Spring Break 2019: Malta and Mykonos

Apologies for the extended hiatus. I just love to keep myself busy and unfortunately my space here is too often near the end of my to do list. Let's cover a couple things before we get to the rest of the post: I turned 21! And rightly took a shot at midnight while on a school field trip to celebrate (sorry Professor). I've eaten my way through Assisi, Florence, Pisa, and Siena. I started tutoring English at a local Italian high school. I've been blogging for my study abroad program! I came to grips with some longstanding mental health and body image speed bumps enough to post about it publicly for the first time. I landed my dream job for this summer! I think that gets us mostly caught up....

For Spring Break, Curtis, Emily, Gaby, and I decided warmth was the way to go so we headed south; first to Malta then to Greece!

The warm sea breezes greeted us in Malta the second we stepped off our (delayed) flight. We spent our four days basking in the sunlight as we explored all that Valletta, Sliema, Comino, and Gozo had to offer.

Malta has one of the best souvenir shops we've come across so far! Called Souvenirs That Don't Suck, this shop is definitely worth looking up the next time you're bouncing around the island.

We wandered into Karnival ta' Malta celebrations on our first afternoon in Valletta and had an absolute blast walking along the massive parade floats, dancers, and, of course, sampling from the dessert stalls!

A huge outdoor party, Karnival ta' Malta quickly earned its place in my heart as one of my favorite Carnivale celebrations so far!

One of the best things about traveling as a pack of 20-somethings is that we basically  make our route up as we go along. One of the most challenging things? That we make our route up as we go along.

We ended up taking a full day boat and jeep tour of Gozo and Comino, the other two islands of Malta, and we highly recommend it! Gozo was breathtakingly beautiful (Game of Thrones fans might recognize a few locations as some of the series is filmed on the tiny island) 

Malta was breathtakingly beautiful with some of the kindest people, freshest fruit, generous happy hours, and hundreds of spots to wander and accidentally find yourself lounging by the ocean. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves -- and also couldn't wait to hop over to Mykonos!

The travelling between locations was definitely the most taxing part of the entire trip -- culminating in our iconic 13-hour overnight stay in the Athens airport on the way back home to Italy. From Malta we flew back to Rome and then from Rome to Athens. We arrived in Athens at midnight and hopped on our 6am ferry from Athens to Mykonos. We were definitely trying our best to enjoy the energy and innate ability to sleep on airport benches that comes with this age.

Once we finally made it to our place in Myknonos, we really settled in. Besides our late afternoon strolls to town for dinner, we mostly set up camp on the bean bag loungers on our grassy veranda or lounged on the beach we had all to ourselves. (And I can't recommend the place that we stayed enough; the kindest staff, the best location, the best views! Even a resident zoo of pets that kept us company. Definitely consider them for your next trip to Mykonos, tell Sofia that we sent you, and request the room with the hot tub)

Visiting in the off season really helped reinforce our lazy mood -- practically everything except a few restaurants that cater mostly to locals was closed, which ended up being absolutely perfect. During high season, Mykonos is basically one huge outdoor party. The island was so tranquil our entire stay and we soaked up every bit of the Grecian sun that we could. The sun...and the 3 Fs: feta, fruit, & fish!

Nothing quite like the Grecian golden hour

When you find yourself in Mykonos next, also check out Kazarma restaurant in Little Venice. Our choice for 2 out of the 3 dinners we ate in Mykonos, the food, the service, and the view are all unparalleled. (Psst -- make friends with your server and you'll end up with a bottle of Grecian liquorice liquor on the house)

A family vacation for the ages, we spent 10 days eating, drinking, exploring, and basking in the warmth and it was nothing short of perfect. We returned a little tanner (or with a few more freckles, in my case) and a little happier -- the best refresher to push us through the end of the semester.