Malta. Many people have heard about it, fewer people know where it’s actually located and even fewer have actually gone there. But let me tell you: after spending six days on this Mediterranean island, I’m recommending it to everyone. And here’s why.
Heads up: this will be a substantial post (5000+ words!), so if you don’t feel like reading all of that, I’m giving you a chance to click away now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
If you don’t feel like spending your time on reading all of that, you could also take three minutes out of your day to watch my travel video.
For the unaware, here’s some background information to get you started. Malta is a tiny island located in the Mediterranean ocean, to the south of Sicily. Correction: Malta is a country made up of three main islands (Malta, Gozo & Comino).
The country’s capital is Valletta, located at the northeastern coast of the main island. Fun fact: Valletta isn’t even in the top 10 biggest cities of Malta (it only has about 6400 inhabitants).
The national language is Maltese, but everyone speaks English, so you won’t have any trouble as a foreign traveler. You might have to try a little bit harder to understand the people, but I’m sure you’ll get there eventually.
Without any further ado, let me tell you about how this was – almost – the perfect holiday.
Disclaimer: this is going to be a day-to-day diary of some kind. If you want travel tips because you’re going to Malta yourself, I’ll list everything at the bottom of this post so you can just skip ahead.
Evidently, I spent some time planning this trip. Around May, I started looking for things to do in the summer and I came across some fun travel destinations. After some contemplation, I decided to go to Malta. And I’m glad I did.
As you can read in my almost-6000-word guide, I read up on what Malta was all about and I picked the things I wanted to see and do. I made a handy map on Google Maps, pinning all the locations I wanted to go to. This gave me a convenient overview of my trip, on a map I was always bringing along on my phone.
Then again, you’re not really interested in that, are you? You only want to know what I did and what I thought of it. And I don’t blame you. So here we go.
My wish list included various things in different cities spread among the islands:
Buckle up!
Of course, my first full day in Malta had to be spent in the capital, Valletta. I say first full day because I arrived at 11:35 pm. Technically, that’s a day as well, but yeah. You know.
After taking a ferry from my Airbnb apartment to Valletta – I was staying at the opposite side of the Grand Harbour – I had to take a lift to get up to the city centre. In doing so, I reached the Upper Barrakka Gardens (totally not worth it, by the way).
The attractions I was most looking forward to were St. John’s Co-Cathedral and the Malta Experience.
Before actually embarking upon my magical adventure, I decided to stop at the Chocolate District and get myself some iced chocolate milk. That turned out to be a very smart decision, because it was just what I needed.
With a belly full of delicious chocolate, I continued up to the Cathedral. Although the entry fee was quite steep (€10 for a regular ticket, €7.50 for students), I think it was totally worth it.
As you can see, most of the interior is decorated royally with all kinds of gold, satin and other expensive things. The entry fee also included an audio guide (available in a wide range of languages) and a visit to the museum. Sadly, this museum was closed when I visited.
One thing I did manage to see was a room dedicated to Caravaggio. Quick background for anyone who doesn’t know: brilliant baroque painter whose name is actually Michelangelo, known for revolutionizing painting techniques with chiaroscuro.
In high school, I had an art class where the teacher was kind of obsessed with Caravaggio. He had a way of conveying his passion to us, the students, which is why I felt like this room was worth a visit.
After spending some time in this gem of a church and getting some quick lunch at a nearby bistro, I made my way up to the Malta Experience. This was a 40-minute audiovisual spectacle where the history of Malta was explained in a concise and entertaining way.
I would definitely recommend going here to any history buffs out there, or to anyone in general, really. Even if you don’t like it, you can just sleep for 40 minutes and listen to what other people thought of it.
Apparently, when I bought my ticket to this history show, the clerk behind the counter misunderstood me and gave me a combo ticket for both the Malta Experience and a guided tour through the Sacra Infermeria.
This tour was supposed to be me and two other people, but they never showed up, so I got a private, guided tour through a 1574 hospital. It was a pretty cool tour, but it’s not worth it to get the combo ticket. Just visit the Malta Experience and get on with your day.
So, let’s see. After everything that happened so far, it was about 5 pm. Earlier, I had sent my host Daniel a message, asking if he wanted to get some dinner with me. He agreed, and said he’d come to Valletta around 7. This meant that I had two hours to fill and no activities to fill them with.
Until I noticed a walking route along the seafront of Valletta. Well, to be clear, it wasn’t really a walking route so much as a secret-ish pathway through the rocks and nature.
So, I followed it. And I’m very glad I did. The path led me to some of the most beautiful things I saw in Valletta, like this shot of the coast line. (The picture is #nofilter, by the way)
After some more light hiking, I found myself at the other side of Valletta. That was fun. Until I realized that I was going to meet up with Daniel at this bar/restaurant called Gugar, which was like another 15 minutes’ walk from where I was.
By the way, I really recommend Gugar to anyone who is looking to grab a quick bite. It might not look like a place you’d spontaneously go to if you want to eat, but it really is worth it.
After sharing a meal with Daniel, we walked around a little bit and took in the atmosphere of Valletta. Of course, at one point, we had to go back home.
Daniel’s house isn’t located in Valletta, but in Bormla (also known as Conspicua), a town at the opposite side of the Grand Harbour. This meant that we had to take a ferry to get back there. While waiting for the ferry, this is what we were looking at.
I spent my second day in Malta wandering around the beautiful cities of Rabat and Mdina. I don’t have a lot of pictures of this day, because I spent most of it either walking around catacombs or accompanied by an American family.
