Last week I tagged along on a friend’s trip to Madrid and Malta. He actually went to Dublin first and a group of us sort of convened in Madrid last Tuesday. The cheapest flight I could find last minute was out of Marco Polo (Venice), however, our return flight was Ryanair to a different airport near Treviso. This meant I wasn’t able to drive my car and leave it the few days I was gone, which ended up being cheaper but a bigger hassle in the long run. The first leg of my journey to Madrid was a train to a bus to the airport.
Italian mass transit is always an adventure. Trenitalia is a decent website but not necessarily reliable in a pinch (as you’ll read later). The train schedules are consistent but so is the fact that train workers consistently strike which throws everything off. Coincidentally so do the bus workers. Those wild cards combined with the fact that a train on the same line I was taking had jumped the tracks and crashed the day before made me a little nervous about time so I left quite early. I wasn’t incredibly worried about the safety of the train situation since the crash the day before made it statistically unlikely mine would crash as well. We’re probably due another one in the next few months though…
Other than initial concern, the trip to Madrid was otherwise uneventful. One of my friends had been there for a few days and the Dublin group was flying in around the same time. After blundering around the terminals for half and hour trying to find one another then the metra we were on our way to the hostel. Madrid’s train system is pretty easy to use if you’re used to any sort of train system. All stops are both numbered and color coded and the stops in the area we were in were all close together. After we reached our hostel and met up with Julia, the last of our party, we decided to go for tapas. It was only 1800 and dinners in Spain, much like dinners in Italy, are late night affairs lasting usually until at least midnight with parties to follow. Tapas sounded like a good tide-over and Julia had found a great market with booths that specialized in different types of tapas, cheeses, and wines.
I tried some of the more adventurous seafood ones, immediately regretted my decision, and opted for the safer empanadas. We actually spent a few hours at the market, decided we weren’t hungry enough for dinner, and wandered out to find a Flamenco show. I’d like to note that tapas are not enough food to counteract a long night of drinking in Spain, which we learned the hard way. We did find a Flamenco show around 10pm but it was sold out with the next show starting at midnight. The bouncers kindly pointed us to a local bar where we waited for the next show. The show was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera and will have to upload pictures later when I get them from everyone else. It was a small venue, 3 member band, and 3 dancers that took turns. That combined with copious amounts of sangria made for an enchanting evening. So enchanting in fact, that we traversed the time/space continuum when the cab driver dropped us off around the corner from our apartment yet we somehow wandered around for half an hour before we found our door.
The next day we woke up around 1300. I blame the fact that we were staying in the hostel basement with no windows to let us know it was morning. We hopped on the train to Plaza Mayor and decided to tour on foot.
We found a castle, a cathedral that was completed in the 1900s (you know you’ve become a travel snob when you are no longer impressed with structures built a mere century ago), and eventually made our way to the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia.
http://www.spanisharts.com/reinasofia/reinasofia.htm
I spent most of my time staring at a couple of Dali’s paintings. To be honest, I know very little about art. So I can stand in front of a painting and truly appreciate how much I probably dont really appreciate it enough… Dali’s, however, are kind of like a scavenger hunt through your consciousness.
Just one of many Dalis that I stared at thinking...weird...
While I would never hang one in my house, I do like looking at them. Is that too pedestrian? Maybe. Whatever, this is a travel blog, not an art blog! Don’t judge me! We also were able to see the Picasso exhibit. It was huge!
After the museum, we went to dinner then napped. Around 2300, we went back out to a club. I’m not usually big in to the club scene but it was fun. What surprised me the most was that the crowd was definitely older, seemingly accomplished business people. I definitely preferred this crowd to the 17 year olds we found in San Julian’s. We didn’t stay out too late as our plane out was leaving at 0900 the next morning. After the club, we went home, got a few hours sleep, then it was off to Malta!
Malta is a small island off Italy but doesn’t have as much Italian influence as you might think…or really any at all. Malta was controlled by a number of nations in its long history and the line of dominance went something like: Phoenicians –> Greeks –> Romans –> Arabs –> Sicilians –> French –> Brits until they eventually received their independence in 1964. Since the Brits held on to the island the longest, their modern culture is heavily influenced by them including driving on the other side of the road and pubs that heavily cater to British tourists.
