Tag Archives: Malta

Fears of Flying

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Here is a photo that summarizes my trip-planning progress:

travel-montage

I depart in 15 days.  I am in full-blown “What if?” mode.

What if I get pickpocketed in Rome (not a far-fetched scenario—my nephew’s wallet was stolen in Rome last year).  What if I’m packing too much into this itinerary and I won’t be able to appreciate it all?  What if I miss a flight/train/bus?  What if people feel sorry for me, a woman traveling alone?  What if I forget my phone charger?  What if I show up at a hotel and they have no record of my reservation and no rooms? What if I rent a car in Spain, and I forget to ask them to give me an English-language GPS, and my Spanish isn’t good enough for me to follow the directions?  What if my son doesn’t water my plants while I’m gone and they all die?  What if I fail to blog along the way, which means I’ll have schlepped my laptop all over for no reason?  What if I trip and fall into a cistern at Pompeii and it gets dark and no one knows I’m there and … are there wild jackals in Italy?

So you see, I have been busy.  I really should have pursued a career in disaster planning.  I would have been a natural at it.

I laugh kindly at myself as I observe the endless chain of what ifs come and go. I will prepare as well as I can. I will resist the urge to over prepare, because that would allow no space for spontaneity. I will deal with anything unexpected as it arises.

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On Friday night my sister joined me and some friends for happy hour.  Long-time readers of this blog will remember that while my son was in prison, there was plenty of additional excitement in my life.  It’s never just one thing, is it?  There was a plumbing problem in my apartment which caused me to have no kitchen for six weeks. I tripped and sprained a knee ligament and was on crutches for about the same six weeks.  My mother was her third major car accident, which caused micro fractures in her spine and led to her giving up driving.

And then … my sister was battling Stage 4 colon cancer. She went through hell.  She’s been cancer free for a year and a half but she’s still dealing with the lingering effects of it all—the  surgeries, chemo, radiation, and all the other aspects of life that are affected by a life-threatening illness—finances, keeping up with a house and yard, two teenage kids, getting her strength back.  The list goes on.

How is this connected to traveling?  Because at happy hour we talked about the phrase “You’re so strong.”  My sister hears it a lot.  I used to hear it a lot when I was a single mom pulling myself up by the proverbial boot straps.  Other friends had been through trials and had heard it too.

We all agreed that we hate the phrase.

“What choice did I have?” my sister asked.  Right.  I had thought the same thing many times when people had said “You’re so brave!”  What choice did I have?  I admit I had occasional fantasies about dropping my son off at my mom’s and running away to Florida. I know there are people who abandon their kids, and people who avoid getting treatment for serious illnesses because they’re in denial or afraid.  But the vast majority of us just do what needs to be done because the alternative would be hurtful to ourselves or others.

“Being strong is when you are afraid of something,” said a member of our group, a psychotherapist who is also a cancer survivor.  “And you do it anyway, even though you could choose not to and there wouldn’t be any consequences.”

And that’s how this relates to travel, especially for someone like me who travels solo a lot.  I do have anxious thoughts about getting lost, being swindled, being disappointed.  But I go anyway.  The fear of regretting that I never saw the Amalfi Coast is stronger than the what ifs.

Red (and White) Flags

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In one month I’ll be in Malta, a tiny country most people have never heard of.

Here is a representative sampling of travel books available in the library for the three countries I’ll be visiting: Italy, Spain, and Malta.  There was a whole shelf of books about Italy, a half shelf for Spain, and one slim volume about Malta.  This should have told me something about what a hot (not) tourist destination Malta is.  But once I get something fired up in my imagination, there’s usually no turning back.

travel-books

Of course Vatican City is technically a country—the smallest in the world.  I’ll be visiting the Basilica of St. Peter and the Vatican Museum and I’m sure there are entire books about them, but I don’t need books to tell me I’ll be seeing a lot of paintings of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.

Someone at work laughed about me going to Malta and suggested that since I would also be visiting Vatican City, I could make this a grand tour of tiny countries.  You know, the ones that send one athlete to the Olympics—an athlete who doesn’t stand a chance?  I could have gone to San Marino, which is surrounded by Italy; and Monaco, which is on my bucket list.  Liechtenstein would be a bit further north in Europe, but not as far as the other five that round out the Top 10 List of tiny countries, which are all tropical islands: Nauru, Tuvalu, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Maldives, and Grenada.

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The lack of interest in Malta may have something to do with how difficult it is to get there.  I will be leaving from Sorrento, where I will have spent three days seeing Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast, and Capri.  You would think, from reading the one book about Malta, that you could just hop a train to Naples and fly right to Malta.  Boom—easy!  But alas, this was the same book that told me I must see the underground, 5,000-year-old catacombs on Malta, the ones that are closed for renovation until 2017.  The book also said it would be “easy” to take a ferry from Italy to Malta.  However I need to get to Madrid afterwards and it would take two days to get to the coast of Spain by ferry.