I started the day off by taking a bus to the city where every building is made of limestone, where silence prevails and where every road looks so alike that you won’t get out of there without getting lost. That city is called Mdina.
It’s so much fun to just strolling around and taking in the beauty that is Mdina. Looking at the buildings and realizing that this town has 4000 years of history worked into it gives you an amazing feeling of insignificance.
My plan for Rabat was to visit one museum, one church and one set of catacombs. I got started with the catacombs. And of course, my plans quickly changed.
While exploring the catacombs, I found myself in one room, together with an American mother and her son and daughter. The daughter was reading the explanation of the room aloud to her brother and I was listening along (because I was too lazy to read it myself).
At one point, we started talking and I asked them whether or not it was okay if I stayed with them for the rest of the catacomb tour. Luckily, it was, and we discovered all the secrets the Maltese underground had to offer.
When we left the catacombs, we quickly found out that our schedules for the rest of the day pretty much collided. We visited a museum and a church together after that.
Eventually, we had to go our own ways. We quickly exchanged telephone numbers before they hopped back on their bus. (@ Family: if you’re reading this and you’re ever coming to Belgium, you’ve got a place to stay!)
So let’s recap. We’re two days into our Malta trip, and we’ve seen the (arguably) two biggest and most important cities on the main island. However, one thing we haven’t done is take a look at the other two islands that make up the country of Malta.
The second biggest island, Gozo, is mainly known for its relaxed attitude and beautiful nature. I experienced both.
My main plans for Gozo: make my way to the beach, chill there for a while, make my way to the other side of Gozo and sleep in a temple. Yeah.
Okay. So the main goal of my day in Gozo was to find a nice beach, lie down and chill for some time. To some extent, that actually happened. But other things happened as well.
The most annoying part of Gozo was transport. I had to take a bus from Bormla to Valletta, then transfer to another bus from Valletta to Cirkewwa, then take a ferry from Cirkewwa to Mgarr, and then take yet another bus from Mgarr to Qorrot.
If that was confusing to read, try doing it in real life.
I’m coming at you with another Google Maps screenshot so I can show you just what I had to do to get to the beach.
Three buses and one boat ride later, I arrived at the last bus stop. From there, I still had a 25-minute walk left to go until I reached the beach. That walk was mostly downhill, which was a blessing. Well, it was a blessing until I realized that I’d have to walk uphill for 25 minutes when I went back.
Anyway. On the way to the beach, I noticed two people holding hands, walking in the same direction as I was. I accelerated a little bit until I was walking alongside them.
The girl was the first one to start talking. She asked me if I knew where the beach was. I told her I was looking for the same beach and I joined them. We started talking and I found out that they were from Poland. They were also on a holiday, exploring Malta for about a week.
After a while, we arrived at the beach. There was nobody else there, so we had the whole thing to ourselves. So we got out our towels, found a sunny spot in the sand and got settled.
Of course, I didn’t try to intrude into their romantic getaway too much. I went for a swim went I felt like they needed some privacy, and I think they appreciated that more than they let on.
After about an hour and a half, the Polish couple said goodbye, got up and left. I stayed at the beach for another half an hour, and then I got going myself (you know, because I still had to find my way to the other side of the island).
“Wardija? What in Pete’s name are you on about?”
I can hear you think it. Remember when I told you that my plan was to sleep in a temple? That temple is Wardija. More specifically, it’s called Wardija Punic Temple and it looks like this.
Also, here’s another Google Maps screenshot to indicate just how far this temple was from where I was at the time (Dahlet Qorrot Bay).
Again, it might not look like much, and if you try to look this route up yourself, you’ll find that it takes around half an hour to get to the temple. By car. Of course, I didn’t have a car, so it took me quite a bit longer than that.
For me, this route was the most adventurous one I went through during my week in Malta. It involved missing two buses, hitchhiking, just barely catching yet another bus and 45 minutes of hiking.
Situational sketching: it’s 4:30 pm, I’m alone at a beach (Dahlet Qorrot) and I need to get to the other side of Gozo before dark.
Earlier, I had to walk downhill for 25 minutes in order to reach the beach. Well, now was the time to do that walk in the other direction. Of course, as my luck would have it, I was out of water, it was 32°C and there was no shadow at all.
After about 15 minutes, I started feeling kind of dizzy. While I was walking uphill, I noticed a rental car on its way down to the beach. I stopped the car and asked the driver (who was a French man on a holiday with his family) if he had any water I could take a sip of. Luckily for me, he did, and he was kind enough to give me some water.
French guy, if you ever stumble across this post and somehow get to read this, I’m eternally grateful. You may have saved my life that very day. Thank you.
With this renewed power, I managed to make my way up to the bus stop. There, I waited for another 10 minutes, only to realize I was waiting at the wrong bus stop, and the bus I was supposed to take (which passed a bus stop right around the corner) had already left 5 minutes earlier.
Although slightly demotivated, I quickly thought of how I still had a long road ahead of me and started walking toward the next bus stop. On the way there, I had the brilliant idea to start hitchhiking, as a way of getting to my destination more quickly.
And what do you know? It worked.
After another 10 minutes of walking and hitchhiking simultaneously, there was this one guy named Mike who was friendly enough to stop his car and let me (and my backpack) in. He took me to Victoria, the main city of Gozo, where I was supposed to transfer and take another bus.
While we were in the car, Mike and I started talking. I found out that he was born in Australia, but his parents moved to Malta right after his birth, so he grew up there. Later, when he was an adult himself, he moved to Gozo, because he liked the way life moved more slowly there.
It was an interesting talk and I’m very grateful to Mike for picking me up and shaving some time off my trip. He dropped me off at the bus station of Victoria and he got going again.
