Malta ! No country forum - so anyone can help ?

I've been there. They have a good bus system.

I suggest you go to Wikipedia and read about the islands. Most of your questions will be answered then.

It's a really old place with lots of history. The port as we sailed in is built of huge stones that were quarried by hand in the Nile River basin and brought over by boat and assembled. It's really incredible.

If you do a search on Malta, you’ll find quite a few posts., We spent 2 weeks there in January (2019), so completely different weather. We stayed in Valletta. The bus system is excellent. You don’t need a car. We really enjoyed our time in Gozo.

We used LP and Bradt guidebooks.

i visited malta last summer for 4 days. as you may already know malta is a unique little island nation in the eu with a history that goes back thousands of years. european with a strong influence of many cultures particularly british and arabic. thus you find a parliament, street names like old mint road and old bakery street as well as places like mdina and salema, and road names starting with 'triq'. the maltese language itself is a latinised form of old arabic. In addition to maltese most people speak English as well.

i have always been intrigued by malta mainly because it was home to caravaggio for a short time and because of the stories of the 'malta convoys' and 'faith, hope, and glory' - three largely mythical biplane fighters that apparently fought the italians and germans airforces during ww2.

valetta is the main city and where i stayed in an airb&b. took the extremely good bus system on the island from the airport. loved the fact that you can pay your fare by tapping a credit/debit card on the bus. no hunting for a vending machine at a bus stop or looking for a 'tabacci' as in italy. You can pay cash as well. malta also has the ‘bolt’ rideshare service similar to lyft and uber. i used the bus service to get around. there are frequent ferry services across the various bay, from example from valetta to salema or cospicua or to the smaller islands like gozo.

plenty of things to do in valetta. My main target was the st. james co-cathedral with its two amazing caravaggio paintings. spectacular interior too, on par with any in Italy. the modern parliament building is a wonderful design by renzo piano, and blends in perfectly with the surrounding older buildings. lovely views from the upper baraka gardens of the grand harbor. you can watch the very british saluting battery ritual every day at noon. many other museums, palaces, and churches, all within walking distance of each other. some of the roads sloping toward the sea are fairly steep.

outside of valetta, mdina, the old capital of malta is a must-see. It is beautifully preserved, on a hill, and is a lovely mixture of norman, baroque and arabic architecture. easy to get to by bus. no cars are allowed inside. i loved walking around in the narrow streets and taking pictures. saint paul's cathedral is worth looking at. there are many ancient archaeological sites in malta if you are interested. also, several ww2 sites and museums. a great day trip is to gozo via ferry service either from valetta or cirkewwa. i wanted to see the baroque st. george’s basilica.

had a wonderful time visiting this jewel in the mediterranean. if you like take a look at the link in my profile for some photos of my trip to malta. hope this helps. good luck and enjoy.

I would stay in Valletta, it's very central to the bus network as well as chock-full of things to see. I would look on the Malta website and get a Bradt guidebook to Malta (or Lonely Planet). And beware of how insanely hot it will be in June. I went in September and it was more than I could comfortably bear. If I had to do it over again, I would go in early Spring.

I think four days is a good amount of time. In addition to ideas listed above, there is a famous hypogeum, an underground burial site. You have to buy tickets well in advance as numbers are limited. Visitors are led through in small groups. No bones are visible.

From Malta it’s a very short flight to Catania in Sicily, where you could easily spend weeks. If you get hooked on Caravaggios, there is another in a church in Ortigia, one in Messina and one in Trapani (all in Sicily).

I stayed in Valletta and also on the island of Gozo. How many days do you have? I recall a very good tourism website: https://www.visitmalta.com/en/
I prioritized the Neolithic temples, Mdina/Rabat, and some Roman sites. Never needed a car, I actually walked across Gozo. You can supplement bus with taxis as distances are so small.
Be sure to book Hypogeum tickets, I missed it!

Pat, I haven't been there yet, but we have a trip there coming up in September, and I've been doing a lot of research.

