A week trip to Malta

At the end of the last year during Christmas we decided to enjoy a glimpse of sunshine and a much nicer weather then we currently have in Estonia and took a trip with a couple of our friends to Malta.

Malta is a small Southern European country (only 316km2) located in the Mediterranean sea. Roughly half a million people leave there based on main 2 islands Malta and Gozo. It’s really rich in history and beautiful architecture. The sea around the island is magical turquoise color and there’s unlimited majestic sights overlooking cliffs and rocky seashores.

In a matter of fact they have a lot of rocks there, almost everything is made out of stone based materials since there just isn’t any trees. Only occasionally you can glimpse one somewhere but mainly just small bushes and other low growing plants.

Since they don’t have much to stop the constant winds blowing from the seas it’s really windy there, at least in the winter time. If you can find a nice quiet place then you could sunbathe or even go for a swim (the average air and sea temperatures were around 18 degrees Celsius) but otherwise you definitely need a jacket or two to stop the wind blowing just right through you.

They have just exquisite choice of different pastries – various pies, cakes, cookies and everything in between. To be honest if you are a sweet lower as I am they are too good to spend a longer time there :). All in all the food was really delicious and pricewise roughly the same as in Estonia, maybe a little bit more expensive.

Almost 40% of all the houses/apartments in Malta are empty and it looks really weird. As I understood there are many reasons behind it related to different regulations and laws but the main thing is that a lot of the real estate is being bought form outside the EU in order to get an European citizenship. Either way it was really sad to see all these place completely deserted, covered with dust and doors and windows nailed shut. I really hope that they are able to fix this issue somehow in the near future.

The streets there are really narrow and since there are a lot of buses (the way how we got around. Buses basically go almost anywhere and it only costs 21€ for 7 days of unlimited travel) most of the time there are traffic jams. There just isn’t enough room for two vehicles to pass each other. So be advised if the destination is only 10km away it will still take a decent amount of time to get there, doesn’t matter if you’re traveling with a bus or a car.

At the end of the post I’ll also add a short video of our trip but here are the main places I would recommend to see when visiting Malta (in random order). 1 week is in my opinion sufficient time to have a look at all the main sightseeing places but of course if you’d like to dig deeper in the local culture and way of life you should plan for a longer visit.

• Blue Grotto
• Salt pans in Gozo
• The ancient capital of Mdina
• Valletta
• National Aquarium
• Dingli Cliffs
• WWII Beach Post – Ta’ l-Imgharqa – just a really beautiful place to take a swim

And as said before do’t forget to go out and enjoy the tasty foods Malta has to offer 🙂

All the best!

Lauri