When I got out of Mike’s car, I looked around me, a little confused, and found my way to the information board right next to the bus terminal. Just as I figured out which bus I had to take – thank you, Google Maps – I saw that bus arrive.
I hurriedly got out my money, paid for a ticket, and got on the bus. After a 15 minute ride, the bus arrived at the last stop: Dwejra. You might know Dwejra as the location of the Azure Window (which recently collapsed).
Earlier that day, my host Daniel had told me how to get from the last bus stop to the temple. There was a path through the mountains and plains that would take you all the way there, if you were willing to hike for another 45 minutes.
Of course, as it was my intention to go sleep in the temple, I was more than willing to do that.
When my bus arrived at the Azure Window, I took in the beauty of the ocean’s waves crashing against the rocks and the smell of the salty water. After this #blessed moment, I decided to get up to strength and get some dinner. After all, this was going to be my last meal until I woke up, hiked back, and found something to eat.
I started hiking. And I continued hiking. I’m talking about 45 minutes that were too boring and uneventful to even talk about. So I’m just going to skip ahead to when I arrived, if that’s okay with you.
Eventually, I took the last turn and arrived at Wardija. But then, I noticed that two other people were already in the temple that was supposed to be my bedroom for the night.
I quickly found out that these two people were a French couple who were hiking around. They were planning to watch the sunset at this temple, take some pictures, and head back to their hotel/hostel/dorm/…
And then along came I. I introduced myself to them and I proposed to watch the sunset together, because I was going to have to spend the next 12 hours there anyway. So, again, I ruined a couple’s romantic plans, but I don’t think the French guys minded as much.
Luckily, they agreed. We sat alongside each other, talked about everything, took pictures and listened to music. And then, suddenly, it was time for them to get back, because they wanted to be back by nightfall.
It was at this time that I realized the time was perfect to take some pictures. After all, it was the perfect hour, and the scenery around me was already so beautiful as it was. And that’s the story of how I, a photography newbie, managed to take this picture.
So, I was now alone. In a temple 45 minutes from the nearest sign of human civilization. As I had no cell reception, I kept myself busy watching the sun slowly fall down into the ocean, listening to music and dancing around like nobody was watching – because, you know, nobody WAS watching.
Around 9 pm, I literally decided to go to bed out of sheer boredom. When I went back to the temple, I noticed a crack in the back wall. Upon closer investigation, that crack seemed to be housing a number of beetles. It looked terrifying in the dark.
After making sure that the beetles weren’t going to hurt me (like the scarabs in The Mummy), I was able to fall asleep rather quickly, considering my poor sleeping position (my mattress was a towel).
I only woke up once during the night. At around 1:30 am, I decided to check out the stars and listen to some more relaxing music. I was awake after all. The stars were magnificent, and I’ve never seen so many at once. Sadly, I wasn’t able to take any good pictures of this, because my phone camera isn’t the best.
At 6 am, I was awakened again. This time, it was the early morning sunlight that woke me up. Luckily, I fell asleep again quickly. I woke up two more times, at 7 and 8.
Eventually, I decided to head back home at 9 am. While I was brushing my teeth (yes, I brought a toothbrush and toothpaste), two Spanish people walked by. I had a chat with them and found out that they were father and daughter, hiking around in the area.
After that, I finished packing up my stuff and headed back to Malta.
So now, three days and one morning have passed, and I’ve been to Valletta, Mdina, Rabat and Gozo. As I was already close, I decided to dedicate day 4 to visiting Comino, the third island that makes up the country of Malta.
As you may or may not know, Comino is most known for its Blue Lagoon. Well, when I say it’s most known for the Blue Lagoon, I really mean that there is literally nothing else to do on the island.
Comino is 3.5 square kilometers, car-free and it has one hotel. Aside from the Blue Lagoon, there’s really no reason to come there. Or so I thought.
I went to Comino by ferry (a return ticket from Gozo will set you back €10). Initially, I thought I’d see a lot of clear blue water when I arrived there, which I actually did. Only thing was, it was filled to the brim with swimming tourists.
Now, as I had swum the day before in Gozo, I didn’t want to swim here. Also, I didn’t really feel comfortable leaving all my stuff out on the rocks while I’m in the water by myself.
Anyway. Upon arriving at the island, I started thinking it was a huge mistake to come here, as I wasn’t going to swim anyway. I got off the boat and started walking in one direction. And I kept walking.
That’s how I found some little-known spots at the backside of Comino, like this one. Although the water wasn’t as ridiculously clear as in the Blue Lagoon itself, I still thought this was worth the 10-minute walk.
That was really all that there was to do there. I spent half an hour wandering around, looking for spots to take pictures and make little video clips for my travel video, but after that, I really had seen it all.
On my way back to the ferry, I chatted with a girl from London who was waiting for someone there. I also bought a Popsicle from an ice cream stand because I was about to start melting down.
After that, I took the ferry back to Gozo, then another ferry back to Malta, and then a couple of buses, until I ended up back in Bormla around 4 pm. For the rest of the day, I didn’t really do anything exciting. I went to the grocery store, Skyped my parents, and had ramen noodles for dinner.
The next day on my trip was to be spent in the city of Mosta, a town some 15 km (9.3 miles) from Daniel’s apartment. I grossly overestimated the amount of activities and things to do in this town, though.
I was going to visit the Mosta Rotunda and the Ta’Bistra Catacombs. Mosta Rotunda is a church with a big, round-arched ceiling, inspired by the Pantheon.
