Exploring by car

Getting a rental car

We managed to get a rental car online at short notice for the day, from Sicily By Car.  The price was only EUR18, picking up from its airport location whereas whatever available in the old city was far pricier.  The downside was that we had to get to and from the airport before and after the rental.

We walked to the bus station around 0830 for the 0900 bus to the airport.  It was a short walk to the Car Park East multi-storey building where there was a short wait to be served.

Even though we had booked for 0930, the paperwork and checks took some time and we only hit the road at 1000.  They seemed really professional but we had never seen such a new car full of scratches.  Roads in Malta are narrow!

It didn’t take long for Kim to realise that the Peugeot 208 (complimentary upgrade from a small Fiat) was an awful car.  The 3-cylinder engine and gearing didn’t provide much power.  To make it worse, the car had been abused and had trouble getting into first and second gear.

I had my first experience with Android Auto today, connecting my phone to the car for navigation. Strangely, navigation required a cable connection whereas music and phone functions were connected via Bluetooth.  Well, it was strange to me anyway.  Not having had a newish car before, I don’t know what the norm is.

Revisiting Mdina

Our first stop was Malta’s hilltop historic capital of Mdina.  Getting there around 1030, we managed to find a free park just before the main carpark.  First up, we needed a small snack.  Everything was tourist-price so we settled for a pea pie which cost EUR4!  That would normally be EUR1.50 max elsewhere.

We wandered along the main paths and some of the smaller ones to get to the city wall area where we could look out to the panorama. As we had visited Mdina before, the daytime heat didn’t encourage us to do a detailed exploration.

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Northern beaches

From Mdina, we continued our drive to the north.  The intention is to find a beach that we could swim at.

First up was Golden Bay, a fine stretch of sand in quite a remote setting apart from 3 large hotel blocks.  Getting there around 1200, it was super crowded.  Parking was impossible but we managed to double-park to take a photo.  We remember having visited briefly here six years ago and looking back at those photos, we crowd was nothing like today!

Next was Ghadira Bay.  This shorter stretch of sand in a built-up area was also very packed.

Having had no luck, we thought we’d try looking for this quiet beach café which did awesome sandwiches last time.  We had visited after giving up on the car ferry to Gozo.  With the help of Google Maps and Timeline, we managed to find that it was called Armier Bay Beach.

It was no longer the quiet beach that we remembered.  As it was after 1230, we sat down and enjoyed their awesome sandwiches once again.  Their ciabattas were just perfect in texture and crunch!

After killing some time over lunch, we decided that the crowded beach wasn’t nice enough to swim in.  We’d be better off saving ourselves for St Peter’s Pool later on in the day.

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St Peter’s Pool

Our next point of interest was St Peter’s Pool in the south.  We decided to detour via the built-up areas of St Julian and Sliema.  St Julian seemed very nice and Sliema wasn’t too bad either.  The crowd here seemed much younger and it’s probably a more happening place at night compared to where we’re at in Valletta.

The last bit of the road to St Peter’s Pool is very narrow with no room to pass oncoming vehicles.  We were lucky not to have too much oncoming traffic.

Arriving about 1540, we paid EUR3 for our parking before walking down through the makeshift café to the swimming area.

The place was buzzing with young people, more so than six years ago, when we looked back at photos for comparison.  What we did notice that many people are in very good shape compared to young people in New Zealand.

We managed to get a couple of swims in, then watched some people jump into the water, some with great somersault skills.

With time to kill, we drove to the fishing village of Marsaxlokk.  We sat on the waterfront and had a pork and mango patty in a bready pastry.  Delish!

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Around 1715, we started our drive back to the airport, getting there around 1745.  We were hit with a spot of bother when the checker noticed that the rear left mag had some dents and the tyre was a little under-inflated.

There were concerns that we had damaged the mag and had a puncture.  Fortunately, I had taken photos of the mag condition this morning.  With so many scratches to be marked on the car condition report, we had missed that the mag dent hadn’t been marked.

Kim then said that the tyre inflation light had been on since we picked up the car this morning.  The checker messaged the manager and we were given the all clear.

We returned to the city by bus around 1815 and wanted to buy some ftira sandwiches.  Unfortunately, at around 1900 they weren’t making any fresh ones and all that had left were tuna ones which been sitting since the morning.  And they weren’t willing to discount them one cent.

We got some pastries instead for a light dinner, and later topped it up with eggs on toast.