In a year with Covid-19, the answer to where to go on vacation is not easy, as I wanted the destination to be a country where I had never been, which in Europe are already few. Thus came Malta! A cheap flight from Oporto, Jorge didn’t have the time off, my mother did, it was only necessary to take a covid test, everything was looking good. In the days before the departure, we still suffered a little because Malta “threatened” to be the first country that would only accept vaccinated people and I still lacked the second dose, but we managed to enter the country before the date scheduled for this new rule, which ended up not being applied… Here are my tips of what to see in Malta, Comino and Gozo, in 8 days!
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Day 1 – Arrival / VALLETTA
We arrived in Malta, with Ryanair from Porto, at 6PM. The whole Covid inspection process was pretty quick and organized and we were out of the airport.
We wanted to take the X4 bus, which takes us directly to Valletta, for just €1.5 and leaves every 30min, but because of the maximum capacity, we didn’t fit in the one that passed by and as we had a short light time, we decided to take an Uber to the city, together with another Brazilian couple. The trip costed 12€.
I immediately fell in love with Valetta, its pale stone houses and especially all the balconies, made of wood painted in different colors! We left our bags at Luciano Valetta Boutique, on Merchant Street (Triq Il-Merkanti), right in front of the Co-Cathedral and immediately set out to discover. The plan was to wander the streets of Valetta, without a destination.
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So, we went down to the Lower Barrakka Gardens, to see the view to the Three Cities, Birgú, Senglea and Cospicua, touched by the golden hour, and from there we explored the beautiful streets of the capital until ending up in St. George’s Square, where we had dinner. The walk continued, this time on the west side of the peninsula, overlooking Sliema. We walked around the walls of the city until we reached the City Gate, from where we visited the beautiful contemporary garden in the ditches, and followed Republic Street (Triq Ir-Repubblika), passing the modern Parliament and the beautiful Opera “House”, an open-air ruin, on the way to our hotel.
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Day 2 – VALLETTA and the Three Cities
We had St. John’s Co-Cathedral right in front of us, and I read that it was advisable to go early in the morning to avoid the crowds. Admission costs €7.5 per person. The interior of the cathedral is breathtaking, contrasting with the very simple facade!
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Then we head to the Upper Barrakka Gardens, to be part of a Valletta tradition: every day, at noon, there is a cannon fire salutation. It formerly served as a salute to foreign ships and became part of Maltese folklore. The best part of the Upper Barraka Gardens is the incredible view of the Three Cities, where we would go.
To get there, there is an elevator from the garden (€1.5 round trip) that takes us to the sea level, then you cross the street and continue to the left. There are two options to cross:
- by ferry, which costs €2.80 round trip (€1.5 one way) and takes about 10 minutes to cross;
- a traditional “gondola”, which lasts a little longer and costs €2 each way.
We went by gondola and returned by ferry, because the gondola leaves us near the Collegiate Church of St Lawrence (link to see the exact location), in Vittoriosa (also called Birgu in Maltese), one of the three cities, while the ferry leaves from Senglea (link to location), another of the cities.
These two and Cospicua are known as the Three Cities and all offer magnificent views of Valletta and can be easily visited on foot. In Birgu, we tried to visit Fort St. Angelo, to confirm what we had already read, it is closed on Tuesdays, like many of the other attractions in Valetta. As it was very hot we decided to take a bath in the Mediterranean and to have a picnic lunch, of pea and ricotta Qassatat, a kind of pie, very typical and tasty!
We continued the tour, passing the Inquisitor’s palace, the Maritime Museum (temporarily closed), crossing the bridge to Senglea without ever actually reaching Cospicua, and always walking by the water, going for another dip along the way, to the tip of this peninsula, where the Safe Haven Gardens are located, with an incredible view of Valetta. We went back, through the interior of Senglea, with many balconies and stairs, to the ferry, to cross back to Valetta.
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We were tired but the next day we were leaving the capital and there was still a lot to explore. So I passed Casa Rocca Piccola, the only inhabited palace in Valetta, and continued on to Fort St. Elmo at the tip of the peninsula, which was built in 1552 by the Knights of the Order to protect the ports of Valletta. From there I continued along the west coast, in search of the best place to see the sunset and the dome of the Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, one of the city’s landmarks.
We opted to have dinner in a restaurant next to the Opera, as there was a rehearsal for a concert that would take place a few days later. A German friend, who was also in Malta and has recently moved to Lisbon, joined us and we ended the night in a Portuguese bar (on St. John Street, right next door to Luciano Valetta Boutique) drinking ginginha and listening to Salvador Sobral, two things he didn’t know yet.
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Seeing Valetta and the Three Cities in just over a day was short. The city is beautiful and it’s worth staying another day, but I wouldn’t give up anything I’ve done in other places either, so the ideal would be to spend 10 days in Malta – further down you’ll see where the 10th day is dedicated to!