My plan was to visit the church in the morning, then have lunch, then visit the catacombs and then stroll around Mosta until I felt the need to go home. Well, it’s safe to say that that plan failed.
I arrived in Mosta around 11 am. The bus stopped right next to the big church, so I went to the entrance to take a look. There, I found out that the Rotunda wouldn’t be open until 4 pm. Yeah, that happened.
So, I had to switch things up and go for one of two things: I could either visit the catacombs early and have a late lunch, or have lunch first and then go to the catacombs. I went for the first option.
I don’t even want to waste any words on the catacombs. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re visiting Mosta, don’t go to Ta’Bistra Catacombs. IT’S NOT WORTH IT.
When I was inside the catacombs, the only reason I watched all the videos and read all the information plates is because I had to wait until 4 to get into the church. That should give you some sort of indication of how much fun I had.
I did manage to spend little over an hour at this place, though. So now, it’s approximately 1 pm and I have three hours to walk back to the Rotunda and have lunch. I took my sweet time to pick out a restaurant and to have my lunch (sorry, restaurant owner, I had no idea you were about to close!)
While I was sitting on a bench right next to the church, a street cat helped me fill my time. But then, he ran away and I was left alone. Somehow, I made it to 4 pm and entered Rotunda.
There was no entrance fee, so I was able to get into the church along with some other tourists who – by the looks on their faces – also had to wait all afternoon.
The most impressive (and also, only impressive) part of the church was the 37.2 metre dome ceiling. Other than that, it was basically like any other church.
So, all in all, day five was actually a disappointment more than anything. (Hence the or maybe not in the title of this blog post)
I went back home after the church, had dinner, chilled in the rooftop hammock and went to bed.
Yes, you read that correctly. And yes, you’re also correct if you noticed that there’s no scuba diving footage in my travel video. That’s because this was my first time diving, and I wanted to pay attention to what my instructor was saying and what I was supposed to be doing. In other words, I was too busy trying not to die.
Anyway. About two weeks before I went to Malta, I booked a “Discover Scuba Diving” course with Diveshack. Quick disclaimer: they were amazing. Professional, helpful staff and clean, up-to-date equipment. No, they didn’t pay me to say this.
As I don’t have any pictures to show you, I’ll just have to explain the experience of diving to you.
When they said “Taking your first breath underwater is something you’ll never forget”, I thought they were just saying it to convince people to spend money in their shop and dive with them. I now know that they weren’t.
It really is an extraordinary feeling. Swimming along the bottom of the ocean, not having to worry about a thing, as long as you’ve got some oxygen left in your tank.
I even met some new people who were diving with the same instructor I was diving with (Shazz). An American couple living in Malta. They were both funny, light-hearted people and it was a pleasure to meet them and dive with them.
After my dive, I went to a burger bar and got myself something to eat. I hadn’t eaten anything since 9 am, and my dive finished around 5 pm, so you can imagine I was pretty hungry.
My day ended with a bus ride back home, more ramen noodles and the only time I went to sleep at a decent time.
For my last full day in Malta, I consciously hadn’t planned anything. I wanted to have some wiggle space, in case anything else came up. So, I slept in and didn’t wake up until 11 am.
Nothing interesting really happened until 7 pm, so let’s just skip to that.
At 7, I was chilling in the hammock up on the roof again, when Daniel came up and told me there was going to be a barbecue there at 8. Now, I had heard him talk about the barbecues he had hosted in the past, and they always seemed like so much fun.
I would later find out that it was, indeed, insanely fun. Daniel had invited an Irish-Canadian couple I had met a couple of days before, as well as a Mexican girl and a Dutch guy. This international group of people turned out to be able to talk with one another as if they had been friends for years, although half of them hadn’t even met each other until that very night.
The barbecue really was the perfect end to an (almost) perfect trip. Everyone left around 2 am, after which I stayed on the roof a little while longer to enjoy the silence and gaze at the stars. Eventually, I went to bed about half an hour later.
Again, I hadn’t planned anything for the day of my flight back, for obvious reasons. That, combined with the fact that I only went to sleep at 2:30 am, led to me sleeping in again. I woke up around noon. After having breakfast and taking a quick shower, I packed my bags again and I got going. I tried to wait for Daniel to get back so I could say goodbye, but the clock was ticking.
While I was on the bus on the way to the airport, I sent Daniel a message thanking him for being the great host he was and telling him how much I enjoyed my stay.
After that, I went through airport security without any problems, took my flight back to Belgium and I got home without a scratch.
All in all, I feel like I learned a lot from my trip to Dublin, and I was able to incorporate what I learned into my next solo adventure.
I made fewer mistakes in Malta, I enjoyed being by myself more, and I met a lot more people.
If I ever go to Malta again, it won’t be for another week. I feel like five days is plenty to visit everything I visited, and maybe even more.
Although not everything went according to plan, I still stand by my belief that traveling by yourself can change your life. I’m very happy that I decided to go to Malta, and I would recommend the island to anyone who is looking to take a couple of days off in the Mediterranean.
This is the section where I give potential future Malta explorers some tips as to how to make their trip even more perfect than mine was.
I put a lot of effort into this post. If you enjoyed reading it, I’d appreciate it very much if you could share it with some of your friends who might be interested in my blog.
As always, thank you very much for reading!
-S
Hey! In this post, I’ll be telling you the travel story of How I Took The Best Trip Ever. Don’t worry, I won’t be doing the obnoxious “capitalize the first letter of every word” thing all the way through. This story involves my dad, hours of driving in a car and meeting an online friend. Buckle up!
