Last days on holidays are always a sad occasion. They come round far too soon, when you feel you’ve hardly got your legs under the destination’s table, so to speak. And then you get sent back to where you came from, to the gloom of that 9 to 5 existence that you couldn’t wait to escape barely a week earlier. Unless you were having a rotten time, of course, in which case you can’t wait to get home.

But we had adored our little week in Malta; and so we resolved at Friday breakfast to make the most of the relaxation options and just stay around St Julian’s for the last day. So, alas, there would be no HOHO bus trip round the south of the island; there would be no trip back to Valletta to see the Grand Master’s Palace; but as the poet once said, it gives you a reason to come back.

My pre-holiday planning had revealed there were some classy looking restaurants with good gluten-free options at the Portomaso marina complex in St Julian’s. We still hadn’t actually found it – I could work out from the map whereabouts it should be, but in all our wanderings we hadn’t stumbled across it. So we determined to find it, and maybe identify a nice place for lunch, or dinner, or both.

It’s just off the Hilton hotel complex. You go through an arch, and then you have a wide descending staircase with restaurants off to the left and right, before you reach the water at the bottom and can then walk around either side and admire the yachts and motorboats. It’s beautifully clean, feels approachably exclusive, and makes for a nice leisurely walk.

There’s a small promontory you can walk around and end up on the sea side (as opposed to marina side), with lots of fascinating little rockpools. But what took our attention the most, were the little patches of salt in the rocks, a residue of the seawater, and, as Mrs Chrisparkle pointed out, nature’s own exfoliator. Off came the trainers and we rubbed fresh salt all over our tootsies, like a pair of podiatric pixies. Incredibly effective, and left your feet feeling really soft and energised. You could pay a fortune for a pot of that stuff at home.

We retraced our steps back through the marina and checked out the restaurants. By now it was already an acceptable time for early lunch, but they were almost all closed. We did however note a couple of possibilities, primarily Spoon, a Chinese restaurant with a gluten-free menu. Unheard of! Mrs C’s tastebuds started to quiver. The only Chinese food she’s had since she was diagnosed about ten years ago has been eggy rice. They were closed, so we couldn’t book, but we hoped there would be some tables available for the evening.

But that didn’t solve the problem of lunch. We headed back towards Paceville and thought we’d check out the Bay Street Complex again. It didn’t inspire us lunchwise, but we did get a nice bit of shopping done. Mrs C got a red shirt in a nice little boutique – not cheap but very trendy and excellent quality – and we both did well in the Terranova sale. I regret, gentle reader, that I am unable to bring to mind exactly what we eventually ended up eating. Or where. Or when. I know – I have let you down. It must have been something local, and by the same token, totally unremarkable and unmemorable. I do however remember staying out after lunch and popping into Peppi’s again, the bar/restaurant on the way into Sliema that we had visited earlier in the week, not for food but for that wonderful holiday institution, the “afternoon drink purely for the sake of it”. When we had visited before we loved the views on the outside terrace and also the wine was nice enough. We just wanted to enjoy the sit down, and to while away the sunshine of our last afternoon with a glass of wine. We’d had the La Vallette before, and it was nice but unchallenging; so, feeling bold, and trusting in the integrity of the establishment, I ordered a Half Carafe of the House White. Everything we had drunk before in Malta had been completely acceptable.

Until now. It was like warm radiator fluid. Not that I am a connoisseur of radiator fluids, at any temperature; but Mrs C and I agreed pretty rapidly that it was totally undrinkable. Actually on reflection, I’m sorry to say, it was probably more like urine than radiator fluid. It certainly had that colour; that early morning urine that’s been building up inside you overnight and strengthening as it develops. Too much information? You should have tried the wine. I called the waitress over and said it was disgusting and could we have a half bottle of the La Vallette instead, as I knew that would at least be generally acceptable. She took the carafe away, brought the bottle and two fresh glasses and offered it to me to taste. Me: “That’s much better, thank you”. Waitress (with added tetchiness): “So, you knew you would like La Vallette, and yet you did not order it at first. Why?” Me: “Because I wanted to try something else”. She stomped off.

We drank the wine; we lingered over the view; we rested and relaxed and watched the world go by. It was lovely. Then started the nagging internal question: would they charge for both wines, or just the nice one? No doubt they will have just tipped the rest of our carafe of urine into their simmering cauldron of bodily fluids out the back, so they would barely be out of pocket. The bottle was emptied; the bill requested; the waitress brought it over. They charged for both. €6,50 for the urine and €6,00 for the wine. I did a quick mental calculation: €6,50 + €6,00 + impertinent waitress = no tip. And no recommendation from me, either. Avoid them like the plague!

The last afternoon nap of the holiday is a bit of a damp squib as it gets overtaken by that thing called “packing”. All those fine bits of clobber you’d painstakingly prepared, folded and placed just-so in the outward suitcases now get screwed up and bundled back in any old how. Well that’s what I do; I think Mrs C comes along behind me and unscrews things and folds them out a bit more neatly. Not quite sure why – they’re destined for the washing machine, after all. One good thing – at least we weren’t flying Ryanair, so we didn’t have to dread unpacking everything in the airport concourse to satisfy their need to humiliate their passengers.

So it was the last evening; and we wandered back up towards Portomaso in the hope that the Spoon would have a table for us. But first, pre-dinner drinkies at the bar just outside the Hilton Complex. Lovely setting; the service was a bit slow, but we didn’t mind that; and we entertained ourselves by eavesdropping into the conversations of some of our posher co-drinkers. It was about 9.30pm now so our tummies were more than ready for a spot of Chinese. Spoon was very busy but they found us a table. And sure enough, there was a gluten-free menu! Part of the fun of a Chinese is to order lots of different meals and then all share them, so I ordered from both the g-f and the ordinary menus. The only thing I had that wasn’t gluten-free were the barbecued spare ribs, so I slavered over them completely by myself and I have to say they were gorgeous. We had seaweed and soup, crispy duck and beef with cumin. It was all a very plucky attempt to create a g-f Chinese banquet, and much of it was very tasty, if a little dry – especially the beef with cumin. It lacked that aromatic gloopy sauce that would have made it taste sensational, but which would almost certainly have enough gluten in to flatten your cilia at fifty paces. We still enjoyed the meal though; it was relaxed and elegant, and with a lovely view over the marina; and once again it made Mrs C feel a bit more mainstream in her restaurantability.

And that was it! Dinner over, we slunk back to the hotel miserably; well not really, we’d had a wonderful holiday and relished every minute. We didn’t have to get up too early the next day; the hotel arranged for a taxi to take us to the airport; transfers, flights and so on all took place smoothly; we were back home by 6pm. Verdict: Malta is a great place for a holiday. We could have done and seen much more, but we wanted it to be relaxing and it absolutely filled the bill. Now it’s your turn to visit!