Malta is thirty minutes wide. The hard part is choosing.
Which Comino boat anchors in the Blue Lagoon rather than passing it, what a Gozo day costs once lunch is in, and whether Valletta is a morning or an afternoon. Reviewed, priced and timed.
The boat dayGozo & Comino Islands, Blue Lagoon & Seacaves TourGozo, Comino and the lagoon in one crossing★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $28
The city dayThe Original Valletta Walking TourValletta on foot, bastions to harbour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $26
The island dayGozo Full-Day Jeep Tour with Private Boat to Gozo & returnA jeep across Gozo, with the boat over★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $92
The Blue Lagoon, the bastions, the catacombs and a kayak.
Five bookings a first week on the islands hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The one everybody takesGozo & Comino Islands, Blue Lagoon & Seacaves TourGozo, Comino and the Blue Lagoon on a single crossing. Take the early boat and you swim before the fleet arrives.
02The first morningThe Original Valletta Walking TourValletta end to end on foot, from the city gate down to the harbour batteries. Three hours, and the grid finally makes sense.
03The old capitalMdina and Rabat Walking Tour with CatacombsMdina inside the walls, then the catacombs cut under Rabat. Go late afternoon, when the day buses have gone.
04The cheap thrillUltimate Kayak AdventureA kayak along the cliffs and into water you cannot reach any other way. An hour, and the cheapest good thing on the islands.
05The one with the kidsPopeye Village Entry TicketPopeye Village, built as a film set in the seventies and never taken down. The bay it sits in is the real attraction.
Group cruise, catamaran, or a hull of your own. Pick your deck.
Nearly every good Maltese day starts at a jetty. Three ways to get onto the water, what it costs to board each one, and which harbour it leaves from.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Blue Lagoon, Crystal Lagoon, and Seacaves Tour
The Comino runGozo, Comino and the lagoon, with a swim stop that lasts.
Catamaran daysShade, a swim ladder and lunch cooked on board.
A boat to yourselvesYour own skipper, your own route, no other passengers.
The cave runUnder the arch at the Blue Grotto, early, while the light is in it.
All 96 days on the water →
The days out more people book than anything else on the islands.
Every tour we have reviewed →What the booking numbers actually look like across Malta, Gozo and Comino, and what earns each one its slot.
1
Gozo & Comino Islands, Blue Lagoon & Seacaves Tour
Spend 6 to 7 hours cruising from Bugibba to Comino and Gozo. Swim at the Blue Lagoon, view Crystal Lagoon and pirate caves, ride the boat waterslide, and explore Victoria or Ramla Bay. Add the Gozo shuttle if you want more time sightseeing and less time walking from the harbor.
From · $28
Read our review →
2
Blue Lagoon, Crystal Lagoon, and Seacaves Tour
from $35
3
Blue Lagoon, Beaches & Bays Trip by Catamaran
from $62
4
Gozo, Comino, Blue & Crystal Lagoon, & Caves Cruise
from $34
5
Comino, Crystal Lagoon, and Blue Lagoon Cruise
from $40
6
Gozo, Comino and Blue Lagoon Cruise
from $41
7
The Original Valletta Walking Tour
from $26
8
Highlights of Malta & Mdina Full Day Tour with Lunch
from $79
Valletta, Gozo, Comino, and the four towns the boats leave from.
A capital you can walk across in twenty minutes, a second island with its own pace, an uninhabited third one with the water everybody came for, and the harbour towns in between. Six starting points, and the best day out from each.
The Blue Lagoon is a channel between two islands, and it is as good as the photographs.
Comino has no hotels, no cars and about three permanent residents. The water in the channel runs over white sand at four metres, which is why it reads electric from the deck. Boats leave from Sliema, Bugibba, Mellieha and Mgarr, and the ones that anchor beat the ones that circle.
Valletta fits in a morning and rewards a whole day.
Everything in Valletta →
The whole capital is six hundred metres end to end, built on a grid by knights who wanted every street to catch the sea breeze. Walk it before the cruise groups land, then spend the afternoon on what the walk only pointed at.
- 13-Hour Walking Tourfrom $25
- 2Full-Day Gozo Quad Tour with Lunch and Boat Ridefrom $131
- 3Guided City Walking Tourfrom $24
The city on foot, gate to harbour
Down Republic Street, through the auberges, out onto the Upper Barrakka with the whole Grand Harbour underneath. Small groups get into courtyards the self-guided route walks straight past.
Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua
The three fortified towns across the harbour are where the knights actually lived first. Narrower, quieter, still residential, and the crossing over is a two-euro boat rather than a tour bus.
Shows, forts and cool interiors
The audio-visual shows are unfashionable and genuinely useful for getting the Great Siege straight before you stand on the walls it happened on. All of them are indoors and cold.
Gozo is twenty-five minutes away and runs about thirty years behind.
Terraced fields, a walled citadel over the middle of the island, salt pans cut into the rock at Xwejni and temples older than anything at Giza. Most people give it a day. A day is not enough, but it is better than the afternoon most tours allow.
Every Gozo day out →
What a day on the islands actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Malta is cheap for the Mediterranean, and a surprising share of the best days come in under the cost of dinner.