Malta appears to be extremely popular with Europeans (especially with Brits), though few Americans go there (to me, that's usually a good sign that indicates I'll probably like the place). Be aware that most of the tourist promotional materials you are likely to find will focus on very short-term visitors looking for cheap (for Europe) "fun in the sun" and cruise ship passengers who are only there for a few hours. Malta does get a LOT of visitors from the UK on package tours, and it also gets a lot of cruise ship traffic (both of which often make me think twice about a destination, but in this case I have become convinced I'll still like the place a lot) - I'm going just outside of peak season, which should mitigate a lot of the over-tourism concerns. The place is clearly overflowing with history and historic sights.

Valetta -- or rather, Valetta and its immediate surroundings -- seems to be the place to stay. I booked a place in "three cities" (which is actually a set of older gritty neighborhoods immediately across the harbor from Valetta itself). We're also spending several days on Gozo, which by all accounts sounds quiet, lovely and mostly free of the crass over-commercialization that exists in some parts of Malta (I've read some say Gozo is what the rest of Malta was like decades ago, before tourism became the basis of their economy).

We are doing a week on Malta itself, plus five days on Gozo (we are going scuba diving on probably two of those days - to my surprise, and delight, it appears that Gozo has some incredible diving, perhaps the best in the Mediterranean - I only discovered this after I had booked our flights, and since we are avid divers, this is a huge plus for us).

It seems to me that just about everything about a trip to Malta is super easy (kind of like a British version of Sicily?). For you (coming from Victoria), like us (coming from Seattle), I suspect the hardest part will be figuring out flights. After looking at many (inefficient) options that involved multiple stops in North America/Europe on the way, I ended up booking our flights via Istanbul, it greatly simplified things for us (there's a new nonstop from Seattle to Istanbul; I added on 5 days in Istanbul on the way home since our last trip there was cut short by the pandemic). If you want a one-connection flight from Vancouver, take a look at Turkish Airlines (you could go YVR-IST-MLA).

We actually will be renting a car for Malta/Gozo. While a car will be of no use in Valetta itself, there's plenty to see around both islands (enough that in our 12 days there we will not run out of places to explore). They do have a decent bus system but it appears challenging/slow to get out to the smaller, quieter places away from Valetta and other primary tourist zones.

I would imagine things will be busy in June. We specifically picked end-of-September hoping to dodge the worst of the crowds, but still catch warm weather (and warm sea water). We'll see about all that. I do expect the center of Valetta to be crowded with cruise ship passengers pretty much every day, year-round (it's a very popular cruiser port....even Rick Steves gave it a cursory three minutes of attention on his "Cruising the Mediterranean" episode 😎). The Bradt guidebook is excellent.

I'm really looking forward to this trip.

I've been, and did not particularly enjoy it. (That's not to say you won't).

Valetta was interesting, although was pretty much flattened during WWII, and largely rebuilt. As others have said, it has a pretty comprehensive bus system so transport is easy. There is no language barrier in that nearly all Maltese speak English. The ancient sites are interesting, the story of the Siege of Malta by the Ottomans is fascinating. I liked Gozo more than Malta itself.

Am I being unfair if I say that the best thing about Malta was the ferry to Sicily? I realise the latter is a much bigger Island, but it seems to me that everything Malta has , Sicily has better.

Oh my goodness I am so grateful to so many of you for such thorough replies ! Thank you very much !

We have an indeterminate among of time as I’m still in planning stages ( whole trip is 30 days flying in and out of London , but have already booked first 10 days in Greece - so still have 20 days to fill ( fun problem ) !

Yes flights may be an issue as airfares have really gone up and “ hopping about by cheap airlines “ isn’t so cheap anymore !

Will start looking at all suggestions !

Thanks again !

pat,

I had been planning a trip to Malta a few years ago, but sidetracked by some personal issues and of course the pandemic. I bought the Lonely Planet guidebook and found it very informative. One of my sons was there just before the pandemic, and they stayed partly in Valletta and partly in Gozo.

Good luck with your planning!