“Another year older and another year wiser,” or so they say.  I definitely don’t feel any wiser and luckily I don’t actually feel any older, especially when I get to celebrate doing my favourite thing, travelling and eating.

We did 5 days in Malta and another 3 days in Palermo, Sicily.

Malta

I decided to splurge my hard earned SPG points for an amazing suite that overlooked St. Julian’s Bay.  Best part is we arrived to a bottle of bubbles and chocolate complimentary of the hotel for my birthday.

The first day will relatively laid back with everyone arriving at different times.  So really it was my friend and I staying cool in the Le Meridian lounge eating and drinking to our hearts content while we waited for my brother to arrive.

We did try to go out to see the night life, but realised pretty quickly the scene was way too young for us (teens and early 20s?) and found a place to sip on some whiskey instead.

The rest of the trip was spent seeing the sights and eating to our hearts content.  If you haven’t already, check out my post on the best meal we had in all of Malta!  Be prepared for some mouth watering food pictures.

We also had 2 mornings where my brother and I went scuba diving as it is supposed to be one of the best places to dive in the Mediterranean.  I’m not going to lie, I think we’ve been spoiled by the warm waters of Asia and Hawaii, and really did not love shore diving or having to squeeze ourselves into a double layer of 5mm wetsuits.  We did 4 dives and the visibility and marine life were just O-K, and everyone claims we just had bad luck with it.

The last dive at a wreck off the blue grotto was by far the best and definitely wish we had done both our dives that day there.

Not sure if I would dive again in Malta, except maybe to check out the blue hole and the remains of the azure window. Otherwise too cold and I prefer diving off a boat…

One thing I would definitely suggest is checking out Mdina, the silent city, which is the old capital and Medieval town in Malta.  You’ll be able to walk the whole city within 30 minutes, but we took our time and enjoyed the quiet ally ways and beautiful views.

If you couldn’t tell already,  I definitely had a favourite pose to do on this trip.  Dancer / Needles just look absolutely beautiful and I probably had the most fun doing yoga on our boat tour to the blue lagoon.  Although touristy, it really is an amazingly beautiful place.

Food wise, Malta definitely wins an award for some amazing pasta and fresh fish dishes!

Palermo, Sicily

When we landed in Palermo and were driving to our Airbnb, we weren’t all that impressed with what we saw, but we were going to make the most of the trip and at least find all the yummy food places.

We took a stroll around town and found most the main sights within walking distance, but it was so hot we had to go back to cool off. The heat made all so cranky, we pretty much spent every afternoon in Palermo enjoying the AC inside. Plus it seemed like local were out and about in the morning and by afternoon were no where in sight for siesta, so why not follow suit!

One of the mornings we found some of the famous markets and got ourselves some street food as breakfast and picked up a 2 kg of shrimp to cook. Look at how massive these guys were!

Final day, we found another pasta place to try! We arrived to a huge queue, but there was no order. The host had me write my name on a shirt with no numbering system, and then would call out numbers. We figured out pretty quickly he was calling our party sizes and would just raise our hand whenever we heard 3. Worked out pretty well, we got our table decently quickly and proceeded to get our food and more importantly, wine!

A pretty chilled out way to celebrate, but I loved every second and all the food I got to eat. How do you like celebrating?