I'd heard of Malta of course however I have to confess prior to meeting a lovely young Maltese couple in South Africa last year, I didn't really know anything at all about Malta. After trouping around South Africa with them for a month I saw photos and heard all about Malta and what seemed to be an amazing country that has at some point been invaded by a multitude of nationalities. 

Today while external influences do exist, Malta is very much its own country. The languages are Maltese and English so its very easy to get around and to communicate and while it isn't a large country I was very surprised at the amount of space that they have. I was thinking it was going to be like Singapore I guess. I figured such a small country would be pretty much one big city but no, it has many different personalities, influences and a wide variety of scenery.

Our decision to stay in Rabat was mostly because we wanted something different, we wanted to be away from Valletta (not knowing how busy Valletta would be) and after researching it I found that we could get almost anywhere on the buses from the Mdina stop.  I found a very cool little traditional house in the middle of Rabat through AirBnB and it was perfect for our stay. Tiny in footprint but it had everything we needed. A downstairs sitting room, bathroom on the 1st floor, bedroom on the 2nd, TV room on the 3rd and a great terrace on the roof. All this combined together with an amazing staircase that was a combination of traditional sandstone stairs and modern glass wall. Very cool indeed. 

NB: These are photo's from AirBnB's website. They aren't mine.

I spent a few months in Spain in 2016, and after that a few more months in north west Africa in late 2016 early 17. Drawing on that experience I felt that Malta was very much an eclectic mix of both. It has the wonderful narrow street walled cities that Spain has but it also has that Arab influence of rows and rows of small businesses that have roller doors and apartments above. It also has quite a bit of the older abandoned properties that you see around Europe here and there. Talking to people, often the cost of repairs to the old buildings is more than you would pay for a new property so they just move on and haven't yet sold or done anything with the original home. 

Rabat has the lovely winding streets you would expect from a city this old and surprisingly compared to the balance of Malta, there isn't a lot of let go buildings in Rabat. They are still there, but no where near as prevalent as other parts of Malta.

The streets reflect lovingly looked after homes with swept stoops, painted doors and pot plants displaying an explosion of colour as they come into spring. This is one of those area's where if you go down the the plaza in front of the church you will always find a huddle of elderly men gossiping and arguing the day away. The ladies seem more intent on chores or going somewhere but the men are sitting and talking each others ears off. Actually as I write this I realize I've not seen this since Cuba. Now that I think about it - yes Cuba is exactly what it reminds me of. 

There is a well worn walk that goes between the Mdina (also the main bus stop in Rabat) and the church plaza and St Paul's Catacombs. This street is filled with restaurants of differing standards and menu options. You will literally find something for everyone. From sandwiches to Fine Dining - its there. 

The Mdina isn't just a tourist destination - people do live there so when you visit try to be a little respectful of the home owners and keep it as quiet as you can. 

Our host recommended a restaurant called Route 81 which is right next to Cork and Fork on the map here. For some reason I can't get it to show on Google maps but the owner can so I'm not sure what was going on there but it is lovely. Amazing food and while its not crazy expensive its not a cheap dinner. Its good food in a great atmosphere with incredible staff. Can't recommend it enough. 

You can easily spend an afternoon wandering the Mdina and Rabat itself is the same. There are a few small grocery stores around and one slightly larger one (on the road to St Agatha's Catacombs) so you can get most things. There is a great wine and alcohol shop just off the church plaza, but it is usually closed by dusk.

The buses from the Mdina Stops can get you almost anywhere however the stops further down into Rabat are often only used early and the last pickup there may be as late at 8:15am. We were going over the other side to get on a ferry one day and looked on their transport website and found out we could get on the bus just at the end of our street, however when we got down there that was the last bus that picked up there during the day so if you are searching for options make sure your times are correct or you will be standing there for hours! The buses are very cheap though and easy to use. The Mdina stops do have buses that can get you almost anywhere on the island so if you miss a stop at a specific station, just walk to the Mdina and you will be able to get where you need to go from there.

