2 Best Sights in Gozo and Comino, Malta

For years, the site that drew visitors to Dwejra Bay was the Azure Window, a huge rock arch steeped in mythology—it even made an appearance in the first season of Game of Thrones (as did a lot of Gozo). In 2017, it collapsed into the sea during a storm and inadvertently became one of the most popular diving sites on the island. But it wasn't the only lure to Dwejra, where a rather touristy series of cafés and stalls has built up. The Blue Hole, a spectacular inland sea pool, lures swimmers and divers alike, while just to its west stands Fungus Rock, famed during the days of the Knights of the Order of St. John for a rare parasitic plant that grew on its summit. They banned all locals from the rock, as they believed the plant had powerful medicinal properties—it didn't. These days the Inland Sea, a lagoon connected to the ocean by a 100-meter-long rock tunnel, is perhaps the biggest draw to the bay. Once a busy haven for fishermen, now boatmen ferry visitors (€4) through the tunnel in a loop around Dwejra Point to get the best view of the unusual rock formations and to peer down to try and see the remains of the arch.

This beautiful inlet of twinkling jade waters is popular with swimmers, snorkelers, and diving companies, as its shallows and gentle slope make it perfect for try-dives. It was also the setting for an especially awful Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie, By The Sea, which locals still rant about, as it meant the area was off-limits for months. Head inland on the track directly across from the water and you'll find one of Gozo's hidden wildernesses. The trail winds Mġarr ix-Xini gorge, a lost world of scratchy garrigue and slopes bending with carob trees and strangler figs, whose coralline limestone walls are popular with climbers. An old British water pumping station, built into the rock itself and abandoned since the 1960s, lies vacant here, its entrance hidden behind a tunnel of thorns.