Malta

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Buy the ticket in advance
If you want to visit the Hypogeum make sure you get your ticket in advance, only 80 people are allowed to visit a day.

One of the UK low cost airlines started to fly to Malta, and it's a country that I'd never visited, and it has ferry connections to other interesting places - three good reasons for my visit to Malta.

Malta is an interesting place, with the largest natural harbours in the Mediterranean, and some amazing underground to subterranean structures excavated c. 2500 B.C.

I spent five days on Malta, a day longer than I was expecting due to the high winds that stopped the boat sailing to Sicily.. and even then I had to take a plane to Sicily. One of the most amazing sights on Malta are the buses that everyone uses to get around the isle. They are painted bright yellow and orange, cover most of the island, some of the buses are great old 1950's Bedfords. They are a tourist attraction in the their own right.

Another site not to be missed is the Hypogeum, a whole series of underground caves that were excavated back in pre-history. One of the cave entrances looks just like a set of pillars holding up a huge lintel (the technical term is a trilithon), but it's not three parts, it's just carved out of the rock to look like that!

Hagar Qim

I also made it out to Gozo on the ferry, and spent a morning wandering around Rabat, I found a very nice cake shop and got a cake to eat on the ferry on the way back!