May 18, 2022- Travel to Malta

The trip to Malta started out pretty smoothly- after dithering over whether to take public transportation I decided to save my sanity and take Uber to the airport.  The one suitcase I had was too big for an overhead bin, so I stuffed it all in an ancient cloth tote bag, including all my electronics.  It weighed a LOT.  I arrived at the airport plenty early and took a long, leisurely walk through the huge terminal to get in some exercise, and selected a bottle of wine (main criterion: screw top not requiring a corkscrew) in Duty-Free, and found I had to carry it with me since I was flying within the EU.  Oh, goody- more weight to carry.

I picked up a sandwich at a bar called “Fuerst Metternich” (Prince Metternich) because I was tickled by the historic reference, took the quick tram out to the airport’s hinterlands and found similar facilities in the “hinterlands” terminal.  I guess I could have waited.

As I was re-organizing and checking everything I realized I’d lost my vaccine card, which had been carefully tucked into my passport.  I’d taken the passport out at the security checkpoint and then didn’t need it anyway.  The card was nowhere to be found.  I reminded myself that both Air Malta and United had uploaded copies of my vaccine card and I still had the picture on my phone.  I checked at the gate- the agent reviewed the rules and said I wouldn’t need the hard copy to enter Malta.  I wish she’d also told me there had been a gate change….

At about T minus 30 I realized that the gate area was empty and there was no inbound.  I’d listened carefully to all the announcements, both in English and German, but none applied to my flight.  I checked the monitor.  I was at K-22.  My flight was boarding at K-7.  Oops.  I ran (well, I jogged) frantically over to K-7 and made it with plenty of time to spare.

The flight was about 2 hours and we landed in Malta on time.  We were herded into overcrowded, unventilated bus to the terminal- but everyone wore masks. There’s that, I guess. Uber, it turned out, did not operate in Malta but a company called Bolt did.  I sat down with some coffee, loaded the Bolt app and jumped through the hoops to get validated and register my account.  I ordered a car to the Hilton and as I was waiting for it, I looked through my possessions and couldn’t find my passport.

Panic time.

The driver arrived and we proceeded to the hotel, which was beautiful- but my first act after checking in, dumping the entire contents of my bag on the bed and carefully shaking it out and finding no passport, was to get another Bolt car- to the American Embassy.  They closed at 4:30 PM (which I could not find anywhere on the Internet) and it was 4:15.  The guard took my Missouri Driver’s license, went in and talked to the staff and came out saying I had an appointment for 9 AM tomorrow.  I had a tour scheduled at 10.  Well, I HAD to get a passport.  No, he could not tell me how long it would take to get a replacement.  It was Wednesday afternoon, I was flying back to Munich Friday and flying home Monday so a lot could go wrong.

Another Bolt car back to the hotel, where I headed to cocktail hour in the Executive Lounge.  It was hard to stay fretful while sipping good wine on the Lounge balcony overlooking the swimming pools and the sea.

 When I got back to my room I opened the sliding glass door to my balcony, turned off the A/C and never turned it back on again.  The sounds of the waves lulled me to sleep but I did not sleep well.

Balcony of my room.  Bliss!