Last-minute trips are weird. You start looking at an Ireland itinerary, but for some reason hotels are 200€ a night. You check for alternatives and end up booking at a place you had never considered before. In my case, it was the tiny country of Malta, an archipelago with eight islands: Malta, Gozo | Għawdex, Comino | Kemmuna, Manoel Island | Il-Gżira Manoel, Cominotto | Kemmunett, Saint Paul’s Island | Il-Gżejjer ta’ San Pawl, Filfla and Filfoletta. It turns out that Malta is both the country and the main island. Only Malta, Gozo and Comino, that is inhabited – and there are just two people living in the latter.

Malta is located in the Mediterranean Sea, a handful of kilometres south of Sicily. It is one of the smallest, and most densely-populated countries in the world – actually, in the island of Malta you literally cannot tell where one city ends and the next begins. The inhabitants speak English and Maltese (I will use this order for bilingual references, English | Maltese, as I did above with the island names). Malta as an independent country was established in 1964, when it gained independence from the United Kingdom.

Humans first reached Malta during the Mesolithic, around the year 6500 BCE. Due to the island’s geostrategic location in the middle of the Mediterranean, it has been lusted after by many powers and alliances – from the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans to the British Empire and everyone involved in WWII. The successive populations have heavily influenced the islands and its architecture.

My original plan was to stay in Valletta, a fortified city mostly from the 16th century and the capital of the country. However, I only found apartments in basements for a decent price. I finally found a hotel in Saint Julian’s | San Ġiljan. Once that was booked, I focused on what to do and see in Valletta, but the more I read about the island, the more intrigued I grew.

In the end, I decided to balance some landscape watching (22nd and 26th) with historical Valletta (23rd), prehistoric ruins (24th) and a guided tour through the smaller island of Gozo (25th). There were a few things that did not work out as intended, but all in all it was a good trip with lots of new experiences, but a tad of necessary improvisation made it less efficient than it could’ve been. Fortunately, everything that went wrong could be fixed.