Malta: advice

Dionysus

I just arrived back today from a week in Sicily, preceded by 9 days in Malta.

I've never known anybody who has gone there, so here's some advice:

1. Avoid St Julians and Sliema, unless you want to be surrounded by noise from cars constantly driving past and their tyres screeching on the road incessantly with the heat (think of the noise in those multi-story car parks in Dublin, and you get the idea). We stayed in St Julian's for five nights, and it was far, far too noisy for us. On the other hand, if you're in your late teens/early twenties, St Julians/Paceville might be ideal for you. All of the points below are for couples from their later 20s on.

2. Valetta is beautiful, extraordinarily so. Visit it, try and stay as near to it as possible. We discovered it too late. On a Saturday night down by the waterfront all the class of the city is there dining in the numerous restaurants. It's buzzing in pedestrianised areas. It's also particularly beautiful at night, so bring the camera. The size of the city walls will leave you in awe, particularly at night as you look at them and Msida across the water. It's also especially peaceful next to the Co-Cathedral of St John's at the heart of Valletta. Some lovely restaurants next to that very historic cathedral. We stayed in a two or three star "boutique hotel" right there and the sound of the cathedral bells brought both of us back in time. Prior to that there was a saxophonist on the street playing wonderfully mellow music.

3. The bad points: Bus travel is dirt cheap, but the buses are filthy relics from decades ago. Awful, truly awful, things. Moreover, the bus drivers will try to fleece you whenever they are given the chance. If they give you a shít load of change back, count every cent. And confront them about the missing money.

4. Malta's taxi drivers will screw you, and screw you as many times as possible. From the start, therefore, demand that they put the journey on the meter, or agree a set price. You will be an idiot to do otherwise. You've been warned.

5. Gozo is, despite the hype, genuinely unique. However, everybody whom we asked recommended that we go to Marsalforn. We chose Xlendi where we stayed in the St Patrick's Hotel which was some ten metres from the sea. Well worth staying there just to hear the waves come up against the beach below you. Very peaceful for a couple. We then went over to [the island of] Comino for a day and that, too, was really out of this world. We missed the last boat home to Gozo so the boat operator came out and collected us for free. That was a far cry from the anti-tourist culture we experienced in mainland Malta.


6. Bring your driver's licence with you. You may think you won't need it, but bring it. I thought I would cycle around it, but for various reasons I didn't. Car rental is cheap if you book in advance and tell the car rental company to "fúck off" when they try to impose additional charges on you. The car rental company (Budget/Avis) said they'd accept a faxed copy of my driver's licence. I went down to collect the car the next day and the Avis/Budget person said I had to pay for the top insurance cover each day because I hadn't my physical licence -a cost of some €20 each day. That's the sort of shenanigans you're up against so bí cúramach. Having said that, the biggest problem we had with Malta and the Maltese was that:

A) the signposting in the entire country was atrocious, really dreadful; you spent hours trying to find a simple village. The Maltese government clearly doesn't give a fúck about tourists. Oh, and as a byline, the road surfaces must be the worst in all of the EU - but it's still the lack of signposting which made it so awful for us.

the Maltese, in our experience, were most unhelpful when it came to compensating for the awful signposts and telling us where to go. A general "over there" was the usual response. When we arrived in Sicily after Malta, the contrast couldn't have been more stark between the people.

C) added to that, the basic lack of courtesy and gratitude among the average Maltese driver was surprising, if not shocking. Not once did we receive a simple wave of the hand, or nod of the head for letting somebody through. Bizarre.

7. Request, and insist upon, a double bed if that's really what you want. Make it clear to the hotel in question that a double bed is *not* the same as a twin bed. They have both, but far fewer double bedrooms than twin bedrooms. We stayed for the first three nights in a "double bed" which was merely two single beds shoved together with a 10cm divide between each. You have to fight for the basic things, no matter what you specifically request on the hotel booking form.


Malta: very much worth seeing, just pay extra for the GPS, minimise your time with the natives, check your change at every turn, and escape to Gozo for a bit of class and relatively decent human behaviour.

Best of luck