It rains in Malta as well as in Wales.

Bus drivers are not friendly.

Bus drivers don’t even wave to each other when passing like Welsh ones do.

Car drivers toot a lot. Maybe their horn is connected to their brakes.

I don’t like artichokes.

Spa treatments aren’t for me.

There are no sea birds as the locals shoot them all. The sea without gulls is wrong and weird.

I said ‘Bonjus’ to all the cats I met in case they didn’t understand English hello.

The cacti growing wild have leaves bigger than my head.

I get over-excited seeing wild cacti.

People carve their names or initials into cactus leaves. Strange bad people.

Queueing is only something the British and Germans do.

Buses are frequent, but you need to channel your inner rugby player in the scrummage to get on.

Selfish people who turn up late for tours annoy me.

It’s really, really steep getting down to the boats for the Blue Grotto tour.

The Blue Grotto is the most beautiful blue sea.

Health and safety on boat trips in Malta are non-existent.

Stepping heavily into a small boat can make five people scream simultaneously.

The catacombs in Rabat disappointingly don’t have any bones there.

Mdina is beautiful and like being on a film set.

Twenty minutes on a tour of Mdina is not enough time there to soak it all up.

Pea pies are delicious.

It is very steep everywhere. I now have buttocks of steel.

The ratio of cats I saw in Malta is greater than in Jersey.

Shouting ‘that’s me’ and doing jazz hands at the driver waiting at the airport holding your name on a sign is guaranteed to freak him out.

Valetta is a picturesque city, that doesn’t feel like a city.

I’m easily hypnotised by watching the sea wash up jellyfish, then swish back to take them away again.

There is a lot of construction work on high-rise buildings in progress. I’m not sure that’s progress.

It’s a very cosmopolitan country with Arabic, Italian, English, and French influences.

Lots of people smoke there and the beach at Mellieha was littered with cigarette butts.

As a fat lady, I would have been a goddess in ancient Malta as there were hundreds of fat lady statues found in the temples.

There were two wild flamingos at the Ghadira nature reserve that had stopped off on route to Africa.

The national bird of Malta is the blue rock thrush. I never saw one.

While I enjoyed Malta, Jersey still has my heart.

(More detailed travel write-up to follow.)