All the flights from Naples left at either 6:00 in the morning or 4:00 in the afternoon.  They all connected somewhere else, which meant that reasonable-sounding 4:00 p.m. flight would get me into Malta at 11:30 at night.  And the 6:00 a.m. flights were much faster; I seriously considered one that had a 6-hour layover in Paris.  Finally, I decided to fly from Rome. This will require me to get up early—but not quite as early as the 6:00 a.m. flight—catch a train to Naples, then connect to Rome, then catch the express to the Rome airport, then fly at 11:00 a.m. to Catania—which is on Sicily, then finally arrive on Malta at 3:30 in the afternoon.  That is, if nothing goes wrong on any of the five legs of the journey.

malta-sorrento-map

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Another puzzle has to do with baggage.  The flights to and from Malta are cheap—if I am willing to travel with only a carry-on bag weighing no more than 22 pounds.  I spend some time researching ultra light bags; I could get a nice one for $70.  Or I could just pay RyanAir $75 for the privilege of bringing a real suitcase with me.

I toy with the idea of traveling light.  It would be easier to get on and off all the trains and buses and planes. I’d be less conspicuous, since my regular suitcase is purple.  It could be kind of a cool challenge to wear only two outfits for a month, to say “no” to buying clothes in Italy, and eschewing souvenirs.  Plus I would be doing my small part to save the planet!

Nah.  I’ll bring my purple monster.  I like to have options.

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I contemplate these “problems” knowing that countless refugees are attempting the crossing to Italy in rubber rafts before the sea gets too rough in November.

Malted

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I go through three stages of planning a big trip.

First, a caveat: I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to have any of the following “problems”—first-world problems, as they say.

First I pore over maps, getting more and more excited but less and less focused.  “If I go all the way to Thailand, I might as well go to Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam, right?  And Burma!  That’s not touristy yet. Japan wouldn’t be that far away.  It’s only a few thousand miles more.  Then there’s Australia; I’ve always wanted to go there, and New Zealand is so close ….”

At this point I am looking at a $20,000, three-month vacation.  But it’s fun to dream.

The second stage is getting real and picking something.  In the current case, my friend Lynn suggested meeting in Spain and traveling around the sunny south.  I said yes.  Since I have been stockpiling my vacation time, I thought I’d go early—to Rome, then Malta, then on to Spain.

I spent a couple weeks reading guidebooks and researching plane fares and hotel rooms. I had to wait for some big expenses, like a new refrigerator, to work their way through my finances like a capybara in a boa constrictor. Finally, the day came when I had the spare dosh to buy my ticket.  The fares had gone up by $300.  I tried all the tricks, like waiting until Tuesday at 3pm Eastern time, and burning the effigy of a 747 under the full moon, but in the end the budget boa had to swallow another very large expense.

But on to stage three: Nailing down the small flights, hotel reservations, and tickets to popular sites.

I must say, RyanAir makes Delta look like a paragon of transparency. RyanAir came up as the cheapest flight from Rome to Malta, and really it was so cheap I wondered how they can stay in business.  That becomes clear when you actually book the ticket.  Would you like to bring a bag?  That’ll be €18 for a carry-on sized bag and €35 for an actual suitcase.  You know, those things tourists take on planes?

How about a seat upgrade for more leg room?  Only €15.  No thanks, but there’s an unavoidable €8 charge just to choose a seat—any seat.  Being an obstinate person, and since the flight is only a couple hours, I chose not to choose a seat.  I will probably regret it.  I will probably get a middle seat between a snorer and a crying baby.

Thank goodness I don’t have an infant of my own, because the infant fee is €20.  I’m not kidding.  Then there are fees for musical instruments, golf clubs, bikes, and therapeutic oxygen (€50), which you need after running the gauntlet of the RyanAir website.

Finally, I went to check out.  There was a €2 fee for paying.  RyanAir really puts the ire in Ireland.  This charge for using a credit or debit card makes me want to fly to Ireland, march into RyanAir’s HQ, and try to pay for my ticket in cash.  They would probably charge me €3 for that.

Next, I went to book my carefully-researched hotels in Rome and Malta.  Yes, they were both fully booked for the times I wanted.  I will therefore be staying in a convent in Rome and at a hostel in Malta. That’s okay.  It’s an adventure, right?

The convent beds have those super-cheap bed spreads that appear to be made out of plastic that you see in Latin America and third-rate motels in the US.  Ick.  This tells me that the sheets will also be threadbare—if they are even made of thread.  Maybe I can fit a nice cotton sheet into my suitcase, and leave it behind when I fly to Malta so I don’t have to pay a fee for the extra 2 ounces of weight.

Well.  The convent is dirt cheap.

Next, booking tickets to the Hal Soflieni Hypogeum, the 2,500 B.C. catacombs the 2016 Malta guidebook raves about and which is kind of my Holy Grail on this trip.

Noooooo!  It is “Closed for Renovation until 2017.”