Renting a car in Malta
Malta is one of the cheapest places in Europe to rent a car and one of the least relaxing places to drive one. How to decide, and what the headline price is not telling you.
Read the guide →
Independent guides · No. 01
Everything in Malta is close.
Almost nothing is quick.
Malta is 316 square kilometres of limestone with half a million people living on it, which sounds like a place you cannot possibly get wrong. Then you spend forty minutes on a bus covering nine kilometres. Or you rent a car and find out that the apartment you booked has nowhere to put it. Or you reach the Blue Lagoon at eleven in the morning in July and cannot see the water for the boats.
These are the five guides I would have wanted before my first summer here. No listicles, no drone shots, no “hidden gems” that hold four hundred people. Just the decisions that actually change your week, made in the order you have to make them.
The five that matter
Plan it in this order
Bus, ferry, taxi or car
You can see most of the island on a two-euro bus ticket. You can also lose half a day waiting for one in August. When each option actually makes sense.
Read the guide →Where to stay in Malta
Sliema, St Julian’s, Valletta, St Paul’s Bay, Mellieħa or Gozo. The island is small, but the wrong base quietly costs you an hour every single day.
Read the guide →Blue Lagoon & Comino
The most photographed water in Malta is also the most oversold. Still worth it — but only at the right hour, on the right boat, and not in the middle of August.
Read the guide →Sort this before you fly
Data, money, insurance, the airport run and the two tickets that sell out weeks ahead. Twenty minutes of admin that buys you a good first day.
Read the guide →Gozo in one day, and why you should give it two
The ferry, the Cittadella, Ramla’s red sand and the drive that only makes sense if you sleep there. In progress.
Twenty minutes of admin
Sort these before you land
The car, if you need one
Malta is one of the cheapest countries in Europe to rent a car, and prices climb steeply the closer you book to the date. Compare before you commit — and read our guide first, because plenty of trips are better off without one.
Compare car pricesThe Comino boat
The Blue Lagoon crossings that leave early — the only ones worth taking between June and September — are also the ones that fill up first. Booking ahead costs the same and saves you the 9am queue at Ċirkewwa.
See Comino tripsThe right base
On an island this small the neighbourhood matters more than the hotel. Sliema and St Julian’s put you on the ferry and the bus spine; Valletta is beautiful and quiet after nine; the north is cheaper and further from everything.
Check availabilityAn eSIM before you fly
Malta is in the EU, so an EU roaming plan works normally. If you are coming from outside the EU, an eSIM bought before departure means Google Maps works the moment you land, which matters when the bus stop names are in Maltese.
Get a Malta eSIMTravel insurance
Malta has excellent public healthcare and an EHIC/GHIC agreement with most of Europe, so this is about the rest: cancelled flights, the boat trip you miss, the scooter you should not have hired, and anything that happens in the water.
Compare policiesThe Hypogeum
The Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum admits a strict handful of visitors a day to protect a 5,000-year-old underground temple. Tickets routinely go weeks or months ahead. It is booked directly through Heritage Malta, not through us — no commission, just do it now.
Heritage Malta
Orientation
Malta in eight lines
- Currency
- Euro (€)
- Languages
- Maltese and English, both official
- Driving
- On the left, like the UK
- Plugs
- Type G, the British three-pin
- Best months
- May, June, September, October
- Hardest months
- July and August: hot, full, expensive
- Airport
- Malta International (MLA), Luqa
- The islands
- Malta, Gozo, Comino
Three things people get wrong
What it actually looks like
Who writes this
Not a content farm
I live in St Paul’s Bay and I have taken the 222 bus more times than I would like to admit. Every route, price band and opening pattern on this site is something I have checked myself or re-checked against the operator’s own page before publishing — and the date at the top of each guide tells you when. Where I have not been, I say so.