Goodbye tapas,Hello maltesers

 Today is transit day and we are off to Malta. We are picked up by our monosyllabic driver at 0645(sic) and then off to airport, known here as the airoporto.

Today we are flying Ryanair, the airline given a rather generous 2 stars by a recent reviewer. We have paid for all the extras: seat with tolerable legroom,priority boarding, handluggage, seatbelts etc. Madrid airport(airoporto) is huge and we manage to get up our 10000 steps before getting to the boarding gate. Knowing the $20 per gram excess weight fee we nail both our suitcases at 20.0Kg exactly. As we queue up we can't help but notice that even those who haven't paid for handluggage have copious amounts of handluggage-classic eurotrash behaviour. Anyway the flight was quite tolerable and we and our luggage arrived unscathed. We are driven to our luxurious digs in Sliema(known affectionely by the locals as "The Slime").

Our apartment has stunning sea views which closely resemble the sea views in Australia.

We go out for dinner to a very traditional Maltese restaurant where we dine with Mr. Al Fresco-the great advantage about eating out in the fresh air is that one's fellow diners are only too happy to share their cigarette smoke with us!

We eat the Maltese traditional dish of rabbit served win a rabbit sauce accompanied by vegetables cooked inside a rabbit with a side of rabbit chips.