City walks, catacombs and film sets, the kayak hour, and most of the group boats out to Comino.
The full days: Gozo with lunch and a jeep, catamarans with a swim stop, quad tours that cross the island.
Private skippers, chartered boats and the day where somebody else drives, waits and books the table.
The Comino boats cancel more often than anyone tells you.
A hard northeasterly puts a swell straight into the channel and the crossings stop, sometimes for two days. July and August add the other problem: open limestone is unbearable by eleven. Both have the same answer. Go inland, go underground, go indoors.
Mdina held the island for two thousand years before Valletta existed.
Four hundred people still live inside the walls, cars are barred, and after the last coach leaves the noise drops to nothing. Underneath Rabat next door, early Christians cut burial galleries into the rock that you can walk through on the same ticket.
- 1Mdina and Rabat: Guided City Walking Tourfrom $24
- 2Mdina and Rabat Insider’s Tourfrom $24
- 3Vintage Bus to Valletta, Sliema, Rabat & Mdinafrom $9
Three things that only happen on these islands.
Clear water and old stone are Mediterranean staples. A channel between two uninhabited islands, free-standing temples a thousand years older than Stonehenge, and three fortified towns facing a capital across a harbour are not.
The Blue Lagoon
The lagoon is not a bay, it is the channel between Comino and the islet of Cominotto, and the sand on the bottom is what throws the colour back up. Nobody lives there to speak of, so everything on the island arrives by boat and leaves again the same day. Come before ten or after four and the difference is not subtle.
- 1Comino, Gozo, Blue Lagoon, Crystal Lagoon and Caves Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,923 reviews
- 2Comino & Gozo: Blue & Crystal Lagoons Cruise with Sea Caves★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,536 reviews
- 3Best of Gozo & Comino★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,273 reviews
The Megalithic Temples
Ggantija on Gozo went up around 3600 BC, which puts it a thousand years ahead of Stonehenge and well ahead of Giza. The builders had no metal and no wheel, and the blocks run to fifty tonnes. Hagar Qim and Mnajdra sit on the southern cliffs of Malta under protective tents, aligned so that the equinox sun runs straight down the main axis.
- 1Gozo Full-Day Tour with Guide, Temples, & Train★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 567 reviews
- 2Prehistoric Temples of Malta Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 517 reviews
- 3Prehistoric Temples, Limestone Heritage & Blue Grotto★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 412 reviews
The Three Cities
Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua faced down the Ottoman fleet in 1565 and then watched Valletta get built on the ridge opposite as a reward. They stayed working towns: laundry over the alleys, boatyards along the creek, and a waterfront of restored warehouses where the superyachts now tie up. The traditional dghajsa across from Valletta is the best two euros on the islands.
- 1Valletta and the Three Cities Scenic Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 763 reviews
- 2Valletta & Three Cities Harbour Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 239 reviews
- 3Senglea, Bormla, and Birgu Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 138 reviews
Four Maltese bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this can be sorted the night before over a beer in Sliema. These four run on boat timetables, a market that happens once a week, and small fleets that are simply full by Thursday.
- 01Blue Lagoon, Beaches and Bays Catamaran Sailing TourComino has no hotels and no roads. Every visit runs on a boat timetable, and the last crossing back is not a negotiation.
- 02Blue Grotto & Sunday Market at Marsaxlokk Fishing VillageThe fish market at Marsaxlokk happens on Sunday morning and only on Sunday morning. Miss it and the next one is a week away.
- 03Gozo & Comino Quad Bike & Boat Tour with LunchOperators run small fleets and the Gozo day fills first. One of you needs a full driving licence, carried on the day, not photographed.
- 04Guided Walking Tour with St. John’s Co-CathedralSt John’s Co-Cathedral closes to visitors on Sundays and public holidays, so the walks that go inside only run on certain days.
Rabbit, ftira, and a chocolate factory in a Gozitan village.
Maltese food is Sicilian with a North African accent and a British hangover. Book the market walk before the heat, the workshop that ends as lunch, and the tasting that explains why the wine list is all Girgentina.
- 1Lazy Pirate Boat Party with Drinks & Foodfrom $81
- 2The Valletta Street Food and Culture Walking Tourfrom $66
- 3Valletta Food Tourfrom $60
Valletta, the harbour towns, Comino, Gozo: the shape almost every first visit takes.
Valletta
Three Cities
Mdina
MarsaxlokkBy place — three islands and the harbour towns
By kind of day — deck, walls, engine or table
The newest Maltese tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Valletta and 3 Cities Private 4-Hour Shore Excursion
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Private guided Malta shore excursion with a professional guide and transport
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Malta Shore Excursion: Malta in One Day Private Sightseeing Tour
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Sightseeing Shore Excursion for Cruise Passengers
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From Sliema or Bugibba: Two Islands Ferry to Comino and Gozo
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Valletta Half-Day Guided Tour with Optional Cathedral Tour
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Comino Cruise and Jeep Tour with lunch and Transport
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Gozo Jeep Safari Tour (4×4) + Comino (Blue Lagoon) boat trip!
Read our review →