2 Sep 2018
We slept in late after a long nights rest. We made it to breakfast at 9:30 am. It was quite a spread. After breakfast, we decided to wonder around the hotel to see what facilities are available. We are glad we booked into the the Westin Dragonara. It is slightly pricey but the service and facilities are good.
We decided to do the hop-on-hop-off bus tour of Malta with our friends. We got our friends to meet us at the hotel as our hotel is a pickup point.
Booking for this trip is rather convoluted. We booked the trip through the concierge at our hotel. He gave us a receipt but we were told payment will be collected at stop 17 of the tour. We get to stop 17 in Silema and two men boarded the bus to collect the fare.
The tour takes us past Valletta but not into the town and heads for Mdina. There are two tours; North Island tour and the South Island tour. Mid-way to Mdina the bus stops at one of the regular stops. Those going on the South Island tour needed to change buses.
The bus then takes us through Mdina and heads for Golden Bay where we get off to have lunch and look around. Golden Bay is on the West coast of the island.
After lunch, we caught the next bus that took us to St Paul’s Bay and then back to our hotels in St Julians. Mid-way, the bus stops to wait for the another bus behind to pick up passengers from that bus. It is not the most efficient system and the fast driving around the island did not improve the experience. However, we did learn something from the commentary. We waited nearly 30mins or so in the hot sun for the other bus to turn up. I would say the hop-on-hop-off bus service is rather crude but we got to see a lot of the island.
At night, we all went out for dinner to celebrate Fiona’s birthday. We had a scrumptious seafood dinner on the beach.
