We had thought that our time in Malta would be comparatively quiet, given that we have been here several times before. The fact that this entry is being written four days since the last indicates that we misjudged that a bit!

Our entry for today will be comparatively brief. Our original plan had been to make our way to Pozzallo, the ferry terminal for and hence on an early ferry on the 26th to Valletta. As we indicated previously, not only was there no early ferry, there was no ferry at all, and not just for the 26th but for the entire week of the 21st to 27th. Plan B was plane from Catania.

We packed up the apartment, and by arrangement, left our bags there while we went to the archeological museum, which holds many of the treasures of the various eras of excavation in Syracuse. It is a comparatively new building, with a fascinating array of exhibitions, commencing with the pre-historic era and its fauna and moving on through. Despite its comparative youth, the building is showing the same signs of early decay of much of the construction in Sicily - poor quality materials and shoddy workmanship to the fore. Whether this is a consequence of corruption or general slackness we don't know, but it is still sad.

We had left a bottle champagne and a box of chocolates for Marco by way of consideration for his kindness, and when we stopped back at the apartment with the keys to hand them over, he then gave us a beautifully wrapped box of Sicilian almond biscuits. What a guy!

We made our way to the bus terminal, and were delivered efficiently to the airport where we settled in for the long wait for the 1010 plane to Malta. ( We couldn't leave our luggage in the apartment too long as there were new guests coming, and we didn't want to lug it around in Syracuse, so this seemed to be the best option Catania airport exhausts its diversions pretty quickly, so we charged phones, read, walked, ate our Sicilian biscuits, had coffee, had dinner, bought and taught ourselves how to play Sicilian cards and watched our flight listing climb higher up the screen.

We boarded our well worn Air Malta plane and settled in afor a flight that took only about 25 minutes of the total time - with taxi and take off and landing accounting for the rest of the 45 minutes!

We walked straight out of the plane, and with no immigration and no luggage to collect, we moved right to the taxi counter bought a 17 Euro voucher, got in the cab, texted Jasper and were at the door in about half an hour from touch down!

Jasper showed us the ropes of the flat, which we had stayed in some five years ago. It has one of the world's great views, as you can see from the picture that is the blog cover! Crashed a bit after midnight.