Blog That!: Holiday

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Malta - Bus Tour

We hopped aboard a Citysightseeing tour bus, this was a bit of an adventure for me, as I have never had the opportunity to travel much, this was a chance for a bit of time with my husband to do the "touristy" bit in between his many conference obligations. The offer of a Harbour Cruise on the Captain Morgan boat was enough of a temptation to overcome his initial reluctance. So we booked up to go on a 90 minute bus tour called the Violet Tour with an immediately following hour long boat ride. What fun!

I must point out that this was a close as we got to going on the Harbour Cruise as you will find out, I took this photo before we left on the bus tour whilst we were waiting for our bus to arrive. We hopped on the Hop On Hop Off Bus and we set off, the sun was gorgeous and the open topped bus was just the perfect vehicle to let you take photos as you pootled about the main towns of Malta.

However, things went wrong about half way round our tour when the sound system of the bus was reported to the driver as not being working, so we were very quickly transferred onto another bus, except the bus we were transferred to wasn't doing the Violet Tour but the much much Blue Tour so instead of 90 minutes on the bus it was 3 hours on the bus! Not what was intended but on the bright side we saw a lot more of Malta and got lots of great photos. No Harbour Tour though, so when and yes I did say when we come back to Malta that's got to be on the list along with the Craft Village which was unfortunately shut it being a Sunday.

These are some of the photos (only some, I took hundreds) from the tour.


Love the mix of old and modern architecture in Malta


Ultra Modern Conference Venue

As an island Malta is actually really small with only a small population of 400,000 (ish), but the history of the island is fascinating as it has been of strategic importance to so many difference conquering nations and each conqueror has left a piece of their culture behind especially in the impressive churches and fortifications.

A lot of central Malta is dedicated to farmland and growing the fruits and vegetables that we have enjoyed during our trip. In particular the peaches and strawberries here are just divine.


Love the amazing scaffolding

Angry Birds in real life

Welcome to Malta

I'm not a great traveller, never really had the funds or the time to go anywhere really, so getting the chance to tag along with my husband on the odd work trip is always a treat. This trip is to Malta, never been here before and I genuinely can't say what I was expecting. So the island and its people has been a really pleasant surprise.

The first thing I have noticed about Malta is the level of construction going on, it's everywhere, right around the airport complex and along the coastline is just a forest of cranes and half made buildings. Malta is obviously undergoing some major investment.

We are staying at the Hilton Malta, it's a gorgeous building, very new and fresh, with wonderful architectural lines build along a natural harbour.

Each room or suite features its own terrace. ours is big enough to hold a party on... although not planning that. Considering this is a techie geek conference I have tagged along to I can't see any of them going for it. Anyone know what a collection of Geeks is referred to as? Is it a Byte? A boredom of Geeks. Oh I like that one... a boredom of geeks. Wonder how I can get that coined and turned into a proper verbal reference.

Anyway back to the bits I am loving about this trip, obviously the boredom of geeks isn't a big player in the list.

This chap is one of a pair that sit outside the entrance of the Hilton Malta, I love them, I think they have real character and I have named them Laurel and Hardy... this one is Laurel.


Hilton Malta Entrance

Not had a single bed since I was about 9 so this has been different and definitely haven't been in a single bed since I got married. But having said that there is something to be said to not being stuck to someone else all night long. The room is lovely, clean, bright, airy and pretty much everything you could want with a fabulous en-suite bathroom, but really what you expect from a Hilton. But not entirely sure why we have duvets, it's 78 degrees here and even at night it hasn't gotten cold.

And finally for this post... the view from the balcony, this was after 6pm when we arrived... can it get any better than looking out at that!

Bunratty Castle

We popped along to Bunratty Castle in County Clare during our weeks holiday visit to my in-laws. The castle is inside a heritage site which includes a folk park of historial buildings like a fishermans cottage, a peat cutters cottage, an old school building, a recreation of a whole street of shops.

Bunratty Castle itself is an amazing building, there has been dwellings on the site since 970 but the first defensive building was built in 1270, since then there had always been a castle of some sort on the site. The present castle was built in 1425 and was occupied pretty consistently until 1804 when the building was left and fell into disrepair.

In 1954 the Castle was bought and restored to its present condition by the 7th Viscount Gort and his wife. Having walked around the place I doubt that they restored it to live in as it didn't seem particularly cmfortable a place to live.


Plaque commemorating the restoration by Viscount Gort

The Castle itself was very very busy, it's obviously a very popular tourist destination as I was hearing lots of accents and languages from the people walking around.

Highly recommended as a place to visit but be warned the whole park is quite big, we didn't manage to see it all as with a 5 year old with us it got quite tiring and both he and I were pretty shattered by the time we had done the castle and the village. I think we will be going back again during another visit to see all the bits we missed out.