Disclaimer: the image quality in these pictures is pretty bad because I took them with my smartphone. Sorry about that.
First, some background information. Normally, my family and I go on holiday together every year. There’s not one specific place we return to every year, but we’re always together. 2016 was the year that changed. We decided to switch it up a bit: my dad and I went on a three-day trip to the south of England and my mom and sister went on a city trip to Barcelona. I was excited as hell, because I got to choose our destination, as long as it wasn’t too far away and we could do it in about 3 to 5 days. So, I originally chose Brighton. But then we quickly found out that there isn’t enough to do there to fill four days, so we made a road trip out of it.
On the first day, we woke up very early. It was around 5 am when my dad came into my room to wake me up. We had to wake up this early, because we were supposed to catch a boat trip and we still had a two-hour drive to go until we got to Calais, where the boat was waiting for us. Once we arrived in England, we disembarked in Dover and drove to Lewes. After driving around to find a parking spot, we walked through the town center. We found out that there was some sort of food market going on and we decided to go have a look. This was what we found.
The entrance of the food market, already looking cozy as all hell.
One of the food stalls, selling all kinds of organic and vegan foods (I think).
After having discovered this little gem, we strolled on. In the city centre, we found some large store chains and a lot of little quirky shops. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. These were on every corner and they all looked the same. I wanted to go inside every time, but my dad didn’t. Sad.
I’m only adding one picture because frankly, all the quirky shops looked like this.
We found that there wasn’t really much else to do in Lewes, so we went to a tourism bureau and asked for recommendations. The wonderful lady there pointed us in the direction of the Seven Sisters, a formation of chalk cliffs with a nature reserve attached to it. So, we headed up there and had lunch before embarking upon what would turn out to be a two-hour walk in between the cliffs, a field of goats and a golf terrain.
Our assorted lunchbox, coming from the aforementioned food stall.
Not too bad for a lunch view, if I do say so myself.
After having lunch atop this hill next to the actual cliffs, we started walking through the beautiful hills and such. After seeing the cliffs and scaring my dad by pretending to jump off them, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. We discovered that somehow, our only option was to go all the way around a huge field where sheep were grazing peacefully in order to get back to the car. Eventually, we made it back and we drove to Brighton. For me, this was the absolute highlight of our trip.
Our view as we were driving into Brighton.
Right now, it’s about 2 pm, which means we have a whole afternoon to discover the beauty of the city I had been dreaming of for months. The first thing we did was check in to our hostel. My dad had found a beautiful little hostel right in the city centre. After everything there had been taken care of and we had dropped our luggage in our room, we headed out. The one thing I wanted to see the most was the Brighton Pier. It was just as I had imagined: playful, huge and gorgeous.
What the entrance of the Brighton Pier looks like.
We walked around the Pier for a while and went inside to the casino part after that. That was pretty magical as well. The atmosphere inside was so different from outside though. On the pier, people were sunbathing and enjoying the company of strangers, while inside, it seemed like there were only money-hungry gamblers.
This is what the inside looked like. A couple of seconds after taking this picture, my dad pointed out that we weren’t actually allowed to take pictures inside. Oops.
The next thing we did was check out the famous, peculiar shopping district, The Lanes. I really loved spending time here for some reason. Maybe it was the spirit of generosity and animosity, maybe it was all the cool shops. Maybe it was a little bit of both.
A little extract of what the Lanes look like.
For some reason, this jeweller’s shop reminded me of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter.
We hung out around the Lanes for what was left of the afternoon. We then got back to the hostel and prepared ourselves to go out for dinner. When we were sitting at the dinner table and my dad was making some small talk with the people on the table next to ours, I remembered my friend Ryan lived near Brighton. I had gotten to know him online and during the past year or so, we had been joking about meeting each other.
I figured out that was finally an actual possibility, so I asked my dad if he’d be okay with me abandoning him to meet up with my friend and he said he would be. So, I sent Ryan a message asking to come to Brighton and hang out, and he did. He took a train, and I waited for him at the station (luckily, the restaurant we were eating at was right next to the train station).
Ryan and I obviously had a little chat about how great it was to finally meet in real life before heading to town. When we were about to enter a pub, I noticed I had left my wallet (which had my ID) at the hostel, because I figured I wouldn’t need it anyway (at the time we left the hostel, I had no idea I would meet up with Ryan). As I didn’t have any proper identification, none of the bars would allow us to go in. At this point in time, we decided to go back to the hostel and go get my ID. About half an hour later, I emerged from the hostel, wallet proudly in the hand. We hit a pub near the hostel, had some pints and played some pool. It was honestly a great night.
This is Ryan (left) and me (right) after hanging out at the pub, both looking like we smoked about twelve joints each. I swear we didn’t.
After this great adventure, I headed back to the hostel room, where my dad was waiting for me to tell the whole, amazing story. We fell asleep watching some football game on television.
The second day, we woke up around 8:30 am. We decided to grab one of those delicious, full English breakfasts in some kind of breakfast bar we had spotted the day before. Soon afterwards, we returned to the hostel, packed our bags again and headed out to Eastbourne. After finding a parking spot just outside the city centre, we walked around for a while. We quickly discovered that there wasn’t too much to do here, so we decided to check out the mall.
Following the trend of the rest of the city, the mall was nothing special. We had seen everything inside in about 10 minutes, if it even took us that long. It was less glamorous than I had hoped it would be.
