Malta with a Toddler or Baby: Know Before You Go

Malta is kind of having a moment right now. With tourism growing at record rates for the small Mediterranean country, you’d think it would feel over-saturated, like so many booming tourism capitals that have lost their charm. On the contrary, even in the peak of high season, Malta felt traditional, authentic, and welcoming.

Situated in the central Mediterranean, halfway between Sicily and Northern Africa, this EU member nation enjoys a perfect climate and incredibly natural scenery.

With a history that dates back to 5900 BCE (and plenty of megalithic temples to prove it), there is no shortage of culture and history to experience. From the infamous Knights of St. John to the indispensable role Malta played in WWII, you will find fascinating stories all over this island.

If you’re planning to travel to Malta with a baby or a toddler, here are some things that we learned along the way that might help you!

Malta is an archipelago, but you will probably stay on… Malta.

Malta is a country that is made up of three islands: Malta, Gozo, and Comino. While all are accessible and have sights to see, most of the amenities that make for a good family vacation are on the main island of Malta.

On Malta island you can find busy cities, tons of beaches, historic sites, quieter towns, nightlife… everything you need. It is the cultural, business, and tourism capital of the country.

If you’d rather have a slow-paced, rural, fishing village experience, you might consider Gozo instead. It’s known for diving and it’s calm way of life, but you won’t find big cities with lots of attractions there. If that’s more up your alley, check out the best things to do on Gozo. You can find some awesome Malta nature on Gozo!

Comino is essentially uninhabited and only has one hotel – you might visit to go to the Blue Lagoon, but you probably won’t stay there.

You can get all over the island in an hour or two (depending on traffic).

Malta is really not that big. The main island, at it’s longest point, is less than 17 miles span (from northwest to southeast). However, there is a lot of traffic during the high season, when the population of the island doubles.

A trip that might take 20 minutes without traffic, from the towns in the south up to the beaches of the north, could take 90 minutes or more in the worst traffic. But really, if you plan your days well (and try to avoid rush hour), you truly can explore the whole island easily.

Check out these family-friendly beaches.

Malta is absolutely spoilt for beaches. There are gorgeous beaches on every corner of the island, and they’ve earned the ranking of the cleanest waters of any country in the EU. And with a climate that is sunny virtually the whole year round, you’re going to want to check out the beaches.

But not all of Malta’s beaches are created equal, especially when you are considering visiting Malta with a toddler or baby. You’ll want to find the beaches that are not rocky, and that have good facilities. The best of these tend to be toward the northern part of the island. Based on our experience (and my tons of research), here are a few that you should definitely consider:

• Paradise Bay: While this beach can get a little crowded, it is great for families because it’s sandy, shallow, crystal clear, and has decent facilities. It’s on the northern-most tip of Malta, right by the ferry to Gozo, so consider combining it with a day that you plan to visit the other islands! Paradise Bay is also known for great snorkeling.
• Mellieħa Bay: This is probably the most popular beach on Malta, and for good reason. It’s massive, surrounded by restaurants and a few hotels, easy to get to on public transportation, and has all the facilities you might hope for, including life guards. It has shallow, calm water, and you can rent an umbrella and happily stay for the day.
• Golden Bay: Located on the northwestern coast, Golden Bay is a little less built up than Mellieħa Bay, but still easily accessible and family-friendly. The setting is beautiful!

Wherever you end up going, pay attention to the flags, and stay out of the water if there are red flags up. Also know that it is not socially acceptable to enter nearby restaurants in swimwear (or bare-chested, for men).

Car seats are not required in taxis (so here’s what to do instead).

The Maltese, unfortunately, are just not that into car seats. While we were there, we saw multiple instances of kids climbing around in moving cars. One taxi driver told us that car seats are not required by law, so no one uses them. That’s actually not true – they are legally required in passenger vehicles (not taxis), but the fact that a lifelong citizen thought otherwise speaks to the culture around car seats.

Don’t expect any taxi at the airport to have a car seat available. However, many of the airport transfer services do offer car seats, and we found their prices to be comparable to that of the taxis.

Of course, when our transfer back to the airport showed up, he did not bring the car seat that we had paid €7 extra for, so we had to go without for that ride. At least there are no freeways on Malta, and the highest speed limit you’ll find is equivalent to about 50 mph, although most places it is much lower, around 22 mph. For me, this was still nerve-wracking.

Restaurants are pretty kid-friendly.

Is Malta child friendly? For sure. Every restaurant we went to was welcoming of our baby and toddler. This is certainly not the case in every European country we’ve visited. They had kids’ menus for the most part, and everywhere we ate had high chairs.

