We left on Friday morning and upon arrival were greeted by a U.S. Embassy rep. who walked all of us through clearing customs and briefed us on how not to get into trouble. He left us with his personal cell phone number and instructions to call if we had a temporary lapse of judgement and ended up in trouble.
It seemed like it took us forever to finally get to our hotel but after working through several snags we did manage to get there. After checking in we grabbed a bite to eat at a local Italian restaurant that was walking distance from the hotel and then back to the room for the night.
The kids were chomping-at-the-bit to go to the pool so on Saturday morning after breakfast we all went down to the pool. It was there that S put his plan into play. The night before, on our dinner expedition, he saw a sign for an all-day boat cruise to some of the local sights. He pitched it to us and we took a vote. We could just hang out at the pool/hotel all day or go on this cruise. Just about everyone voted for the cruise. By the time we voted on it we had about 15 minutes to gather up all of our kids and stuff and get out to the bus in front of the hotel. We forgot towels, snacks, and most importantly sunscreen. By the time we fugured this out we were already on the boat and headed out to sea. OOPS!
The first place we stopped was the island where the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked for 3 months. (it is in the book of Acts) Anyway, the boat docked and we all hiked up to the monument to Paul, took pictures and explored this desolate little island for a bit. Then we boarded the boat again and headed to the next place.
They took us to the place where they had filmed the movie The Count of Monte Cristo. We got tot see the Chateau D'If, the cliff that they threw him off of, and the cave where he found the treasure. The water was incredibly beautiful. The older kids kept commenting on how pretty the water was.
We then went to "Blue Lagoon". This was a popular place as there were several boats moored there and lots of swimmers. We were informed that we would be there for about 2.5 hours and that we were welcomed to jump off of the boat (there was a ladder to get back up onto the boat) and swim around or go ashore to the tiny little beach to swim. We did both. After jumping off the boat numerous times we decided that we'd go for a change of scenery and play at the little beach for a while so the little boys could play in the water too. After about 20 minutes or so two ladies walked by me on their way down the beach to the water. It took me about 15 seconds and a double-take to figure out that they were topless! After regaining composure I glanced around for my innocent children, especially my 9 and 12 year-old sons and yelled "all Fishers out of the water!" Come on guys we're going back to the boat! I was pretty sure that they knew why I was frantically herding them out of the water and back to the boat because no one threw a fit...they all came willingly...now, how often does THAT happen...kids willingly getting out of the water...well, unless they are purple and freezing to death. NOTE: H informed me that they all thought that I'd seen a shark...hee hee hee
On our way back to the main island of Malta we kept seeing big greenish/brown jellyfish. After about 10 minutes E started counting them. By the time we got back we had counted 181 jelly fish!
Did I mention that JB had started to get sick on the boat? Well, he did. He had a terrible headache and a fever. I gave him some Motrin, he slept for a little bit and felt much better. By Sunday he was feeling much worse and his fever was quite a bit higher as well. So I decided to stay in the hotel with JB and the 3 younger boys while S took the 4 older ones into Mosta for church and then to Viletta (the capital of Malta) for a documentary movie called "The Malta Experience". Needless to say I had a lot of "fun" cooped up in a hotel room with one sickie and 3 rambunctious boys...you can only play "Go Fish" so many times. :-)
We ended up encountering a couple of snags on the departure. The ground people at the Malta Airport weren't as supportive as they could have been. We were supposed to have airstairs to walk up to board the plane. Said airstairs were parked about 100 yds in front of us but we could not get anyone to pull them over to the plane for us. After 26 of us climbing the ladder up through the pilot's hatch (including young children and a pregnant lady) one of our Air Force ground crew decided that had enough of the insanity and hi-jacked the airstairs. The airport ground crew saw this and all of the sudden we got a lot of attention! hee hee hee Go Air Force!
We all had a great time despite the snags.
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