After we departed the plane and located luggage, we hopped in a cab rather than renting a car. This was fortuitous since there are no highways in Malta and a lot of main roads were closed off due to the Pope’s arrival that weekend. Also, the Maltese drive about as crazily as Italians and when you have no idea how to get from point A to point B, driving on a different side of the road in an unfamiliar car would be stressful at best. The cab literally wove its way through the streets of Malta before dropping us off at our seaside hotel where we had a suite for 15 euro a night per person. We of course bragged about this to each other throughout the course of our vacation and this bit of hubris may have come back to bite us in the ass when we tried to leave…more on that to come.
View from the hotel!
We stayed 2 nights in Malta. The first night we went to the capital, Valletta. The cab dropped us off and we walked down the street, running straight into a marching band in old school military uniforms. The music they were playing was strikingly familiar. I suppose this makes sense as America and Malta have strong English roots. We decided to follow this random event to the town square where a group of people performed a re-enactment of Malta’s heroism during the WWII bombings which led to the award of the King George cross. http://flagspot.net/flags/mt%29gc.html
Neat! Half of the re-enactment was in Maltese (none of which I could comprehend) and half was in English. After that, we wandered around the city for a while and noted that it was surprisingly subdued for a capital. We decided to head back to the hotel and hopped in with another cab driver. He was apparently unfamiliar with exactly where our hotel was located and had to stop at his office for directions. Apparently there’s no GPS in Malta… Oddly enough he just stopped the car in front of a random building, got out of the car, and left us alone with the keys in the ignition. He came back 5 minutes later with directions and bananas for the four of us. I’ve never had a cab driver offer produce to me before…really random. While I thought it was a nice gesture, I waited to make sure the others didn’t get sick before eating mine. It was a delicious addition to my breakfast yogurt!
Waiting patiently for the driver...
The next day we took a bus tour around the island. I normally abhor guided tours but this seemed the cheapest way to put eyes on most of the island while getting some of the history. We started with the arts and crafts part of the island. The glassblowing was neat but spending an hour at the jewelry department was extremely tedious. Other parts of the tour were much more interesting and they included a guided boat tour of some of the water caves as well as a trip to the largest church/dome made entirely out of stone! The trip did serve to help us get our bearings.
We arrived back at our hotel and decided to get dinner before going to San Julians. Up until this point we actually had a hard time finding authentic Mediterranean food. Most places were over-catering to the British tourists and nothing we ate had a distinctly Mediterranean feel. On a tip from one of our guided tour friends we stopped by a place called Ta’Pawla and finally got our Mediterranean fix. I took a chance and ordered rabbit against my better judgment. Last time I ordered rabbit was in Vallencia and the cooks kindly left the rabbit face in my paella. This was a little better but I still had to pick around bunny organs trying to find viable meat. Really glad we ordered the appetizer platter…
After dinner we cabbed it to San Julians which is Malta’s party hub. It was vibrant, full of people, and fun for about the first hour and a half. All the bars/clubs had different themes and were all very open. You could just wander in and out of wherever you felt like exploring, no cover, no hassle. Unfortunately it took about twenty minutes in to realize we were the oldest people there by far. In Malta, 17 year olds are allowed to drink and boy did they! The entire strip was crawling with teenagers giving the entire experience a feel of some bizzaro high school field trip of insipid youths. I dont think anyone in our merry party was ready for this level of awkward debauchery so we decided to be the adults we are and went home much earlier than expected. Plus the drinks, while cheap, were incredibly watered down. I give San Julians a solid meh. But hey, if hanging out with a bunch of kids with outrageous senses of entitlement is your thing I recommend just getting bottle service.
After our great night’s sleep we awoke the next day feeling refreshed, ready to pack for our trip home, and excited to hop on a tour to Gozo! Julia and I were leisurely packing up while still remarking how we basically got our rooms for a steal and how inexpensive this trip was in general. A few minutes later Drew walked in with some interesting news. Due to Volcanic ash that had drifted its way from Iceland, all flights were canceled indefinitely…including ours. Gozo was cancelled. Operation ESCAPE FROM MALTA commenced!
