Discussion
Thoughts on Malta.
We were there for a touch less than a week.
I can compare it to Cyprus and Lanzarote, which I think are fair "comparables".
It's a shorter flight than either. It feels more crowded than either, although last time I was in Cyprus was a long time ago now.
We are both capable of dealing with heat, but this was a bit much even for us.
Valletta is beautiful, and we will likely return to explore more. Mdina is also outstanding, a little like Carcassonne in some ways.
Gozo also shows a lot of promise.
We only really dipped our toes in each of these places, because of the mega heat.
Food. We had one outstanding meal, one good meal, and many many "meh" meals. I think a lot of the people visiting and recording reviews may be less regularly exposed to "unusual foods" than we are, so perhaps score things higher as a result.
Over all, we found the service great, but the food not quite matching. One meal we had high hopes for, and were a bit disappointed.
@bloor Sandra and I went to Malta years ago.
We were underwhelmed with the food and public transport, in particular.
Gozo was beautiful.
@neil @bloor Went a few times. Thought the buses were fine to get around. But it requires some planning. Best meal we had was on a harbour side in Marsaxlokk — away from the tourists.
I think we were wise to stay in Valletta though. For both food and drink, and accessibility to the rest of the islands.
@neil I think there maybe a combination of factors. First and centre may be that many of the tourists who go there go there primarily for the weather, and not much else. They want cheap food not good food.
But the second may actually be the cost and difficulty of getting raw ingredients on the island.
We felt pretty dumb going to Wagamama (twice, actually) but there was a reason; not massively great (not awful) experiences elsewhere in places we felt we'd get something more local.
@bloor The best food we had in Malta was a lovely Chinese restaurant. We went twice :)
@neil We did go to a Korean restaurant once which was good, too.
@neil It did feel like a really cosmopolitan place, in terms of ethnicities, I have to say, which I hadn't really been expecting (having done exactly zero research).
@neil We've always been quite disappointed by Chinese food when abroad in Europe. My parents recommended us a place they'd thought quite highly of in Lanzarote, so we trooped there and came away a bit "meh". I think this kind of puts us off trying Chinese food when abroad close-to-home.
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