In which Demi goes mad for Malta

As I've mentioned in the last few posts, I embarked on a spontaneous end-of-the-summer-and-student-lifestyle holiday with my friend A., who I've been friends with since the middle of high school.

Flapper fancy dress at school

A. and I had several lessons together, when the year group started to get set depending on ability aged 14, including the core Maths/English/Science, and we soon struck up a friendship which helped to form a group of friends - my home girls - which still exists. Then we both, coincidentally, chose to go to Nottingham University, where we subsequently became even closer than we already were. Our third year at university was especially important to me, as we both experienced a lot of heartache, upset and joy which served to bind us tighter to one another, providing a comforting link to home and our past.

I rarely have to explain anything to her - she always seems to know exactly how I'm feeling and, while she doesn't always agree, can empathise and advise. While I jokingly think of myself as a therapist to several people, A. is my own therapist. And because she's awesome, she got snapped up for a big accountancy job down in London, which she started on Monday (and I know she'll be kicking ass at, already), leading to our separation for the first time since we've been friends. She only left on Sunday, and I miss her already.

I love this photo, from when we went to Liverpool to visit O.

BUT, this is not a melancholy post. We had too much fun for this to be a depressing post!

Malta was brilliant. I had no idea what to expect before we arrived, after throwing it out as a random location suggestion while we tossed ideas around. We'd both been lucky enough to already have been to a lot of mainland Europe, and our big American adventure had to be put on the back burner when news of the mysterious and rather scary lump reduced my chances of getting insurance to pretty much zilch.

After the hassle of travelling hand baggage only, thanks to pesky Ryanair and their ridiculous charges, we staggered out of the airport to be greeted by the cheerful mini-bus driver, who informed us that there was a heatwave currently hitting the island... yup, back to 42 degrees. And this time, we'd gone cheap and our hotel had neither air-con nor its own pool. As I am not one who copes particularly well with extreme heat when neither of these are nearby, I was massively apprehensive of what the week would bring.

Luckily our hotel was kind enough to provide us with a fan. Unsurprisingly, it simply wasn't enough to properly contend with the heat.

Nice try.

Despite the heatwave making it more difficult, we had a great time exploring the island. Due to its turbulent political history (such as casual invasions and being "gifted" by various monarchs) the melting-pot of culture we found was unlike anything I'd ever seen. The majority of the population spoke English as a second language (handy, as their place names contained ridiculous amounts of the letter 'x' and far too few vowels!) due to the fact that the British were the last of the colonisers, but due to its proximity to Italy, it retains a largely Mediterranean feel - from the food to the older, Venetian-style decorative buildings. Which, in turn, rubbed shoulders with modern North African-style buildings, with their blocky silhouettes. 

The capital, Valetta, and the original capital city Mdina, were absolutely stunning. The latter was especially unique – after the capital was moved to Valetta following the great Siege of Malta, Mdina was rebuilt but somewhat abandoned; the streets were mostly deserted, a city frozen in time only interrupted by the wandering tourists. The entire city has been turned into something  of a giant museum, overflowing with history and treasures to be explored. Unfortunately I forgot my camera when we went to Mdina - d'oh!!

Stunning ironwork and columns

Brightly coloured window boxes punctuated the serene stone

The Co-Cathedral's interior was as impressive as it's exterior

Baroque decadence inside

We were fairly restrained with the many sight-seeing opportunities that were presented, choosing to visit Valetta, do a hop on/hop off bus tour (in which we visited Mdina) and a harbour cruise, interspersed by days at the beach. And by beach, I really mean rock...

It wasn't bad though, as we discovered Surfside, a bar/restaurant/club which had a bunch of sun beds (for free, yessssssss) and backed onto a stretch of these beauties:

I am not a fan of the sea AT ALL, so these were the perfect compromise

These rock pools were half naturally formed, half man-made - apparently originally used by Victorian ladies who wished to bathe privately, and each pool would have a tent over it. They were great, as you could dip in to cool down, and not have to deal with the open sea with the waves and the current. I will always choose pool over beach - not knowing what's in the sea freaks me out - so being able to A) touch the bottom and B) being able to see what's in the water made me a lot more comfortable.