Location: Rabat has the Mdina which makes it's accessibility to the rest of Malta perfect.
Staff: Claudette (from Caseri) was lovely and even though we didn't arrive until 10:30pm met us at the house and showed us around.
Facilities: Great - its a small house but has everything you need.
​Beware: Nothing - except the aforementioned bus timetables.
Value: Accommodation = 10! Location = 9. Rabat was a great place for us to stay and the only reason I didn't give it a 10 was that it's not close to any beaches so if you are looking for a beach stay - its not for you.
Bed Comfort: 6 (* Bed rating explained at the bottom of this post)

AirBnB - This link will take you direct to the property. If you haven't used AirBnB before, use this link to get $55 discount on your first trip over $110.
Air Malta - we flew Air Malta from Paris and they were perfectly fine. They also partner with Air France which gives you a wider range of flights.
Malta Public Transport - there is a journey planner to help you find where you want to go.
Skyscanner flight box below for flights further afield than Malta.

* Bed Comfort Rating:
1 is OMG I'm sleeping on the floor and 10 is I died and am floating in the clouds

Nice was the start of our European jaunt for Brad's 50th trip this year. As long as I've known him he has talked about the Monaco Grand Prix so I decided I would investigate the Grand Prix for his 50th trip. Holy snapping duck shit - that is EXPENSIVE!!! I'm talking 15-20K for 4 days. Hmmm - not on my watch.

Fortunately this year Monaco also hosted the Classic Grand Prix. These are cars from pre-war to the 1980's and (despite the massive price reduction) is much more our kind of thing. It's only held every three years so while my backpacker budget was screaming loud and long, it was 90% closer to being affordable than the actual grand prix. 

We arrived in Nice to fantastic weather. It was 27 degrees, calm, sunny and perfect for walking and eating (which lets face it is our favourite thing to do)!  I had done little or no research on Nice and expected it to be nowhere near as lovely as it is. Along with miles of esplanade (promenade to you non Aussies), there are galleries and restaurants, an old city, marina's, bars, markets and heaps to see and do. After dumping our bags at our hotel we headed off for an afternoon of browsing the area and having a few wines while watching the world go by.

We wandered through an incredible assault of colours in the markets from flowers to fresh strawberries, smells from seafood to leather sandals. Our gracious hosts at The Jay Hotel recommended a local restaurant for dinner and we spent the early evening grazing on a divine meats and cheese platter while drinking local red wine. 

Jet lag after a two day trip from Australia to get here ensured we were both wide awake at 5am so true to form we headed of on our morning 10k walk. We passed so many people coming home from the night before but it was at least 6:30 before we sighted any other exercisers. Feeling old - CHECK!

It was still pitch black when we left our hotel and it was great to see the sunrise over the Cote D'Azure. We walked past homes, seafront, marina's and a very cool diving platform built off a restaurant "Le Plongeoir" that went straight into the sea. I'm assuming the restaurant name is "The Dive" but that's just my shocking french translation.

​Vieille Ville Nice is the city's Old Town district. The narrow streets and colorful buildings wind past unique little shops and delicatessens offering delicacies off all flavours. If you get tired of walking its not hard to find a pub, restaurant or cafe to rest you legs and recharge on wine or coffee. If you make it to the hilltop park you will be rewarded with amazing city and sea views. Well worth a visit.

Although we only spent 24 hours in Nice, we found our gorgeous little art deco boho (I made that term up but that's exactly how I would describe it) hotel was the perfect place to stay. Only two blocks from the Promenade, close to some lovely shops, restaurants and cafe's and within walking distance of the main restaurant precinct, the markets and the old town of Nice this lovely little hotel was a delight.

The staff were more than glad to hold our bags for us and after dropping them off we had not too far to walk at all to find a nice spot for lunch.

When we arrived back to check-in, the staff on reception very kindly told us we had been upgraded from a studio to a suite. That was a nice surprise and it was great to have a sitting are to kick back and have a wine after spending most of the day walking the town.

The bed was awesome. So comfy without being too soft and the quality pillows and black out blinds ensured we had a terrific nights sleep. It was very quiet and in fact we didn't' realise how quiet until we headed out at 5am to walk and kept running into clubbers staggering home. We hadn't heard a thing inside.
​

Breakfast is buffet style and served in the hotels little sitting area which is pictured above. They do rearrange it for breakfast so you each have a comfy seat and the little table to eat from. While it is a continental breakfast, it has every thing you could want from great coffee to pastries, to fruit and yoghurts and even sweets. I've grown fonder of continental breakfasts as I've got older and this was one of the best ones I've had to date.

The décor in the hotel is best described as Art Deco with a hint of boho chic. The colours are vibrant, the fabrics lush and the furniture is very unique.

