My experience as a tourist in Malta
Hello everyone. Just got back from Malta and Cyprus, and would like to share our experience. This is dedicated to our experience in Malta....another will follow on the Cyprus Reddit page. I hope this is useful for anyone looking to visit Malta.
Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, our experience in Malta was a 9. Yes, a 9 out of 10. We had an amazing experience and will be visiting Malta again in the future.
The trick for a great holiday is planning. We had been planning a Mediterranean escape for over a year now and had chosen to visit Malta and Cyprus, spending 10 days in Cyprus and 7 days in Malta before flying back home.
So basically, for a time we were thinking twice about visiting Malta following reading some very negative views about the country on Reddit. But turns out, if you do your own research and plan accordingly, you can avoid being disappointed. I just don't get why all this hate towards Malta - makes me think there is some hidden agenda to give the country a bad name or whatever. It was a very nice experience, people were great, the place is amazing, we never had issues.
Anyway, best tips I can give are the following;
1 - avoid the central areas of Malta. We had booked a place in Sliema but I read a lot of negative reviews on the area. Turns out, Malta is not just Sliema. So we cancelled the Sliema hotel booking and booked the Corinthia Hotel in Attard. Beautiful hotel, very peaceful. We did visit the central areas Saint Julians, Paceville but nah, not impressed. Although our visit to Ayia Napa in Cyprus was a way worse experience.
2 - plan carefully ahead. Malta is not just sun and sea. It has a lot to offer. We planned each day and moved around in a rental and also used Uber. We visited the beautiful Churches (all free of charge), went on hikes, the cliffs at Dingeli are amazing, Mdina was beautiful as well. Spent a day at Mellieha bay - very nice waters. We visited Valletta although it is quite small so it shouldn't be the focus of your travel to Malta.
3 - visit the other islands. Gozo is the second island of Malta. I read posts that Gozo is overhyped. Not at all!! It has so much to offer. We spent two days in Gozo at the Kempinski. We went for walks, visited the inland sea, the Citadel, Ramla bay - so nice and empty actually. I was expecting more people but to the contrary. Unfortunately we missed Comino - the sea on the day we were supposed to visit Comino was rough so we missed it.
4 - the people are friendly and the place is safe. We never felt threatened or anything, and never had issue.
5 - there is construction and congestion mostly in the central areas. Yes that is the area that we avoided. I see that construction means progress but there is a very high concentration of construction sites in the central areas. Also the central areas are for youth - at least that is how we see it.
All in all, we had an amazing experience in Malta same as in Cyprus - although if I were to choose to come back to the Mediterranean, and we will come back, we would choose Malta over Cyprus (only thing we found better in Cyprus was the food - cheap and super amazing - the restaurants at the Hilton were top!).