There's plenty of information available about the castle, the folk park, opening times etc on the Shannon Heritage website


Tapestry inside the main Hall of the Castle

Inside a cottage recreation

All of the buildings in the Folk park have been brought to Bunratty stone by stone and rebuilt from sites all over Ireland including one from Shannon Airport when a runway was being put in. It's a fascinating look at how people lived. I wouldn't have made a very good early Irishwoman that's for sure... the peat fire really irritated my eyes.

But I was really impressed by the level of detail put in to recreating the cottages, including photographs, chinaware and all the paraphanalia of family life.

This statue was hidden away in some trees and hedges mostly unnoticed but it caught my attention.

Soft Play Purgatory

Recently I had my first re-experience (hmmmm is that a real word???) of soft play, you know, those indoor playgrounds that are full of climbing frames, ball pits and slides etc. Oh good god the torture of it. My boys are 17 and 14 so it's a very very long time since I have set foot over the treshold of one of these places and I had forgotten totally what they were like. The first thing that hit me was steam, I mean I know it was raining outside (really heavily... in fact I was at that point considering googling plans on ark creation) so I guess an element of the steam might be kids and parents coming into this hell hole slightly damp but I think also that the steam might have just been the sweat off the kids and the constant CO2 created by their open mouths as they screamed.

And scream they did!!!

We were there because my stepchildren were down visiting us during the school holidays and at 7 and 4 they are a lot younger than my boys so I am having to re-learn how to entertain small people again... not easy I can tell you, but probably good practice if we ever do achieve our aim of having a baby.

The second thing that struck me was the wall of noise. I am wondering is tolerance of softplay venues, parks etc something you get an immunity to? I ean when my boys were small I remember taking them to these softplay places and sitting quite happily with a book whilst they ran themselves into exhaustion and the noise never bothered me, yet here I am a few years later and it was like being locked into a room with 100 howler monkeys all screaming at the top of their lungs and it was absolutely excrutiating. I looked around and there were all these other mums sitting quite happily chatting with each other and yet I could not even hear myself think!!!

I ended up digging into the bottom of my handbag and fortunately found some earplugs which I gratefully shoved into my ears... trust me you could still hear the screaming and shouting... and crying as little Johnny bashed some other kid or vice versa... it was just now at a reasonable dull roar.

I did have a genius thought though if the armed forces ever decide they need new methods to extract information from detainees they could always tie them to a chair and stick them in the middle of the ball pit and just let the kids have fun throwing those plastic balls at them and let the detainees endure a few hours of 100 howler monkeys... oops I mean darling children... a few hours of that and they will be begging to tell what they know.

Hols in Weston Super Mare - July 2010

Two firsts for me on this trip, I'd never been to a Pontins and I'd never been to Weston Super Mare... so that's another two things ticked off the list.

I have to say when we arrived at the Pontins I was a bit shocked, it was like walking onto the set of Hi de Hi and not in a good way.

The point of this trip was really to meet up with our friends Natalie and John Milne and their daughters. We'd been looking forward to this trip for months so even dodgy Pontins wasn't going to spoil it for us.

I did almost rethink that thought however when Natalie showed us to our "chalet" or "shitlay" as I renamed it. It looked somewhat different to the pictures on the Pontins website and we found ourselves faced with either sleeping on the worst sofa bed or two of the smallest single beds I have ever seen in my life. Hmmmmm decisions, decisions!

We opted for the sofa bed which in itself presented us with some major problems.... whoever had used it before us had put it away so badly that I almost broke Pie's fingers when the two of us were trying to yank the bed part out of the sofa.

We'd taken a bit longer to get to Weston than expected due to a slight detour, Pie's fault... don't ask!

So by the time we got there we had missed dinner and had to settle for some fish and chips (me) and sausage and chips (him). It certainly wasn't cordon bleu but it was hot (burnt my tongue) and filling!

I slept surprisingly well on the demon sofabed, mostly due to alcohol anaesthetic, that and the major dip in the middle of the sofabed which meant we both ended up snuggled up quite intimately... it was either that or tie ourselves to the sides of the damn thing to stay in place.

The weekend itself went too fast, spending time with Natalie, John and the kids was so much fun, we went to a funfair and had a wander around a market and played Rock Band late into the night... fueled but the copious quantities of alcohol that Natalie and Pie had seen fit to bring on the trip.

I haven't laughed so much for a long time... and can't wait to get together again. By the time Monday came I had become quit fond of our "shitlay" having spent time naming all the fleas... actually that's really unfair, although the "shitlay" was quite run down and in need of refurbishment it was spotlessly clean and there were no fleas... I promise.

The other thing that was quite impressive was the food at the restaurant within the Pontins, well cooked, good portions and really nice, friendly staff who obviously worked very hard and enjoyed their jobs.

More Pictures