In April, we spent 5 days in Malta.
Below is URL of the web page I just published about this trip.
A TRIP TO MALTA- 2018

If anyone is planning to visit Malta, I hope this can be helpful to you.

Thank you for the great information!! We are going to Malta in August and will take your report along.

Nice report. We enjoyed our 10d trip to Malta a few years ago and visited most of these same locations (there aren't that many others to visit).

Enjoyed reading the report.

A couple of pointers, particularly accommodation. If you look at the first photograph in the report, 'View from our Hotel Room', you'll see two ugly construction cranes, "so what?" you might say. These cranes, many of them, are a constant blight on the Malta landscape, and cause a lot of disruption and unwelcome heavy machinery noise, At he base of each crane is a Building Site, the noise, possible traffic chaos, can and does go on for hours day after day. So make sure you research your accommodation carefully before booking. Check whether your hotel accepts school groups.....a lot of sports tournaments, or teenage related activity holidays are year round. A few groups might be well disciplined to take into consideration other hotel guests, but many aren't, and are a pain in the butt. The adult supervisors of these groups can be just as bad, after all they've either left their wife or husband at home!

The same goes for road works. Malta's roads weren't built for the almost 400,00 vehicles that ply them. A fair whack of these vehicle are heavy vehicles. Roadworks are frequent, and happen often with little notice. Traffic Diversions are often necessary, and can result in frustrating gridlock.

Public buses.....don't get me started! There's plenty of them, the favourite destination seems to be 'Sorry, not in Service'! They're excellent vfm, but they get very full, very quickly.....passenger comfort isn't high on the agenda of Malta bus drivers.

Remember also that a population of c450,000 can almost double in summer. That's almost 1,000,00 people and 400,00 vehicles on a very small island.

If you think I've gone OTT, then fine I'd probably think the same.....but if you're unlucky your holiday will be remembered for the wrong reasons.

You can't pour a pint into an half pint glass, but Malta tries very hard.....not the place it used to be.

That crane in the picture is actually working on the expansion of the hotel we were in - Hotel Juliani.
The project has just started, so the crane will be there for a while.

On the other hand, we weren't bothered by noise or any other construction problems, except for the day they installed the crane, which actually happened while we were there.

There is definitely a lot of building going on!!

I notice on the photo you posted of the view from the Barracuda Restaurant, there's what looks like construction work going on in the right hand side of the photo right outside the restaurant window.

Don't get me wrong I really like Malta, but I don't like what's happening to it.....I don't call it 'Crane Island' for nothing!

Thank you for a great trip report. Will use it for planning our trip in September!

Lancasterladdie:

There is construction going on everywhere in the harbour area. There are cranes everywhere you look!

I remember a joke about China that could be attributed to Malta as well:
What's the national bird of Malta? The building crane!

I'd like to think that the National Bird is keeping well out of the Valletta City Walled area. Last time I was there the Fresh Food Market was closed and being knocked about a bit. I hope that the finished product is as near as possible identical to the original.

If you look from Valletta across to Sliema's long waterfront, in years past the skyline would be at first or second floor level, but now everything seems to have had several floors built on top, giving it that maybe not ugly look, but definitely out of keeping of the Malta of yesteryear..

An interesting recent letter, lots of lovely photos, and comments about Malta from the Times of Malta letters pages...

https://www.timesofmalta.com/article...ke-this.679374

And remember that Malta is a tiny island 17 miles x 10 miles...

https://www.timesofmalta.com/article...ery-day.674859

Incredible.