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Day 3 – MDINA – RABAT / ĠNEJNA BAY / QARRABA BAY / GHAJN TUFFIEĦA BAY / ST. PAUL’S BAY
We took the X4 bus to the airport, with all our bags, to pick up the rental car for the rest of the journey. There is a weekly public transport ticketa that only costs €21 per person, but for everything we wanted to do in a week, and for the freedom we wanted, it wasn’t the best option.
We left the airport towards Mdina, the former capital of the country, before the Knights arrive in Malta. We explored this walled city, walked through all its streets, visited the places where some scenes of Game of Thrones were recorded and left for Rabat, the city outside the walls, where we had lunch at Is-Serkin, a small cafe that had been recommended to us for the typical Pastizzi, not only great, but super cheap!
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But we wanted some beach time, so we went to Ġnejna Bay, from where we started a hike, which I didn’t foresee as difficult, to visit the bays of Qarraba and Ghajn Tuffieħa. I was finally able to fly the drone over these wonderful bays, with clay rocks, golden sand and turquoise waters! We took several baths and it was an adventure that we will never forget – when we look at Google Maps we sometimes forget that reality is in three dimensions 😛 It became one of my favorite places in Malta!
That night we were sleeping in St. Paul’s Bay, at Villa Zamitella, a nice B&B with an excellent view over the bay.
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Day 4 – COMINO / FERRY to GOZO
On the 4th day we left St. Paul’s Bay towards the port of Cirkewwa, where we left the car to take the boat to the island of Comino, the third largest island in the country, which lies between Malta and Gozo, and where the famous Blue Lagoon is. The boat costs 13€, round trip, and includes the (far away) visit of some caves on the way. There are other, more expensive, options for visiting Comino.
The Blue Lagoon is indeed very beautiful, but it has too many people and has been transformed into a hyper-touristy place that spoils the experience a little. Boats pulling “bananas” and “crazy sofas” with blaring music. Lots of caravans selling cocktails inside pineapples, stupidly expensive, and junk food. The only one that we liked, was the lockers one, where we could leave the camera, the drone, and all our belongings, while we went to the water, swam to Cominotto, came back, sunbathed. €7 for the whole day and unlimited access.
But Comino isn’t just the Blue Lagoon, so we went exploring the San Niklaw and Santa Marija bays, crossing abandoned tourist developments and bathing in each bay. Then we crossed inland to the Tower of Sta. Maria, passing by some of the few buildings that the island has: the chapel, the cementery and the abandoned Isolation Hospital, which once received cholera patients and also prisoners.
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After one last dive in the Blue Lagoon, we took the boat back to Cirkewwa, grabbed the car and put it on the ferry to Gozo, all in the same port. Boarding and disembarking are very fast and well organized. There is nothing to pay on the way to Gozo, only on the way back, and the trip for a car and two people costs €20.35 round trip.
Gozo is a small island, where you can get anywhere in 20 minutes. So we opted for an Airbnb in Xlendi Bay. It was good to have an entire house to ourselves, to be able to cook, as eating in Malta is not that cheap, in addition to the friendliness of the owner of the house, Joe. The only supermarket on the island is in Victoria, capital of Gozo, another advantage of having a car. There are still some mini markets elsewhere – even in the center of Valletta there were no supermarkets.
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Day 5 – VICTORIA / RAMLA BEACH / DAĦLET QORROT / XLENDI / SANAP – TA CENC CLIFFS
First stop, the Citadel of Victoria! Located in the center of the island and on a high point, the Citadel is the perfect place to start your exploration of Gozo, as it is possible to have a 360º view of the island from its walls. It is also a very important place in the history of Gozo and of the Gozitans, who here took refuge from the attacks of Barbarian and Saracen corsairs, who intended to enslave the islanders.
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From there we head to Ramla Beach, the famous reddish-gold sand beach and the largest on the island. We didn’t spend much time on the beach because the wind was starting to rise, a wind that would accompany us the whole time we would be on the island (and which made it impossible for me to lift the drone for several days…). We then went up to the Tal-Mixta Cave, which perfectly frames the beach and Ramla bay, and then on to Daħlet Qorrot, a less touristy bay, with boathouses cut into the limestone rocks and with doors of all colors.
We returned to Xlendi as we had a hike planned to the Sanap / Ta Cenc cliffs, the highest cliffs in Gozo, 150 meters above the sea. One of the things I most enjoyed doing in Gozo! We departed from Xlendi bay, passed the tower and salt pans with the same name and continued along the cliffs to the highest point, about 3km from the start of the hike. We could have continued for another two kms, but that would have been four more, round trip, and we had no legs for that. So we decided to go back, through agricultural fields, to Xlendi bay, where a beautiful and typical dinner awaited us – sea bass and rabbit, and where we first tried Maltese wine.