And before I finish up, I HAVE to mention two places we ate at and adored. The food was amazing everywhere we ate (I don't think I've ever eaten so much in my life), but these were our favourites. First up was a cafe called Mint (in Sliema) - opposite Surfside, which was handy! - where we had lunch most days, and MY GOD, the food there is incredible. It's a traditional Kiwi cafe apparently, with a big chiller cabinet of savory choices and another for desserts. They constantly have new choices in the cabinets, as they have a 'once it's gone, it's gone' attitude, and simply replace the old choice with a brand new one. I loved it, as there was constant variety - never mind day-to-day, if you came back later in the day they would be serving completely different things to when you were there before! Everything was delicious, and I have a special place in my heart for their Snowcap cookies.

Secondly, on an evening we would take the bus to the nearby town of St Julian's, which had more of a nightlife and an abundance of restaurants, bars and clubs. We were big fans of Paparazzi, an Italian/American themed bistro whose burgers (especcially the chicken burger with sweet chilli sauce) were incredible. Also, if you're ever there, check out Bar Celona (we loved it for the name if nothing else!).

Mega frozen strawberry daquiri!!

So, basically... Malta is amazing. I would definitely recommend!! My tan has mostly faded back into my usual pale Irish skin, but looking at my still-tanned feet (so brown they look orange against my pale legs...) reminds me that it did all happen. xo.

♥

In which Demi fawns over Frascati

I've been extremely lucky and been on two incredible holidays this summer - one with my family (minus my older brother) and one with my gorgeous friend A., before we are separated for the first time since we became friends aged fifteen.

Firstly, to Frascati. Just south of Rome, Frascati is rustic Italy at its finest. Barely anyone in the town spoke real English, apart from the lovely staff at our hotel, and was mostly made up of restaurants and a scattering of boutiques. Oh, and an incredible gelato parlour which was never anything but heaving on an evening. During the day, when we ventured out for lunch, the place was sleepy and deserted, shimmering in the midday heat as the locals (wisely) took shelter indoors. But on an evening, the place exploded with people; gossiping teenagers, shrieking children, couples - old and young alike - sat on the steps of the church, simply watching the world go by.

We did venture into Rome for a day, as it was only a short train ride away. It was beautiful and interesting, but my attention was massively crippled by the intense heat; we'd coincidentally picked the hottest day of the year to make the trip, and sight-seeing in baking 42 degree heat was painful - literally, as I got physically burned when I sat down on the baking black seat of the tour bus. I'd love to return in the spring or autumn... definitely not summer. There's a reason people escape the city in the summer months.

Castel Sant'Angelo

The Vatican

Our beautiful 16th century hotel

The biggest and most delicious pizza everrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

It was, as it turned out, the hottest week of the year so far. Which, for two easily burning Britons (AKA my dad and I), was not ideal. It was so hot that after the first couple of days the hills began to ring with the sound of fire sirens, as local fire teams raced to put out the fires that were springing up left, right and centre. Fire planes, like enourmous canaries, swooped scarily low over the hotel grounds multiple times a day on their way to the nearby lake to fill up. It was pretty worrying, and the best we could do was keep checking in at the hotel that we weren't in any danger.

Other than the minor fire worries, it was a week of relaxation and de-stressing. My parents from their busy lives, and me from my surgery two weeks prior. A week of slowly, carefully excercising in the pool (and a somewhat doomed attempt to hold off the carb calories; Italian food is incredible).

More importantly, it was the first family holiday we'd taken in a while, for various reasons. And, it felt like, the first time this summer we were able to really relax and just be a family again, since the months of June and July had been so hectic and fractured. I wish my brother had come along too, but he chose to stay at home.

Next up... Malta mayhem with A. xo.

In which Demi forgets something very important!

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If you're going to read any book I recommend, please, please make it this one. Magic, romance, intrigue, twists... I absolutely loved this book. I read it on my mum's Kindle, which is why I forgot to post about it yesterday.

I wish I could recapture the feeling of reading this book for the first time. While laid by the pool in Malta, I kept grabbing A.'s arm to exclaim over the twists and language and tension, until she moved away out of reach!

Enjoy! xo.

In which Demi does a book post, finally.

For a (former, *sob*) English student, I've failed pretty miserably at actually posting much about books. Probably because for the last three years I've been skimming through a whole host of books that I didn't particularly enjoy.

I'm picky when it comes to books. Really picky. Something that I didn't really anticipate being a problem (stupidly) when I first applied to do English at University. In fact, I kinda block out a whole period of literature. As far as I'm concerned, there is very little worth reading from, say, Shakespeare and Donne until you hit the beginning of the twentieth century.