Location: Great - close to the promenade and within walking distance of the markets and old town. It's also very easy to get to the train terminal from the hotel.
Staff: Lovely - very friendly and accommodating
Facilities: Great - breakfast was very good and only €8.
Value: - Good - Priced from $245 AUD at booking.com
Bed Comfort: 8 (* Bed rating explained at the bottom of this post)

* Bed Comfort Rating:
1 is OMG I'm sleeping on the floor and 10 is I died and am floating in the clouds.

As long as I've known Brad he has talked about doing the Grand Prix in Monaco. This year he turns 50 so I thought "what better time" and started investigating it. 

​OMG - that is ridiculously crazy expensive. To give you an example - To view the race from a Yacht (they back them into the port near the main straight) is on average €2,300 per person for the Sunday. That's nearly $3600 AUD per person to watch a race for 6 hours. Yeah - I think not! Packages would have worked out to be around $25000 AUD for us to spend 3 nights and do one day of race viewing. That's crazy money and there was no way I was going to spend that for a long weekend.

​Disappointed, I started searching for alternatives and found that Monaco also hosts the Classique Grand Prix which is run every three years. Luckily 2018 was the year! 

​I managed to find a package with Senate Grand Prix, an English company that was 80% more affordable than the main Grand Prix and we were staying at the Fairmont Hotel smack in the middle of things and had free viewing from the pool deck of the "Fairmont Hairpin" which was really great. I booked us in to the VIP suite at the Fairmont for the Sunday which was overlooking the track, had complimentary food and drink and a maximum of 16 people. I think there were maybe 8 of us so it was a great day spent with some lovely people.​

The races started out with the pre-war cars and built up to the late 70's slot style cars we are used to. I loved how traditional everything was right up to the cigarette sponsorship. I'm sure its not ethically correct now days, but it was great to see the cars in their purest form. The Classic Grand Prix isn't like the normal one, its lots of shorter races over the day so you spend from 9am till around 4pm watching the racing.

I found it great value for money compared with the horrendously expensive  standard Grand Prix and the variety of cars, ages and speeds kept things interesting throughout the day.

Location: Monte Carlo, Monaco
Staff: Senate Grand Prix - very easy to deal with and extremely helpful.
Fairmont Hotel Staff - lovely, very accommodating
Facilities: Great as you would expect from a hotel of this level
​Beware: Not really something to beware of but the hotel is inside the track so you have quite a roundabout way to get in and out of the precinct. Stairs are prevelant so if you are not able to do stairs confirm with Senate Grand Prix first as to your options.
Value: Great. It seemed expensive at first however that's mostly becuase our Australian dollar is so crap. Overall in Euro its not too bad.
Bed Comfort: 7 (* Bed rating explained at the bottom of this post)

Extra Notes: We did have a challenge with the Horizon restaurant in that I ordered a Rare steak and was very explanatory in that (for some reason I always end up with a medium steak and I LIKE RARE!). I wasn't rude at all but explained that the blue side of rare was preferable to medium. The waiter was very nice however I got a well done steak. I mean WELL DONE! It was completely brown inside. I asked them to replace it and it took 3 levels of staff and 40 minutes. I don't mind that the steak was supplied incorrectly, I am in a french speaking country and I'm speaking English (with an Australian accent), however taking 40 minutes to replace a rare steak is not acceptable and I would assume that it would result in a right bollocking to the wait staff from most of the people that dine in that environment. In addition to that the wait staff took away my sides when the steak went back and I never got them back. So I ended up eating meat and nothing else for dinner. I just couldn't be arsed by that point. They also completely stuffed our bill up, but as it was in our favour and after the steak debacle I didn't correct it. I would have usually but I felt ignored because I was so accommodating about the steak so I paid it as it was and didn't correct it.

Senate Grand Prix
The Fairmont Monte Carlo
Viator for day trips in and around the south of France
Skyscanner Search Box for flights to Monaco below

Most of you will be aware that I walked the Santiago De Camino in 2016. More than a few of you will have heard some of my amazing stories from along that pilgrimage, however what you probably haven't heard is the silly stories from along the way. I have of course changed the names to protect the stupid and sadly can't often add accompanying photos  (for the same reason) but I'm hoping you get a laugh out of these and it inspires you to get out and experience a few of your own silly stories.

For some reason I don't remember exactly where it was but it was before the Meseta because I did not yet have Sue with me however it was heavily treed so I'm thinking just outside of Pamplona maybe. 