After wasting a full morning in a town we could have gone through in about fifteen minutes, we made our way to Hastings. Yes, it’s the same Hastings where the battle took place in 1066. One adjacent town, Battle, reminds the inhabitants of Hastings of that every day. The main part of Battle was a big historical reserve dedicated to exactly that battle. One of the best things we encountered in between the ruins of some old castle was what I assumed to be an actor playing a soldier from the 11th century who was play-fighting a kid who had brought a sword with him. It was so cute.
I absolutely loved spending time in this gem of a castle (ish), but my dad wasn’t too keen on it, so we moved on. After all, he’s still my dad and the person who drove the car, so I didn’t really have a choice but to follow.
After another short car drive, we arrived at our sleeping accommodation for the second night. We were sleeping above a pub that had about 6 visitor rooms. After unpacking and refreshing a little bit, we went out and discovered the old town centre of Hastings. We discovered that the main part of Old Town Hastings was a recreation of the fisherman’s neighbourhood, which was conveniently right near the harbour. We visited a small fishing museum and found another couple of quirky shopping streets like the Lanes in Brighton. Here, I bought a cool, vintage-looking poster.
We explored the old part of Hastings all morning and afternoon, and eventually we found ourselves at night in the pub. We played chess, drank beers and listened to the live music. It was pretty great. When the music was over and people were leaving the pub, we decided to go have dinner. We ate fish and chips in a cozy little restaurant nearby. Honestly, there wasn’t much else to this night. After having dinner, we went back to the pub and went to sleep.
The next morning, right after having breakfast, we got going again, this time with Canterbury as our destination. I was very excited about this, even though the thought of going to Canterbury hadn’t even occurred to us before we left from Belgium. My family and I had gone to Canterbury once before, and I loved it then, so I figured I would love it again now. I was right.
In the morning, we walked around the city admiring the atmosphere and architecture. Canterbury is filled with houses that look like they’re still standing from centuries ago (and some of them probably are).
I somehow really liked how these buildings looked. Anyway, we soon found out that we didn’t have that much time left so we went and got lunch at some Asian place. Afterwards, we decided to go on one of those boat trips that take you through all the city’s tracts with a funny tour guide. I’m glad we did that, because our guide was hilarious and I actually learned a lot as well.
What you can see on the photo above is a low bridge our boat had to go under. The guide, who normally was supposed to stand up while paddling, was forced to go low as well. Anyway, the thread-like structures on the archway are actually spider webs. The guide told us about this, but only when we were about halfway through. This led to a lot of people panicking and screaming. It was pretty funny.
The funny part about these webs is that the city of Canterbury is not legally allowed to get rid of them. They belong to some sort of protected spider species and if they clean up their webs, their entire species would be in danger of extinction.
That was pretty much the most exciting part of our trip. After the boat tour, we had to go back to Dover in order to make it to the boat on time. Congratulations to you in case you made it through this entire post. I realise it’s quite a long story and it might be a hassle to read it all. But honestly, there wasn’t anything I could have left out.
During this trip, I had the time of my life. I’d do it all over again any day of the week. However, this is where I leave you. If you like this type of posts, let me know and I’ll make more of them.
Thanks for reading this long travel story!
-S
Hey! I thought it would be fun to take you through some travel pictures of my adventurous past. All of these are from holiday trips I took with my family (parents and sister). I hope you enjoy these and maybe get a good laugh out of them!
I’ll make one big distinction. The first big category will contain some funny pictures from summer trips (mostly sunny countries like France and Spain). The second category will include travel pictures from – you guessed it – winter trips. This is limited to skiing trips, because that’s generally the only type of travel we do during the winter. I’m not complaining, though.
Me looking like I’ve had it with life during a gas station pit stop on our way to a nice family summer vacation in Saint-Matré [2004]
The start of my alcoholic career. Sipping on my mom’s sangria and thinking I’m drunk in Sevilla [2005]
Once more, me having had it with life in my dad’s arms in the centre of the shopping district of Madrid [2010]
Casually looking as if I had smoked weed (which I obviously hadn’t) while being sunburnt at the airport of Porto [2014]
This is probably one of my favourite pictures of myself. Even though my arms look like skinny straws and my face looks like I’m dropping a massive deuce, my hair was on point and this picture brings back good memories of Amsterdam [2015]
Yet another time, I look like I’m about to give up on living life. Somehow I manage to combine looking like this with a joyous activity like making snow angels. Kronplatz (Italy) [2005]
You see where I’m going with this. Somehow, I had decided I was so done with it all that I just kind of put my head in the snow. I probably did this to get a funny travel picture, though. Obergurgl (Austria) [2012]
Somewhere in the 2015-2016 area, I decided to stop looking terrible (yet hilarious) when pictures were taken. This one in particular is a cheeky selfie in a pair of ski goggles while I was waiting for my lunch. Kronplatz (Italy) [2016]
This is the only travel picture I’ll include that doesn’t have my beauty of a face on it. This was what it looked like from the ski lift on our third day here. There was heavy rain, snow and hail and you basically couldn’t see anything. It was pretty terrifying. Kronplatz (Italy) [2016]
As you can probably tell by the older pictures (basically anything from before 2009), I didn’t used to be so keen on being photographed. However, now, I absolutely love having the opportunity to look back at something that happened years ago and still remember how it made me feel at the time, just because of one photograph. These trips with my family will be things I’ll always cherish and I’m very thankful to my parents for taking me (and my sister) with them on holiday.
I recently purchased a GoPro Hero 5 Session and as far as I’ve used it – which is basically only shooting short fragments of no more than one minute at home – I love it. So I think that I’ll resort more to travel videos instead of travel photos. This won’t mean I’m not taking any more pictures, but I feel like I can convey a lot more in a video than I ever could in a couple of pictures. Anyway, we’ll see how that goes. (UPDATE 30 November 2018: I now love making travel videos more than I like taking pictures and I’ve made quite a few of them!)
Lastly, I apologize for this not being an incredibly long blog post. I felt like a collection of pictures didn’t really lend itself to me typing long paragraphs of text in between each one, so I decided to keep the gist of the talking for the end of the post. If there’s anything you’d like me to do differently, please tell me! It helps me make posts that better suit your needs 🙂
Do you have any funny or embarrassing travel photos? Be sure to let me know on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Thanks for reading!
-S
This will be the last post I write about my time in Dublin. This is the one where I tell you about everything that went wrong while I was there: the bloopers, if you will. They will appear in chronological order, more or less. The main reason for this is that I made a list of bloopers in my phone and updated it while I was there.
The list will exist of both things I could have prevented and things that weren’t my fault at all. Warning: you might feel the need to smack me in the face while reading this. I urge you not to do that. After all, errare humanum est. To err is human. Or, as Hannah Montana put it so eloquently, nobody’s perfect.
There are probably more of these than you’d expect there to be in a five-day trip. This should tell you something about who I am as a person. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m the kind of person that makes a lot of mistakes.
Let’s get this show on the road!
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. You see, I flew with Ryanair, so I wasn’t allowed to bring a lot of baggage. Without paying extra, I could bring one 15 kg bag that fit in the standard hand baggage measurements. The bag I wanted to bring didn’t fit, so I had to pay extra for another bag that they would transport in the cargo hold.
In hindsight, I would have been better off cramming my baggage in a smaller bag, so that I wouldn’t have had to pay extra. That’s just something to keep in consideration for my future trips, I guess.
Again, I’ll have to put this in perspective. I didn’t actually schedule everything wrong. It’s just that when I was planning my trip, I had every day planned down to the hour (more or less). For some reason that I can’t remember now, I decided to switch two days around, which caused some problems. For example, I had originally planned to go to Liberty Market on Saturday, but because I had switched the days around, I had to go on Monday.
At the time, I didn’t realize that this little switcharoo would mean that the market wouldn’t actually be open and I’d be standing in the rain, staring at the entrance, figuring out what I could have done wrong.
Yeah. I had made my travel plans on my laptop. They were neatly organized in a Word document, with addresses of key elements of my tour and all. But, see, I didn’t really fancy carrying around my laptop just to look at the schedule all the time.
Upon arriving at Dublin Airport, I found out that I had no way of accessing the schedule on my phone, which I would in fact be carrying with me. I opened up my laptop, but of course, the airport wifi decided not to work at the time. This meant that I had to wait until I got to the hostel in order to send it to myself, so that I could access it on my phone.
(That did work, luckily.)
You should know, this jail was one of the things I was most looking forward to. So you can imagine the shock I got when I was standing at the reception of said jail, realizing I hadn’t booked a ticket and all tours until that afternoon had been sold out.
As it turned out, there was actually an extra highlight tour being organized, so I had to rush to reception in order to get a ticket for that. Luckily, I made it.
If you want to read the full story – and I highly recommend you do – you can check it out here.
Being a smart cookie, I had brought along a travel adapter from home. This was necessary, because the electricity sockets are different in Ireland than they are in Belgium. One of my roommates from Colombia hadn’t been that smart. She asked me to borrow my adapter, which I gave to her because I’m a decent human being. I shouldn’t have.
When I got back to the hostel from a day of exploring the city, my charger was returned neatly to my bed, but my adapter wasn’t. My best guess is that she took it with her to Colombia. I had to buy a new one at reception, which I thought would have been a couple of euros saved by taking an adapter from home. I guess not.
Again, for the full story, feel free to read this post. Yes, this happened on the same day as my forgot-to-book ticket to Kilmainham. Yes, I was sad.
This was the third (and last) major disaster of day three.
I realize this might not sound that bad to some people, but hear me out. This was on the day that I was having dinner at the oldest pub of Ireland, the Brazen Head. While I was still in Belgium, I had looked up their website. I couldn’t find any way of making a reservation on there, so I figured it wouldn’t be necessary. (If you can find it, please let me know.)
I was wrong. The night I went was apparently a night of live music. This meant that there were a buttload of people there, which in turn made it quite difficult to find a place to eat. A waitress referred me to the bar, where I could wait until a table cleared up.
Which I did. I was there about fifteen minutes when that kind of happened. There was a table of four, already being shared by two couples who didn’t know each other. One of the couples was done eating, so they went off. I took my chance and sat down at their place. And that is the story of how I had dinner in Dublin next to a couple from Catalonia.
For people who travel a lot, this is (understandably) a facepalm-worthy mistake. I know, I should have thought about transferring my deodorant spray bottle from my hand baggage to my checked baggage. I actually did, on my first flight. But somehow, on the way back, I was completely oblivious to the fact that liquids aren’t allowed in an airplane.
The reason this upset me is because it was a new bottle of deodorant. It may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but for a student on a budget like me, things like that can hurt. Both physically and emotionally :(.
As this is the last post I’ll be writing about my time in Dublin, I deem it appropriate to say something about how I felt about everything that happened and what this trip meant to me.
Although this post may make you feel like there were more things that went wrong than right, I would like to reassure you. I had the time of my life. These small setbacks were nothing compared to the experiences I had, new things I went through and people I met. If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t hesitate to.
This trip has definitely sparked my interest for solo travel. I fully intend to continue exploring the world, one place at a time, by myself. I have yet to find myself on my travels, so my next trip will probably be something more adventurous, like Thailand.
