Malta: How to move around the island

• Rent a car
• Public transportation
• Hop-on Hop-off buses
• Ferries and boat trips

Rent a car in Malta

In Malta walking is definitely not an option if you want to see the whole island. If you are an experimented driver I would advise you to rent a car and take the full insurance. Malteses drive as British on the left side of the road but with Mediterranean passion. They rush, don´t use the break, pass over and forget about the common civilised rules, not mentioning their roads… Roads are the worst I’ve ever seen in my whole life!

The speed limit is 35km/h in town and 70km/h on other roads. There are two roads on which you can go up to 80km/h, so if you take a car be careful.

We did rent a car with Goldcar and had an accident with a bus on the first day we were on the island. Luckily we had taken the full insurance and was not our fault so the rental company got us back a new car. The only inconvenience was that we had to wait for a guy to come and pick us up for at least one hour to go to the airport and get the new car.

Tip: No matter where you rent the car online, when you arrive at the airport they tell you if you want to add the full insurance. Even tho you will think is too expensive I definitely recommend you to get it as it’s kind of tricky to drive there.

Tip: If you want to go to a party during the night I would highly recommend you to book your hotel in the same area as driving it is not the easiest and can get worst if you drunk, or tired and lanes are not properly illuminated.

Public transportation

Another option is using public transportation. I think is not very accurate and you risk to spend hours waiting for a bus. Even though the Malta public transportation website says it’s very efficient. Actually, it has an APP with real-time info. Maybe during the summer when the island is very crowded, it works better but when we went in May I almost didn’t see so many buses around.

Hop-on hop-off buses

The best option for me would be the Hop-On Hop-Off tour buses. The City Sightseeing Buses for instance have 3 routs in which you can see the whole island. Prices are 20€ per person 1 day and 37€ per person for 2 days. Also if you want to visit Comino and Gozo you can book a trip once you are there through a local agency. The cool thing is that they normally pick you up directly from your hotel to the excursion and back.

Ferries and boat trips

Remember that if you travel to Malta you will likely want to visit Comino and Gozo, so in that case you have several options:

• Take a ferry: here you can choose between Comino Ferry Service and Comino Ferries. To be honest this might be cheaper (around 10€ return) but also less comfortable as with the ferry you will have to go to the port of Cirkewwa or Marfa and with boat trips normally they come and pick you up form your hotel.
• Take a boat trip: We took this option as we were just going for a long weekend and we wanted everything as easy as possible. We could choose between stopping in Gozo for a few hours for a walk or going directly to the Blue Lagoon which was actually the option we went for. The boat was quite big, we had free drinks and sandwich. There were lots of people queuing at the bar so we were ordering two drinks at the same time 😉 People were super nice and it was easy to start chatting with other groups. We decided to go with Hello Malta Tours but it was just a coincidence as we just went for it as there was an info point nearby our hotel. We spent 17€ per person in the month of May. If I go now to their website prices are more expensive so I guess it’s cheaper to book it there directly but be careful if you are going in the summer because it can be fully booked if you don’t get your spot in advance. I found this web if you want to compare prices beforehand.

To know more about the Blue Lagoon read this article about things to do in Malta or visit our full guide of Malta.