Thank you, ralfkrippner — I really appreciate the comments!

By the way, if you — or anyone else, for that matter — have any questions at all about anything included in this trip report, please ask. I want to help others out as much as possible with their future trips.

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Day 5 Part I

I set the alarm for 4:15 in the morning so that I may arrive at the Sea Passenger Terminal in Valletta on time to catch the tour for my all-day excursion to Sicily. I gave myself a little extra time to navigate the maze of narrow streets that awaited me during the remainder of that Maltese night. I wanted to make sure I adhered to the instructions provided by the actual e-mail quoted above, and I did not want to be late, although I am not sure why I had to be there two hours early anyway...

I started up the goat (please see my post entitled Day 3 Part II on page 1 of this thread for details on why I named the rental car I had the goat) and guided its slow ascension from deep within the belly of the underground parking garage under the Hilton Malta hotel. Escaping from the garage into the warm Maltese early morning darkness (save for a few city lights and an occasional vehicle), the goat meadered its way through the complex Maltese street grid (or lack thereof), past attached buildings, around harbours, through tunnels and past hidden intersections down poorly-lit streets with sparse unclear signage. The surprise occasional pedestrian wearing dark clothing and unexpectedly crossing the street away from an intersection only worsened matters. Driving around Malta this morning felt almost like playing an electronic computer game.

For a small island, the Maltese road system can be rather intimidating, even to a seasoned traveler like me who virtually never gets lost, whether driving the streets of Auckland, Vancouver, New York or Sydney, and many cities in between. A map in the darkness on the seat next to me proved virtually useless, so I relied on instinct and my reliably good sense of direction. Nevertheless, I was confident that I will find my way, as usual. The good part is that traffic was virtually non-existent at that hour, which made navigating around Malta less treacherous.

When I saw that I was approaching the south shore of the peninsula which is Valletta, I realized that I was high above sea level and needed to somehow descend to sea level. After a few minutes, a small, seemingly obscure sign pointed the way to the Sea Passenger Terminal. I drove the goat down this slightly-steep decline for several stories, until I reached the street which hugs the Valletta coast line at the foot of what appears to be a continuous fortress wall. The problem was that I had to make a right turn at a sharp angle — so sharp that it was almost a U-turn — and I had to perform this virtual U-turn near a stone tunnel archway on a narrow two-lane bi-directional street.

After double-checking to make sure there was no traffic, I started my virtual U-turn maneuver, always keeping in mind that I am driving a car with manual transmission on the left side of the street and my steering wheel and seat are on the right side of the car. In the middle of my maneuver, headlights suddenly appeared out of nowhere, zooming around a curve at what appeared to be a high rate of speed at the other end of the tunnel. I was blocking both narrow lanes of the street as the headlights were quickly approaching, getting bigger and brighter.

This is when the goat decided to stall...