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Published: August 29th 2017
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We‘re feeling sad as we leave our cosy apartment and retrieve our trusty little Fiat from the garage for the last time. We stop along the waterfront, and Issy pokes her head up through the Fiat’s roof while I take some happy snaps.
We haven't flown with Ryan Air before so we're not quite sure what to expect. It seems that they don't spend too much time or money cleaning their aircraft. As soon as the last passenger from the incoming flight‘s set foot on the tarmac we’re hustled up the steps and into our seats. We expected the whole cabin to be plastered with advertising signs, but it isn't. Selling things other than airfares does however seem to be high on the priority list. As soon as the seat belt sign’s turned off the crew charges around the cabin handing out catalogues. These seem to be particularly big on promising hefty discounts on jewellery and other luxury items. The flight‘s only half an hour, and we can only buy things while the seat belts sign‘s off, which leaves us about five minutes to decide what we want, and order it. We hope Ryan Air isn't relying on merchandise sales to make the route profitable.
We arrive at the very modern and impressive Malta airport, and are greeted by Issy's cousin Louis and his wife Lily. It‘s great to see them again; they were wonderful hosts when we were here two years ago.
They drive us into Silema, where we’re met by our apartment owner who introduces herself as Paula. Our fourteenth floor digs are plush and modern, and we’ve got an excellent view out over the sea from a large balcony. Paula’s very friendly and animated. She‘s not short of a word, and it seems she’s not short of a quid either; she proudly tells us that she owns fifteen apartments in the complex, each valued at around a million Euros. We wonder where the money came from, well we did until she happens to mention that her husband’s a well known Maltese international soccer player. She explains our apartment’s complex workings - switches that must always be left on, and others that we must never turn on; and it seems that disaster will befall us if we happen to make a mistake. I’m struggling to remember it all, and I sense that Issy is as well …. and to think I was feeling quite relaxed a few minutes ago. It seems that electricity‘s very expensive here in Malta. We’re told that we can use a certain amount for free, but after that we need to pay. I think we might be spending a lot of our time here in the dark. Paula, Issy, Lily and Louis blabber away to each other in Maltese. Whenever there‘s a break Paula tells me that they‘ve been talking about me, and that I should be very worried. I'm not quite sure whether or not she's joking, but I am starting to think that maybe I should have paid a bit more attention when Issy was trying to teach me some of the local lingo.
Paula leaves, and the four of us head to the seaside town of Marsascala at the southern end of the island for dinner. The restaurant owner tells us that rather than ordering off the menu we should just tell him what we want and he‘ll make it for us. Issy and I decide to share a seafood platter, which comes out piled high with mussels and clams, and oversize prawns that look like they’ve spent most of their lives downstream of a nuclear power plant. There’s no room for the calamari and chips, so these come out on separate plates. There‘s enough food here to feed several small African countries. Lily sees me cutting the head off a prawn and putting it with the empty mussel shells, and tells me she read an article recently about prawn heads being very good for you. She says that I should peel away some of the shell from around its eyes and then suck out the inside of its head. She gives me a demonstration, and then tells me to try it. I‘m suddenly not feeling all that hungry……
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Deb
non-member comment
Maltese
Very impressed that Issy can speak Maltese. Great that she's been back visit g where her family came from. Is Maltese like any other language? Hysterical observations Dave!!