Malta

Malta Martina and I, up around 4 in the morning, by car like a rocket to Pisa airport. Because that's what it's called. I've never understood why they wrote it in English since we're in Italy; it's as if when you land in New York it said Kennedy Airport. Go figure!

The first three flights are luckily with MD80s, only the last is a noisy ATR 72. Martina is very happy, and so am I; we always sit in the front seats, so the engine noise is almost nil, the very pleasure of flying. Arrived at Rome Fiumicino, connection for Malta.

It's January 2004; Italy is in the grip of cold; in Valletta luckily it's 8 degrees. Having hired a car at Hertz, I discover you drive on the left. The roads aren't up to much, and neither is the place. It's full of houses. But what on earth will 400 thousand inhabitants do in such a small place, they're all little villages one next to the other without large open spaces. We stop in a small village near the airport, on the beach. There's the new port, which with its great cranes loads and unloads gigantic container ships. Martina plays on the swings and collects shells. We sleep at the Seabreeze Hotel. The Maltese lira is worth 2.3 euros.

But hasn't it joined the European Community? We take a drive around the island and end up in a place where from up high you can see the whole cliff and the rough sea; here the houses are almost all white and some have no roof; it reminds me of Crete in Greece.

The next day, Sunday 23 January, around 11, we return the little Yundy at the airport and, after using the internet in the VIP lounge with Martina, we take the Alitalia flight again, this time though to Milan Malpensa. She loves the flight and sticks to the window; over Sicily she sees many white clouds that she compares to so much cotton. On our arrival we miss by a whisker (5 minutes) meeting my sister, who that very day was arriving from a week's holiday in the Caribbean at Roatan; anyway shortly after we had the last flight to Pisa with an ATR 72, again Alitalia. bye