Malta is three islands. Two of them need a boat.
Which Blue Lagoon trip stops long enough to swim. What a Gozo day costs once the ferry is in it. Whether Mdina wants an afternoon or a whole morning. Reviews of every tour you can book on the islands.
- 710
- tours to book
- $6
- cheapest way in
- 120
- under $30
The Blue Lagoon, Valletta on foot, Ġgantija, a deck of your own.
The four bookings a first week here gets built around, with what each costs and how much of the day it takes.
01The whole archipelagoGozo & Comino Islands, Blue Lagoon & Seacaves TourGozo, Comino, the Blue Lagoon and the sea caves on one hull. More travellers book this than anything else on the islands.
02Valletta on footThe Original Valletta Walking TourTwo hours through a city the knights laid out on a grid, with the Grand Harbour opening at the end of every third street.
03The Gozo dayGozo Day Trip Including Ggantija TemplesOver on the ferry, then Ġgantija — free-standing stone older than the pyramids — and the Citadel above Victoria.
04A deck for the dayBlue Lagoon, Beaches & Bays Trip by CatamaranCatamaran out to the northern bays with the swim ladder down and lunch cooked on board.
Six towns, and the best day out from each one.
A capital on a fortified spit, a sister island across the channel, a holiday coast in the north, two harbour towns facing Valletta, and a silent walled city on the hill. Where the boats leave from decides more than the hotel does.
Every good Maltese day starts at a quay. The question is which boat.
Comino sits between the two big islands and nothing reaches it by road, so the whole country funnels onto the water. Three kinds of crossing, what it costs to board each one, and how much of the day it eats.
Nothing on Malta is far. Anything across water still takes the day.
The islands are thirty minutes end to end by road, so distance is never the problem. Water is. A Gozo or Comino day is a seven-hour commitment once the crossing is counted at both ends, while everything inside the walls of Valletta and Mdina fits in a morning. Build the week around the boats and let the towns fill the gaps.
Give it the whole day
The Maltese days out that carry the most travellers.
Every tour we have reviewed on Malta →More people book these than anything else on the islands, and each one earns the slot for a different reason.
1
Gozo & Comino Islands, Blue Lagoon & Seacaves Tour
Review of Malta’s $28 Gozo and Comino boat tour, with Blue Lagoon swimming, sea caves, Crystal Lagoon views, Gozo time, and practical tips.
From · $28
Read our review →
2
Comino: Blue Lagoon, Crystal Lagoon, and Seacaves Tour
from $35
3
Blue Lagoon, Beaches & Bays Trip by Catamaran
from $62
4
Gozo, Comino, Blue & Crystal Lagoon, & Caves Cruise
from $34
5
Comino, Crystal Lagoon, and Blue Lagoon Cruise
from $40
6
Gozo, Comino and Blue Lagoon Cruise
from $41
7
Comino, Blue Lagoon, Crystal Lagoon & Caves Cruise
from $34
8
The Original Valletta Walking Tour
from $27
What a day on Malta actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by what it costs a head. The cut points are this corpus’s own: half the catalogue sits under $45, and the island is unusually generous at the cheap end.
The big Comino boat days at their entry price, the Valletta walking tours, and museum and palace tickets.
The island standards: the Comino runs, the catamaran days and the Gozo cruises with the caves added on.
Full days with lunch and someone else driving: the Mdina highlights run, Gozo with the temples, and the once-a-trip splurges.
Three things you cannot see anywhere but these islands.
Fortified harbours and clear water exist all over the Mediterranean. Free-standing stone older than the pyramids, a lagoon the colour of a swimming pool, and a cave the sea lights from underneath do not.
The Ġgantija Temples
Two temples on Gozo, raised around 3600 BC, which makes them the oldest free-standing structures anywhere and older than Stonehenge and Giza by a comfortable margin. The largest blocks weigh fifty tonnes and arrived before the wheel reached these islands. Nobody has settled how. The site sits on a plateau above Xagħra with the whole of Gozo laid out below it.
- 1Gozo Day Trip Including Ggantija Temples★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 2,399 reviews
- 2Gozo Full-Day Tour with Guide, Temples, & Train★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 567 reviews
- 3Prehistoric Temples of Malta Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 517 reviews
The Blue Lagoon
Comino has three permanent residents, no cars and one strip of water between it and the islet of Cominotto where a white sand bottom throws the light back up so hard the sea reads as swimming-pool blue. Boats leave from Sliema, Buġibba and Mellieħa. Go early or go late: between eleven and three in August the lagoon is standing room.
- 1Gozo & Comino Islands, Blue Lagoon & Seacaves Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 15,672 reviews
- 2Comino: Blue Lagoon, Crystal Lagoon, and Seacaves Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 5,673 reviews
- 3Blue Lagoon, Beaches & Bays Trip by Catamaran★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 5,496 reviews
The Blue Grotto
On the south coast under Wied iż-Żurrieq the cliffs are undercut into a run of sea caves, and the sun reflecting off the white sand floor turns the water inside them a luminous blue. Small wooden boats go in from the inlet, weather permitting — the swell shuts it down often enough that the morning run is the safe one.
- 1Blue Grotto & Sunday Market at Marsaxlokk Fishing Village★★★★★★★★★★ 3.6 · 803 reviews
- 2Marsaxlokk, Blue Grotto, and Qrendi Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 547 reviews
- 3Prehistoric Temples, Limestone Heritage & Blue Grotto★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 412 reviews
The boats stop before the island does.
A northwesterly closes the Comino crossing and the Blue Grotto inlet at short notice, usually with a morning’s warning and no refund on the afternoon. Malta is well set up for it. Everything below is inland, indoors or behind eight metres of limestone, and none of it cares what the sea is doing.
Valletta, Mdina, the Three Cities: all of it fortified, all of it walkable.
Every walking tour on the islands →Malta spent four hundred years expecting a siege and built accordingly. Three walled towns survive intact, each an easy morning, each with a completely different feel — a working capital, a silent one, and the three fingers of stone that took the worst of 1565.
-
1
Valletta
The Original Valletta Walking Tour
Grid streets, auberges and the Saluting Battery, on foot in two hours.
-
2
Mdina
Mdina and Rabat Insider’s Tour
Inside the gate the traffic stops. Nine hundred people live there and it is the quietest place on the islands.
-
3
The Three Cities
The Three Fortified Cities Tour including Boat Trip
Birgu, Senglea and Cospicua across the water, reached the way they should be — by boat.
By place — Malta, Gozo and Comino
By kind of day — boat, wall, table or throttle
Valletta, the harbour, Mdina, Comino, Gozo: the run that works.
Grand Harbour
Blue GrottoThe newest Maltese tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Half Day Tour in Marsaxlokk Village, Market, Blue Grotto & Qrendi
Read our review →
Sunday: Ghajn Tuffieha (Riviera) Beach Yoga Class
Read our review →
Gozo Unveiled: Guided Hiking in Gozo – South East
Read our review →