Anyway - I digress. So: it was one of the few days that I walked completely on my own and actually had my music in. I thought before I started that I would have trouble with my phone going flat on a daily basis because I would be walking to music pretty much non stop. That wasn't the case however and I can really only remember one day that I spent with my ear buds in for most of the day.  Weirdly I even remember the song - it was Back Where We Started From which is by a mostly forgotten 80's band called Box Of Frogs. Anyway - again, I digress...

So: I'm walking along trying to pace my steps to Box of Frogs and I saw this young girl who to be honest was walking like she had a giant shit in her pants! Now, I am familiar with the shit pant waddle. I have a bad back and when it decides that I've had way too much fun for that month and slows me down I too do the shit pant waddle. So my initial thought was that she had hurt her back. I immediately felt horrible for her however I have to admit I did start to calculate how far the next village was and for how long I may have to carry her pack. Not that I wouldn't have, but I was having a really nice day on my own and was really eating through the miles. It was more a line of thought that I would have to  drastically slow down and my 35k day would get blown to shit. 

Knowing what my thought process was you can understand that my asking her if she was OK was really me saying "Hi, can you make it to the next alburgue OK?". She looked quite teary but insisted she was fine so I smiled nodded and popped my ear buds back in and turned and started walking again. I don't think I'd gone 50 steps when I realised that she had answered me with the same tone I use when I'm in heaps of pain but you talking to me is making it FAR FAR worse. So I stopped and waited for her and again asked if she was really OK.

Looking back it was at this point that I should have realised her nervousness wasn't pain based, but rather shame based. However - this wasn't totally apparent just yet.

So shit pant waddle girl tells me her name is Amanda (changed to protect her identity obviously). She also tells me that her back is fine. She has a more "personal" challenge going on. OK - I'm intrigued but trying not to show it. I assure her that it's probably nothing I haven't seen or done before so if she wants some help I'm happy to offer it but she will have to tell me the exact challenge she is having first.

This is when I realise that the shit pant waddle is the result of some kind of "nether regions" issue. She declines to discuss it any further and tries to waddle off and its at this point that I stop her in her tracks (not hard she's making maybe 3km an hour) and insist that there is no way she is going to make the next town let alone all the way to Santiago so she better just tell me what's wrong so we can work out how to fix it.

Very sheepishly she tells me that she has bum crack chafe! Not in those words exactly and skinny little thing she is I'm not sure she knew the word chafe before that fateful day, however that is in fact what is going on.

So being me and knowing just how bad this can end up (not saying I've had it before but I have heard some horrific hiking stories and I"m sure this exact situation had been discussed on a previous occasion), I take charge of the situation very much to Amanda's horror.

Weirdly there was almost no people around on that stretch of trail and being very forested I coerce her into following me into the bushes where we will "fix this". To her credit she followed the crazy tattoo'd Australian woman around the back of some dense shrubs and actually didn't look too horrified about the prospect. 

I spent 3 minutes extolling the virtues of vasoline, explained the application process and after digging some out of my pack, did the polite thing and turned around so she could take the appropriate action. She seemed to have completed her mission of mercy so I turned back just in time to see her fishing in her bum crack for her undies. I was mortified she had kept them on and told her that they must come off. She argued. I wouldn't budge and eventually I again faced the forest and she removed the offending item. She seemed very perturbed that she was sans jocks so her attention span maybe wasn't quite what it should have been and in her efforts to stuff said underwear into her pack dropped them revealing to me that she had been hiking in a cotton G String! 

OMG the folly of the youth! Cotton, sure I could understand that maybe you aren't a hiker and its only the Camino - we're not in the Bornean jungle here - so I have some leeway for the cotton component of her smalls, however a G STRING! OMG A G STRING! Honestly what on earth makes you think you can walk 20-30kms a day (when you don't usually walk more than 10km per week) with a chunk of cotton cloth jammed up your bum crack and NOT have anything go horribly pear shaped. 

The look of horror on my face must have scared her more that I would have expected. We walked together for most of that day and apart from some idle lunch chatter there wasn't a lot of communication to be honest. She looked wildly relieved when she stopped and I said I was continuing to the next village but was in fact very grateful and promised that at the next big town she would purchase more appropriate underwear and also promised to go commando until that day. 

Strangely I did see her again but it wasn't until the last few days before Santiago. She spotted me across the room in a very busy Albergue and dropped trou to show me her "more appropriate" undies. I smiled and gave her a thumbs up and her new younger, much trendier supporters howled with excitment. 

My work was done. Amanda was bum crack chafe free and could no longer be called shit pant waddle girl.

​This is how Florence Nightingale must have felt...