Sacrilige, I know. I steam-roll straight past Dickens, past Austen, past the Shelleys and Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Wilde, and I intentionally stamp on Hardy as I pass by (Tess of the D'Urburvilles is the single most ridiculous character I've ever had the misfortune of reading about). Jane Eyre got thrown across the room by me after a handful of chapters. Alice in Wonderland was tolerated, but not enjoyed.

Please direct all hate mail to Miss Demi Blogger, I Don't Care Road.

Forgive me for essentially ignoring 300 years of literature, but that's the beauty of personal taste. One man's literary canon is another girl's crap.

I can't relate to it. That's my main gripe. Somehow I can deal with pre-Shakespearean literature, all the way back to Old English, because the world was so foreign compared to our modern world that I can kind of accept the content as something far removed and easily analysed. But the Romantics and Victorians, who believed their world to be the pinncle of human existence, so modern and forward thinking - with their sexism and racism and stupid, stupid rules and morals - drive me up the wall. A woman raising her skirts abover her ankles? Wait, and she was in the presence of a man without supervision?! YAWN.

In fact, my favourite genre of literature transcends even our modern world. I love dystopian and futuristic fiction. I love seeing where our world - however unrealistic it seems at this moment - may go. And since finishing my degree, I've managed to indulge myself in the books I enjoy and wanted to read for months.

I chose some YA dystopic books to take away on holiday with me, something to kick back and relax with that wouldn't tire me out like some of the more literary books on my to-read list. I started off with Delirium by Lauren Oliver.

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They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them.
Until now.
Now everything has changed. Now, I’d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

 I really enjoyed Delirium. I loved the concept of love being a disease, an infection that Lena's society has decided is the main cause of depression, anxiety, madness - and so wiped it out. The result is numbness, a cure that is more of a curse. As a massive romantic, this concept was really sold to me, and while Lena certainly wasn't my favourite heroine ever, there was real character growth as it progressed. I can't wait to read the sequel.

Next up was Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi.

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No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever. 

I had a real love-hate relationship with Shatter Me. I adored the style of it; Mafi writes with the kind of disjointed, hard-hitting style that I've always tried to capture in my own writing. Short, sharp sentences, unusual metaphors, and a real sense of humanity underlies this book. BUT. The insta-love had me rolling my eyes, along with her over-used 'power of three' rule of repetition, and the fact that Adam doesn't seem to be able to start a sentence without saying 'Juliette...' wistfully. It also fell flat at the end, after a good heightening of tension, in order to set up for the next book in the series.

Abandoned half-way was Matched, by Ally Condie. I was so disappointed with this one, I've had it on my to-read list for aaaages, but it was so slow and childishly written that I simply didn't care to find out what happened. So I won't bother saying any more about it!

Then there was Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas.

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When magic has gone from the world, and a vicious king rules from his throne of glass, an assassin comes to the castle. She does not come to kill, but to win her freedom. If she can defeat twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to find the greatest assassin in the land, she will become the King’s Champion and be released from prison. 

Her name is Celaena Sardothien.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her.

And a princess from a foreign land will become the one thing Celaena never thought she’d have again: a friend.

But something evil dwells in the castle–and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying, horribly, one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival–and a desperate quest to root out the source of evil before it destroys her world.

Ahhh, where to begin. This book has such a backstory to it that I could probably write a whole blog post on it. I touched upon the story back in January, in this post. Basically, I'd been waiting five years to read this story again. Five years of reliving scenes in my head, trying to remember snippets of dialogue, of aching to feel the joy and wonder I felt when reading its original form.

And, perhaps inevitably, I was somewhat disappointed.

I had prepared myself for some of the changes. The book was bought and published as a YA novel, while the original story was more of an adult story, with Celaena older and more accomplished - and perhaps more believeable. Changing the heroine from a young woman of early twenties to a girl in her late teens added, I feel, an unwelcome restraint to Maas' tale. That, and I was confused and disappointed to find about half of the events of the original Book 1 just plain missing. This frustration was resolved when I went back to Maas' blog and remembered that she had turned the trilogy into a quartet, with the rest of Book 1 forming a brand new Book 2 to be out next year. If they're not in there, then I really will be upset.

Don't let my preconceptions put you off though. Celaena is still a fantastic character, as are the two boys, although they've all got so far to go. The world is rich and detailed, but not overly so. Worth a read if you like girly yet kick-ass heroines and old-school fantasy.

This post is getting ridiculously long... hope you enjoyed! Coming soon: current musical loves, Malta mayhem, graduate woes and an insight into the story of the mysterious and rather scary lump, which has made my life difficult since Easter.

Summer's over, and change is in the air. xo.