All in all, traveling to Dublin alone was a great decision, and I’m happy I made it. It motivated me to travel more in the future, and travel by myself in particular. All in all, it’s a decision I’m proud of and it’s something to tell my grandchildren about when I’m sitting on my front porch in a rocking chair.
(Sorry there weren’t any pictures in this post; I literally had no idea what to put there, as I didn’t really take pictures of the things I did wrong.)
Thanks for reading!
-S
The last day of the saga! Let me tell you all about it.
(Disclaimer: I don’t have many pictures of this day because not that much actually happened)
By now, you already know what my mornings consist of. Today was no different: wake up, breakfast, shower, brush teeth. The only thing that was different was that my roommates weren’t awake yet so I had to be quiet.
After the usual morning routine, I had to pack my bags because I was supposed to check out before 10 am. It was now 9:30, and still none of my roommates were awake. (Who goes to a foreign city and wakes up after 9?) This meant that I had to try and not make a lot of noise while packing my bags, which turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. My backpack was stored in a kind of storage space underneath the bed, and it was very creaky and noisy when you moved it. I’m sure I woke some of my roommates up at some point, but they didn’t really say anything about it.
Having packed, I headed downstairs to hand in my key card to my room.
Now, my flight wasn’t until 7:30 pm, so I still had an entire day to fill. At this point in time, it was about 10 am. After checking out, I headed down to the locker room to store my heavy bag until I got going to the airport. Now, here comes the most exciting part of the day – at least, for me it was.
Yes, you read it correctly. I got a tattoo. I feel like this requires a bit of a backstory, so here goes. A couple of months back, I was planning my trip to Dublin. Around this time, I was also really interested in tattoo designs, and I looked at a lot of them online. I then realized I wanted to use my own body as a canvas, and started looking into what I could get. I was sure I wanted a tattoo that wasn’t too big, as I didn’t want it covering my whole body.
After a lot of research and looking at different portfolios and tattoo explanations, I decided on a design.
This is the thunderbird. It has two proper meanings and one meaning I’m giving to it.
My personal added meaning is the spirit of adventure. I got this tattoo on my first solo trip in Dublin. The point of this trip was to be adventurous and try things I’ve never done before. Whenever I look at my new tattoo, I’ll think back of the good times I had there and the courage I needed to get tattooed by myself, in a foreign country.
The day before, I had made an appointment at The Ink Factory at 10:30 am. So, when the clock struck 10, I left my hostel and started walking toward the tattoo shop. Well, I was there around 10:15. And around 10:30. And also around 11. Turns out, the artist that was going to tattoo me didn’t know he had an appointment at 10:30 and the studio normally didn’t open until 11.
He eventually did arrive, though. We worked out the design and size of the tattoo, had some trouble with some kind of printer and then headed down to the tattoo stool. I must say, I wasn’t quite as nervous as I thought I was going to be. It’s actually kind of relaxing to see a needle go into your skin hundreds of times per minute.
After about 40 minutes, I was a tattooed person. The guy covered it in some foil that had to stay on for three days and sent me upstairs to hear about the aftercare. I thanked him for my piece of art and headed up.
As I had nothing planned for my last day, I headed back to my hostel, where I sat down in the lobby and looked around, checked my phone and read a book. After all, I would still be in Dublin until 7:30. Eventually, I got up, took out my backpack from the locker and faced the rain once more. I walked to the bus stop and waited for a bus to the airport to arrive.
Once it got there, I got on, paid for the fare and sat down in the back. What followed was half an hour of looking outside in the rain and being irritated at the guy sitting across from me chewing gum and calling someone way too loudly. Either way, I arrived at the airport about 3 hours before my flight was due.
I checked in, dropped my bag off at something called oversize luggage check-in and went through identification check and security. Having forgotten that I left a new spray can of deodorant in my bag, the staff took that away from me. I was quite sad about that.
After getting through all the formalities of airports, I sat down in some kind of lobby with my laptop and GoPro. I decided to use the time I had left to edit my travel video (not available on mobile devices because I’m using copyrighted music or something). When that was done, I had dinner at Burger King, because there was nothing else in sight.
When my gate got announced, I started a 10-minute walk there. The boarding went quite smoothly, and before we knew it, we were all seated on the plane. After sitting there for about half an hour, the pilot announced that there was a mechanical defect and we would all have to move out and transfer to another plane. This led to our flight leaving about an hour late, which isn’t really what you want when you know you won’t be home until 2 am. Anyway, other than that, the flight went smoothly and we arrived in Belgium around 11 pm.
Before my trip, I had looked up how I would get back home the night of my return. I found out that there was one train leaving about three minutes after my flight was supposed to land. As the flight got delayed, I didn’t catch that one – and I probably wouldn’t have caught it if my plane was on time either. The next train, which was the last train of the day, left Brussels Airport at midnight.
By this time, my phone wouldn’t connect to the airport wifi and my mobile data wasn’t working, so I had to ask three Belgian girls to help me. One of them looked up which train I had to take on her phone, and I thanked them for their help.
This train wouldn’t go any further than another train station in Brussels, though. I had a connecting train to my home town about half an hour later. By now, I was tired and all I wanted to do was sleep. I got on the train home at 12:30 am and everything went smoothly from there.
When I got to my home town, I realized that there weren’t any more buses driving around at 2 am, so I had to take a taxi. Do all taxi drivers drive way too fast or is that just me? I wouldn’t know because I barely ever take taxis.
Anyway, that’s how I got home and that’s the end of my update post. There will be one or two more posts about Dublin in the near future, so there’s that to look forward to. Thank you for reading!
-S
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