Goodbye Malta and Hello Again London

We had walked/hiked almost 23 miles in the last 2 days. Our bodies felt it. Lacey and I both woke up sore. But it was our last day in Malta and we wanted to check out one of the cities across the harbor from Valletta. So we woke up and had our last hotel breakfast. We love pastries for breakfast but the breakfast at The Cumberland was top notch every day. I had pancakes again and Lacey had an omelet (we are creatures of habit haha).

We left our bags at the front desk and headed out for a couple hours. The guy at the front desk always thought we were kind of funny (we were the youngest people there by quite a bit plus we are probably goofy). We walked over to the gardens from the first day and then took the elevator down to the waterfront. I have to say, this day would have been a lot harder without that. There's a small ferry company that manages the trips from Valletta over to the 3 cities across the bay. The return trip was only about 5 euros per person.

We waited for the ferry for about 10 minutes and hopped it. It was an easy 10-minute ride across the harbor. The cities across the harbor look like little fingers stretching out from the mainland. We were originally going to walk around one of the fingers called Birgu where the ferry normally docks. Unfortunately, the docks were under construction so we landed on a different finger called Senglea.

We could have walked over to Birgu but it was a few more minutes of walking down and around. Senglea was verrrrry quiet on a winter Sunday morning. We walked through the center of the finger and barely saw a car or person. We walked to the end to get views of Valletta. There's a park at the end and the views were... okay haha. Definitely not really worth the effort but we honestly didn't have anything else to do. We made our way back to the ferry place. We had a few more minutes to kill so we walked down and stepped foot on the Birgu part to say we went there haha.

As we rode the ferry back to Valletta, the sun finally came out again. It felt glorious but we were a little annoyed that it wasn't out earlier when we were walking around.

We grabbed our bags and started the long travel process. We grabbed a bus that went straight to the airport easy peasy (with lots of stops on the way of course). Other passengers were unsure of what stop to take and where to go but we knew. We often find ourselves at the front of the crowd leading the way.

Our bags were checked in in no time. We knew we needed to eat some food before our flight from 4:30pm to 7:30pm and we had not eaten lunch. There were a few restaurants in the small Malta airport. There was a restaurant serving pub food, a KFC, and a Burger King. Slim pickings! We originally tried to sit at the restaurant but no one helped us for like 10 minutes so we left and did KFC. The line took forever but the popcorn chicken was fine. I got chicken strips and 2 were super over cooked and 1 was under cooked. They looked funny when I took them out of the packaging.

We ate the meager food and then waited for the flight. We took Air Malta back to London. Our flight was quite empty, as were most of the flights we took all trip. #offseasonisgreat. On the flight, I wrote some blogs and Lacey hung out. We landed in London a little early and then had to sit on the tarmac for a while which stinks.

We landed in Heathrow Airport which was great. It's so easy to get from that airport into the city (1 tube ride easy, no expensive trains or anything). Plus, our hotel tube stop was right on the line. We picked a hotel on the West side of town this time, in Kensington. The hotel was pretty cheap and close to where I used to live.

We got to the hotel in no time. It's kind of an "eco" hotel with smaller rooms. Not as small as our hostel in Bangkok which was absolutely insane. But we did have to store our bags at the very edge of the bed or we wouldn't have any floor space. The shower was great though and the bed was soft. Honestly, we didn't need that much more than that.

TO end the day, we wanted to get some good food in London. When we were here earlier in the trip, we wanted to eat at a restaurant called Dishoom but they were closed for the holidays. Now they were open again and there was one about 10 mins walk away. It was fate!

Dishoom is a mildly fancy Indian restaurant. As usual with these places, it started with one and now there are a few in London. The deco is mid century Iranian or Indian bar. The decorations were incredible and the music they played was sooooooo cool. This was absolutely the coolest restaurant we ate at all trip.

The waiter helped us order food. We got a dish called Bingu Dahl for a starter. It's roasted vegetables all blended together with spices and you spread it on delicious buns. For mains, we got grilled lamb chops, Ruby Chicken (like Tikka Masala), and some garlic naan (like a pita kind of). Everything was soooooo good but the grilled lamb chops were insane. They were kind of small but so so so so flavorful and tasty. Lacey loved the Ruby Chicken. Overall, it was an insane meal.

We made it back to the hotel and watched some TV and went to bed basically. Malta was a great part of our trip and a necessary one honestly to get out of the city life. We loved it and can't wait to see the Mediterranean Sea again. We talked so many times how in some ways we were really lucky to go in January. In the summer or spring, Malta would be PACKED with people and harder to go anywhere and get away from people. There were so many times where it was just me and Lacey and we will treasure that time.