A Week in Malta & Gozo - Valletta (Day 1)

A view Valletta Harbor and one of the canons of the Saluting Battery from The Upper Barrakka Garden.

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

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Per the usual with our eastward travel, we left Dulles airport in the Washington, DC, metro area for an overnight flight. We had a layover in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport with an arrival around 7:30am there and the second leg of our journey departing around 10:30am. Yes, that means we were able to grab a Parisian croissant breakfast.

Our Charles de Gaulle airport experience was a bit interesting and inefficient. When we de-planed, we had to go through security (during which I had to chug water from both of our water bottles that we had filled up post-security in DC), then went through Customs, then had to catch a 15-minute bus ride to another terminal, and then needed to go through security again. Oh yes, and then one more bus from the terminal to our plane…after a brief pause in activities when the terminal lost power and couldn’t check people in for a solid 3 minutes. The good news was that I was pretty darn tired since it was after 1:30am my time and all that activity woke me up!

We loved the street decorations festooning the narrow streets of Valletta.

The second flight from Paris to Malta was a scant 2.5 hours, and we arrived in Malta around 1:30pm. We had read in advance about the taxi situation at the airport there so knew to go straight to the taxi stand inside the building where you pre-pay based on your destination. It was nice and smooth, and the ride to our destination of Valletta , Malta’s capital city, was easy. Easy until that is, our taxi driver kept circling streets unable to find our Airbnb address. The good news was that I had Googled and seen the street view so knew that the address was right. I finally pulled up my own Google app and had to direct the driver to the place. All’s well that ends well!

We got settled in our “Art Penthouse” Airbnb, which is right in the main part of Valletta. The apartment is a ‘penthouse’ and takes up both the 4th and 5th floors of the building and can be entered via a very lengthy spiral staircase or up an elevator. The apartment is architecturally eclectic and fun to stay in, though the crazy stairs are not something I would want to deal with in my regular life. The 4th floor has 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, and the 5th floor has a kitchen/family room combo with patios off each side. Up four separate steps from there is a half bath tucked away, and then there is a steep ladder (like to a loft) that goes up above the spiral staircase below and will take you to the rooftop patio that has a view of the Mediterranean and other rooftops nearby.

The owner left a bottle of water and red wine for us, which is always a good way to endear me to a place!

The comfortable living room of our Valletta apartment.

Spiral staircases look great but make me dizzy!

We found The Wembley Store to be a good smallish grocery store, only a moderate walk from our Air BnB.

Pretty darn tired - at this point we had been up about 26 hours - we headed out to a small market called Wembley Store , where we got some snacks (local Gozo cheese and crackers) and bottles of water. We don’t normally drink bottled water. In fact, we travel with refillable water bottles. But based on what we read online and was recommended by the owner of the Airbnb, Malta’s water is best to avoid drinking due to its strong flavor.

Within just a block or so of our apartment was the start of the pedestrian streets of Valletta with various cafes, restaurants, squares, and some buildings of interest that we would visit later in our time in the city – such as the Grandmaster’s Palace and St. John’s Co-Cathedral .

Staying so close to the walkable area made our stay very pleasant with food and anything else we may need within a short walk. For our first meal in the city, we stopped at Moo’s Kebab , a Turkish restaurant with both indoor and outdoor seating. We picked a table outside, and Dustin ordered a lamb wrap and Lindsey a falafel wrap. We had our choice of ‘salads’ to include in the wrap and instead of picking three at random, had the man working there put in what he thought would go best, and they were utterly delicious. The salads appeared to be a seasoned rice, a seasoned couscous, and a salad with cabbage and tomatoes. The wraps were so large that we each only ate about half. Leftovers in hand, we dragged ourselves the couple of blocks back to our apartment and napped for a few hours.

Moo’s is a quick but tasty kebab and wrap restaurant.

A short walk away is the former opera house that was bombed during World War II. Its ruins were converted more recently in 2013 into an open-air concert venue called Pjazza Teatru Rjal. We had found that there would be a free concert there that evening that we planned on going to if we were awake in time. Alas, we were not, though a couple of nights later, we would get to experience that venue on pure happenstance.

Post-nap but still groggy, we finished the rest of our wraps and were ready to call it a night a few hours later to get a good night’s sleep and adjust to the time zone, 6 hours ahead of our own.