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Day 6 – Scuba Diving in MGÁRR IX-XINI and RAS IL-ĦOBŻ / MARSALFORN / INLAND SEA / DWEJRA BAY / BLUE HOLE
One of the scuba diving meccas in Europe is the Maltese archipelago, and the island of Gozo has the most diving sites. Before arriving there, I contacted several dive centers and ended up choosing Atlantis Diving Center, in Marsalforn, for the location and the price they offered for two dives in a day (for my mother) and for rental of an underwater camera and snorkeling equipment (for me, I don’t have the diving course). The dive sites are chosen depending on the weather and the state of the sea and we got the bay of Mgárr ix-Xini in the morning and Ras il-Ħobż (also known as Middle Finger) after lunch.
For snorkeling, the first place was much nicer than the second, as it was a bay, protected from the waves and the winds (which I remember, were rising on the last few days). It was also possible to follow the divers, as it wasn’t that deep. The second location was a wonder for the diver, she said that she felt in a television show about marine life, she had never seen so much life in one place.
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Back in Marsalforn, we drove by the seafront along the salt pans, stopped to observe the angry sea and the fisherman who didn’t care about that, and continued to Dwejra, where the Inland Sea is located, a piece of sea that looks like an inland lake, as the water passes through an opening in the rock. In the area we can also see the Fungus Rock, the Blue Hole, and what once was the Azure Window, which collapsed a few years ago. The sea was rough as the Gozitans had not seen it for a long time. Inside the Inland Sea there were waves, so big that sometimes it was impossible to see the light on the other side of the tunnel and the Blue Hole could not be recognized. So we said goodbye to Gozo, the next morning we were returning to the island of Malta.
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Another half day on the island of Gozo would be ideal, the tenth I was talking about above, as there would still be other places to explore such as the “fjord” of Wied il-Għasri, or the Basilica of Ta’Pinu. And on the island of Malta there are also some places that we haven’t explored such as the Popeye Village, the Dingli Cliffs or the Blue Grotto.
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Day 7 – FERRY to MALTA / MARSAXLOKK / DELIMARA / ST. PETER’S POOL
Sunday is market day in Marsaxlokk, so we crossed the entire country, from north to south, to visit it. The sea was still so rough that on the ferry back to Malta we realized that there were no boats to Comino that day! From the port of Cirkewwa, the northern tip of the island, to Marsaxlokk, the southern tip, it’s 45min, but on the way we stopped again at Is-Serkin, in Rabat, to buy more Pastizzi, Qassatat and Date Cakes, to eat later or take to Portugal as a gift.
We arrived in Marsaxlokk already at 11am but there was still a lot of fish on the stalls, not to mention all the stalls selling vegetables, towels, sweets and also souvenirs. In addition to the market, Marsaxlokk is known for its bay full of colorful boats. They are traditional fishing boats called “luzzu”, which date back to the Phoenicians.
Another attraction near Marsaxlokk is the famous St. Peter’s Pool, but as it was a Sunday I was afraid it would be even more crowded than usual. The girl from our lodge, South Wind Guesthouse, suggested that we go to Delimara, another bay about a kilometer from St. Peter’s and told us that from 6pm on, it was already ok to go to the most famous. And what a good suggestion! We loved Delimara!
And when I was tired of sunbathing, I grabbed the camera and walked, always along the sea, to St Peter’s Pool, passed several salt pans and another bay, where the small touristic boats coming from Marsaxlokk arrive. My mother went there by car, we took a last dip and went home to get ready for dinner.
The offer of restaurants and seaside terraces in Marsaxlokk is endless. We chose Mr. Fitz, for the incredible seafood dish it offered, and said goodbye to the Maltese wine. After all, it was our last dinner in Malta!
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Day 8 – IL-ĦOFRA L-KBIRA / MARSASKALA / RETURN
We only had to be at the airport at 4 pm, so there was still time to explore a few more bays on the south and finally fly the drone, after days and days of windy weather. We decided to go to Il-Ħofra l-Kbira, our hostess’ favorite beach in Marsaxlokk, very beautiful and peaceful indeed! Then it was time to revisit all the small bays where we had been the day before, with the help of my flying friend (yes, I finally have a drone!) and suddenly the departure time was approaching, so we went to Marsaskala, to remove the salt from our body in the public facilities and have lunch at the beach bar, before heading to the airport.
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To return I had to do a Covid test and Portugal accepted an antigen test, it was not necessary to be a PCR, so I did it directly at the airport, with swabbingmalta. Although very practical, the test was so badly done, so on the surface, that I was sure it was going to be negative. 20min later I received the confirmation. To return the car was also super quick and that was the end of the vacation.
At take-off we were able to review almost all the places we passed, it was the best way to say goodbye to this wonderful little country!
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If you liked this post and want to read more about my trip to Malta, you can visit the following posts:
