, so was well worth the visit, without mentioning the fact that it enabled me to catch up with some fellow Aussies in Malta which was great. We walked the half hour back to the hotel along the harbour at 2am, Malta is very safe and everyone on the island is very cheerful and helpful.

Day 3 was on the bus to the Blue Grotto. Amazingly, all of the buses in Malta are old 1960s british buses. Like England and Australia, Malta is one of the handful of countries that drive on the left hand side of the road. The non air conditioned clunkers felt like my old school bus and we sweated it out on the half an hour trip. It was well worth it though as the Blue Grotto featured a boat trip through the impressive caves to look at the perfectly clear water within them. The dustbowl surrounding the area also contained the ruins of a few ancient temples that date back to 2500BC! The temples were elaborately built from stone with doorways set up perfectly to measure the year and so the sun entered directly through the gates at the equinox. There wasn't much to read at the site and it wasn't entirely clear how much was original and how much was reconstructed but it was well worth the visit given it is the oldest known building ruins in Europe!

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