by I now live in Limassol, Cyprus - we relocated from UK in March 2004.
My only experience of Malta had been on a visit lasting from arriving early Sunday morning and departing around 9pm on Tuesday evening. It was a familiarisation trip with the UK tour operator I worked with for over 10yrs before leaving to live in Cyprus. My visit would have been in about 1997 or thereabouts.
We had some really poor performing hotels at the time and it was my job to have a look at some of them as I reduced our invoice payments to the hotels if we had paid compensation to our guests because of problems caused by the hotels service, or lack of it.
So my opinion was greatly coloured before I even got there
I can honestly say, it's the only holiday resort I've visited on this kind of trip where my opinion hasn't changed afterwards. I still couldn't decide if the whole place needed to be knocked down and rebuilt or if it had never been completed in the first place.... The only places I did like was Melehia Bay area and Gozo.
Now for the latest turn of events.....
My parents decided to take a month in Malta about 6yrs ago in February and have been returning ever since. They've always enjoyed it, say the people are lovely and friendly. It's one of the cheapest holiday destinations where they could have a month on half board in a basic 3 star hotel (Limelight, BHC and more recently the Topaz) for less than £800Gbp for the 2 of them, including scheduled flights with Air Malta through Chevron holidays.
They come to spend a month in Cyprus each November and in return, we spend a little less than a week in Malta with them. We can fly directly from Larnaca airport into Luqa with Emirates. We just take a room at whichever hotel they have booked into.
The 1st time we stayed at BHC, which was always an appalling unit for complaints. I was dreading it as you can imagine, but the idea is to spend quality time with my parents...
I have to say, the hotel was very basic, fairly shabby too but it was clean. The food provided was also basic but well cooked and a fair amount of choice.
The following 2yrs, we stayed at the Topaz (the last time being Feb 2008). The hotel is in a little better condition than the BHC, but the food choice wasn't as good and I feel the food overall was better at BHC.
I hate Bugibba! It is all scruffy backstreets and it's surprising to find a holiday resort with no hotels on the seafront. We've taken a trip to Sliema each time and do prefer that resort for the fact it's down on the waterfront with views across to Valletta.
My parents surprised us this last visit by announcing they had just bought a timeshare apartment at Salina Wharf in Qawra! They took us to have a look and the furnishings in the show apartments seem very nice. It's got good facilities and a nice bar area and hopefully, they will know the standard of the accommodation for the next few years. Each time they have visited in the last 3yrs they've been disappointed because the hotels they've got used to were closing and they had made many friends with repeat visitors. So, they were looking for something a bit more permanent in the timeshare.
We can spend a week there in one of the apartments for £50Gbp a week, so we will see how it goes this time. They've bought 18yrs!
We do prefer Qawra end to the more built up Bugibba and this time, think we will hire a car and take it across to Gozo for the day so I can revisit some of the places I went all those years ago!
I still cannot say I "love" Malta. It has merely "grown" on me over the last few years. However, it is an extremely cheap holiday where to eat and drink out of the hotels costs next to nothing.
We've made all our accommodation reservations independently using Hotelopia (part of First Choice), Sunshine.co.uk and Travel Republic. We've paid max £21.00Gbp for the 2 of us per night for half board accommodation.
Where else can you get a roof over your head and your meals included for that price?
We've always found the hotel staff are very friendly and it's probably one of the first places we've been to where we find the staff are mostly Maltese rather than Eastern European, although that had changed a little on our last visit since their more recent EU accessions.
We met a very grumpy shopkeeper (just the one), who decided we couldn't go inside his shop as he had just mopped the floor! We looked, but the floor was completely dry - he just couldn't be bothered. We wanted to buy 10 of the Malta buses for our collection so it was his bad luck that day, as we had no intention of going back to spend our Euros in his shop. We got them at the one next door and took great pleasure in waving our bag of buses at him when we came out
Maybe after driving around the island next February, I may have a different opinion. Somehow, I don't think so.... but it always makes a pleasant change to visit my parents there as we don't see too much of them otherwise.
I'm currently looking forward to my mini-cruise to Syria from Limassol port at the end of October, then my mum & dad coming to visit us for 4wks from early November.
