Malta was always the place that I’d planned on finishing up my European trip in 2018. Those reasons were as follows, I needed to finish up on an island because I had done most of my European travel by land, by bus or by train, so Malta could only be reached by plane. It was also a place that was ideally located because at the time, I was temped to do some travel around Northern Africa, but due to lack of time and a couple of complications, I needed to go back to Ireland for about two weeks.

It was a great feeling landing in Valetta, the capital of Malta, knowing that I was only one of a handful of people that had now travelled to every country in Europe. I was in party mode and wanted to do everything possible before flying back to Ireland. I had been working on this task since March 2015, at that time I should have clocked up more of Europe, unfortunately I had an emergency during that time ,though not doing so left the task that little bit more challenging and a lot of countries to step foot in when 2017 arrived.

I had come from Romania that morning and the weather was terrible and it was snowing. Landing in Valetta made things so much better,an island that I should of reached at the end of December 2017, instead February 2018 was when the dream finally came through, all fifty countries at long last and a well deserved pizza in Malta’s oldest pizzeria.