Day 25 Thursday 11th April: Valletta, Malta and then Gatwick Airport
I was out on a balcony as Oceana slowly came into the grand harbour in the letter. Across the harbour I could see a cruise ship in dry dock.
I could see another cruise ship moored and realised that this was The World. This ship is a shared ownership vessel that goes where ever the owners/passengers want it to go.
We had such an early start then I went upstairs to the buffet and picked up some fruit and cereals for our breakfast to have in our cabin.
We were opposite the Hard Rock Cafe and we could pick up their Wi-Fi. I did a quick download of my emails before we left the cabin to leave the ship.
To the airport
In the restaurant we waited for our coach to the airport to be called. Then it was out through the Atrium and onto the quayside to board our coach.
Once we had left the built up area of Valletta we could see the traffic jam heading back into the town. This probably explains why we had had to leave so relatively early for our plane as our coach would have had to be in that jam going back to the ship for the next pick up.
At the airport terminal we were guided by P&O greeters standing every 10 yards also. This made sure none of us wandered off.
Security was easy and we were soon air-side and exploring the few shops that were there. We headed to the Costa Coffee for a drink.
At the end of some of the rows of seats they were USB charging points and I took advantage of one of these while I drink my tea to give my phone a ‘top up’.
Rather than buy bottles of water I filled up our bottles at a water fountain next to the Hard Rock Cafe in the airport.
Our flight was called and we had to now go through passport control. This it seems is a relatively new requirement as we were travelling to the UK which is not part of the EU Schengen Agreement .
We had quite a wait in this area and it quickly filled up. We moved to where, hopefully, the boarding of our flight would be.
The airport had staff walking around with trolleys handing out water, packets of nuts or crisps to anyone who asked. The airport had fast free Wi-Fi so we could do emails and surf the net while we waited for a plane.This filled in the time before our flight (and the crisps were tasty.)