Captain Morgan & The Importance of Planning

The upside to booking any holiday well in advance is that you have the world at your fingertips. (That is also the downside, you know... where in the heck do you pick to go??) It also means that you have the convenience of time before actually leaving to think about the trip. Where will you stay? What will you do when you get there?

For my upcoming trip I have the luxury of time to research the places I'll be going and find the best things to do, so when I arrive I can do what feels best on a given day.

For some activities though, you need to make reservations well in advance, as annoying as it may be. There are a thousand-million little reasons why: Maybe your activity only runs on certain days. Maybe the tour will be completely booked by the time you arrived at your destination. And so on, and so forth...

I am not a person who takes kindly to missing out on an activity I sorely want to do because I didn't book it in time. Especially with trips I've been slowly planning for a year. (That's right, I started forming ideas for this trip while on my last trip in Rome... it's the best time really, when you're out and about and hearing of fabulous places to visit from other travelers)

My advice to you, if you have time on your side, is to research your activities/destination thoroughly. I start with tripadvisor.com and then eventually (a couple of months later) end up just googling the destination name + activities.

Today I made a breakthrough with my Malta activities. I knew that I wanted to visit Malta's smaller islands: Gozo and Comino. I also wanted to take a day and visit the ancient city of Valletta. And I knew that those things were about all I'd have time to do while on this trip. (Bummer!) A couple of weeks ago I started researching ferry routes to get to the smaller islands. I'm cool with taking a ferry. But I knew it may not be the best way to see those islands. I would have had to take a local bus to the ferry port and the whole thing could have become very time consuming (which, if I had two to three weeks solely on Malta wouldn't have been a bad thing). So. Not knowing what was available as far as boat excursions I finally happened upon this gem:

Captain Morgan Cruises/Fernando 85ft Schooner 
 (And you thought I was talking about Captain Morgan - the Rum, didn't you?)

Gozo/Comino/Blue Lagoon Cruise

Includes transfer to/from hotel, food, drinks and snorkel gear

My reaction: SOLD!

The Blue Lagoon at Comino

If you hadn't guessed it by now, I'm a bit of a boat junkie. "A bit" might
be an understatement. I love day expeditions on small boats that hug coastlines and offer snorkeling. So fun!
So I booked it today. If I had waited until I arrived on island (May 4th), I would have toured Valletta on May 5th and tried for the cruise May 6th. Well, the tour doesn't run on May 6th. They only operate Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays until June.

Oh my gosh I can't wait to be on vacation.