Arriving at Malta airport | Unprepared for the first time travelling and this is what happened...

We left Budapest (freezing) for sunny Malta last Friday

Opening my eyes in the morning, I noticed it was snowing. Not much snow, but there was snow, and it was cold. Perfect timing to go away for a few days to better temperatures.. Malta here we come! This time our departure was a lot less stressful than when we went to Skopje, because this time we didn't have to leave at 3 am but 11 am. That makes it all a lot easier because nobody is half sleeping and in need of time. Easy waking up, having a couple of coffee's and breakfast so everyone would be feeling ok when leaving. The nice thing in Budapest is, is that there is an airport, so we just take a taxi as the costs aren't rediculiously high. In Holland we had to travel quite some time (and with that pay a pretty sum of money for public transport) to get to the airport, here we are at the airport in 30 minutes and have a stressfree ride with the taxi instead of public transport. With a toddler we always try to make the trip as smooth as possible. I had a bit of concern that the plane might be delayed because of the weather, but this wasn't the case.

Arrival was even a bit earlier

Even though we had to wait 15 extra minutes before departure in the plane, we still managed to land earlier. Personally I prefer Ryanair over Wizzair because we can easily reserve seats in the back of the plane, and with this getting out first. But I must admit that the food on the wizzair flights is better than Ryanair. And even though it's only a 2 hour flight, I always get hungry traveling lol. Stepping out of the plane, walking to the airport was nice already, the weather felt good, and I saw a nice clean airport surrounded with trees that still looked green even though it was already December. That's quite a difference if you compare it to Budapest where everything already feels winter-ish for a while.

The most luxurious smoking lounge I have seen in years

Arriving at the airport, I wanted to smoke a cigarette, although my boyfriend already managed to quit and replace smoking for vaping, I still smoke, but since a couple of weeks only a couple of cigarettes a day. After travelling I do need to smoke one lol, so we went inside to find the most chill smoking lounge ever. A lot of tables and chairs but also comfy couches, this is nice. While sitting there we noticed little birds flying in and out, and while looking around to the green trees and the clear sky I instantly felt a holiday vibe. The first feeling on Malta was good. Now, let's go find our rental car so we can get to the hotel.

Not as prepared as I normally go travelling

I'm always prepared, and do a lot of research before booking, and look at the options where to go. But this time I thought, let's just see as it goes, because it's December, you can't predict the weather so I can plan all kinds of things on forehand but the weather may be completely different those days as planned, and maybe it's just best to take it one day at a time. And so I only looked online what the options are to do while being in Malta, and with this, I booked a rental car so we have a little more freedom doing things, as using public transport with our toddler isn't always much fun. This way we can at least leave when she's fed up. instead of waiting for a bus to arrive and seeing where the bus leaves (which takes a lot of planning if you don't want to wander around for a while with a fed up toddler). The car rental for three days was cheaper than taking a single taxi drive to our hotel, so that already made it worth it for us.

We bumped into a closed door of the rental agency

Somehow we went to the wrong side of the airport for the car rentals, as the directions in the elevator told us to go to that floor. Nobody in the office, damn it, so the stress began.. Calling the number on the booking, nobody answered, sigh. Oh my god, I thought hopefully we won't have to go by public transport because they fail us here. So we went to ask someone, that told us they also have a desk downstairs, we didn't notice or see this on the signs, but yeah this was open. Stress relief! Then we stood at the desk, handing over the booking and passport, to discover I couldn't find my drivers licence and probably left it at home. Panic!!! Suddenly I got sweaty and thought this is so stupid, you dumbass, how can you forget this, as a control freak :) Then I remembered putting it somewhere else than I normally do, so in the end, there was no problem. I already had an insurance arranged with the booking of the car, but the lady at the desk asked me if we wanted another one, that was all inclusive for 80 euro's and only 200 euro deposit instead of 1100 euro. The 1100 euro made me nervous because of the trouble we had getting back our "only" 250 euro last year in Brussel after renting a car. I was pretty scared that this agency was just as nasty as they were, and 200 euro deposit sounded a lot better. But my boyfriend thought that's another 80 euro spend you don't need to spend, but something inside told me to take that option. I didn't have an explanation for it, but I thought let's trust my gut feeling here. So I convinced my boyfriend to agree with the second option, and off we went. To our rental car.

We had to wait for about 20 minutes

Until the guy on the car park was available, and after about 15 minutes my boyfriend noticed something odd. The driver's seat is on the right side instead of the left side. Bloody hell, how could I not have read that somewhere before I booked this? I seriously only knew that they have this in the UK, not anywhere else in the world. Damn, this is going to be "fun". It's already getting dark and we don't know the island as we just arrived for the first times in our lives. Why on earth didn't I do my normal research? I felt so stupid. Now let me tell you that the island Malta isn't that big, looking at the distance from the airport to our hotel I think you can drive in about 40 minutes from one side to the other. We had to drive 31 minutes. And let me tell you that it felt like we were driving for hours, it took way too long to my liking and I had numerous of moments that I thought someone was going to hit our car.

The first thing we learned about Malta was: traffic is the opposite of what we're used to. No practice, just do it, like Nike.
To be continued :')

~Anouk