life and puppies

I’ll try to be brief.  We arrived in Malta last night and had a smooth trip.  Though I will say I doubt that I’ll opt for RyanAir again.  While it’s seemingly cheap, you pay through the nose for baggage so it seems a realistic option only if you are based in Europe and don’t have to bring a lot of stuff.  I knew this, but didn’t know that the one bag we had paid to check had to be no more than 15kg.  That’s about 35 lbs.  Ours was significantly more than that becasue we had complied with the US rules, having the bagcome in at just under 50 lbs.  This meant we had three choices: (1) throw things out, which I wasn’t excatly against; (2) pay 120£ to check the 50lb-er; and (3)  repack so that bag was under 15kg and check another bag with all of the extra crap for 35£ or $50.  We opted to repack, but have already been strategizing for our return.  We are obviously RyanAir amateurs: a guy in the airport with us looked like he was dressed relatively normally but at the gate, while in line – right before our eyes – he stripped about 5 layers off and stuffed them in his carry-on (which had been measured for size before the gate).  I overheard him say, “I know how to play their games.”  Yikes.  Anyway, the flight was nice and we got into Malta around 8:30 pm local time.  That’s an hour ahead of Britain, 6 hours ahead of NYC, 7 hours ahead of Madison and 9 hours ahead of LA.  Thank you.  We were able to jump on the transfer we (I) booked and took off for the hotel: the Hilton Malta, a generous gift from our beloved Terry.  The hotel is beautiful.  I wish you could see it.  But, alas, you will have to wait until our return as the internet is too expensive…How am I writing this, you ask?  Well, given Terry’s diamond status, we have access to the Executive Lounge, which has free internet.  Supposedly.  We can’t get it to work on our phones, though, so I am using the free computer provided in the lounge.  Our room has a spectacular view of the Mediterranean, though, so I’m not complaining.  I did call the front desk last night, however, when we arrived in our room.  It was supposed to be a king, but it was two twins.  I didn’t care too much but could hear Terry’s voice in my head, so I called and said, “Um…”  The guy said, “Oh, we’ll fix that.”  While we were out having a drink and a snack someone came into our room and pushed the two twins together.  Hmm.  I could have done that.  Of course, now the headboards are all weird and there’s only one bedside table, but we are in…Malta!

So, unless our phones shape up, no more pictures until we’re stateside!