Malta feels like a very family-centric country, and we never got any looks (from waiters or other guests) when we walked in with our kids. Now, we’re not exactly going to the fanciest places in town when we bring the babies, but we did go to a couple of higher-end restaurants with no problem.

Maltese attitudes about breastfeeding are changing.

Malta has traditionally had very low rates of breastfeeding, and as a result the culture is not particularly friendly toward nursing. The health ministry has been pushing in recent years to improve breastfeeding rates, and it has been making a difference. They are also working from a policy perspective to raise community awareness about the benefits of breastfeeding to make it more accepted by the public, but societal views are always slow to change.

That being said, I did not encounter any issues with breastfeeding in Malta. I nursed discreetly, using my favorite nursing clothes for inconspicuous access, and turned away from anyone who might be in view. I did not use a cover, but nor I did not feed as freely as I do in most European countries. I try to honor the culture of breastfeeding anywhere I travel to, and I believe that simply being subtle is enough for Malta.

The buses are easy to navigate, but don’t trust the schedule.

The bus system is pretty solid on Malta. We were able to get everywhere we wanted to go, in a timely fashion, and comfortably. We brought a stroller that folds up small, which made a big difference for the one very crowded rush-hour bus trip we took, but every other trip we were fine to just leave it open.

That said, the bus schedules are not particularly reliable. We used google to plot our trips, and found that the times given by google did not match those posted in the bus stop, and often neither was correct. But the buses come regularly enough that it really didn’t matter.

When you travel with kids to Malta, you should probably accept that things will happen at their own pace, anyway!

We did struggle one day with a a bunch of bus routes being shut down, because it was that neighborhood’s festival weekend (more on that next). There was no way for us to tell, and thankfully a local saw us waiting at a bus stop and told us that we’d need to walk to the next neighborhood over to catch a bus.

There are festivals pretty much every weekend.

Malta is made up of many villages and towns – often, they crowd so close to each other that a visitor can’t tell them apart, and it looks like one big city, but they are separate localities.

Every locality has a patron saint (or two).

And every patron saint has a festa dedicated to him or her sometime during the festa season.

That means that essentially, from May through September, there is a festival happening almost every weekend somewhere on the island. For a festival weekend, you can expect roads to be closed down, banners and flags everywhere, everyone to be in a celebratory mood, a processional march featuring the statue of the patron saint, and lots of fireworks.

It turns out, the Maltese take their fireworks very seriously, and are extremely skilled pyrotechnicians. The localities battle to try to out-do each other with their fireworks displays every year.

Out of sheer luck, we happened to be staying in St. Paul’s Bay during their festa. What a treat! Not only did we get to experience the most jovial nature of the town, but we also happened to be staying in a room with a stellar view of the fireworks! It is worth noting that the fireworks go off pretty much morning to midnight, but our kids got used to it quickly and it was well worth it to be able to enjoy the main fireworks display on Saturday night.

Renting a car? Watch out for speed cameras.

We did not rent a car, but this tip came straight from our taxi driver. There are speed cameras all over Malta, mostly when you exit from tunnels. The locals know where they are, and are adept at slowing down just in time. In fact, my husband was the one who brought this up, because he asked why everyone was suddenly braking even though there was no traffic ahead!

If you do rent a car, it’s best to just stay in the left (slow) lane and stick to the speed limit. If you can’t do that, then at least be aware of what everyone else is doing and slow down when they do! The speeding ticket will cost you €150.

The Maltese drive on the left side of the road, have no toll roads, and their gas stations have attendants. And while I wouldn’t call the driving relaxed by any means, it’s nowhere near the level of challenge of driving in Italy.

Check out the best things to do in Malta with toddlers

If your baby is a little older and you are looking for where to go in Malta with a toddler, check out our post that focuses more on what activities to actually do when you visit Malta with toddler: Top Ten with a Toddler: Malta. If you have a young baby, it doesn’t matter as much. But with a toddler, you’ll want to split some of your time to toddler-friendly activities, like the waterpark and aquarium!

Everyone speaks English. But the Maltese language is pretty cool too!

Malta has a fascinating history, ruled in different eras by the Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Spaniards, French, British, and others! As a result, the culture – and the language – is a blend of many influences.

When I first heard Maltese spoken, I thought it was Italian, because I hadn’t stopped to wonder if Malta had it’s own language. But then I picked up Arabic sounds and words (Arabic being the language I studied in college), so we asked a local about it. We learned that Maltese is primarily a perfect blend of Italian and Arabic, and it is a truly beautiful language to listen to!

However, you will not need to learn Maltese to get by in Malta. English is the second official language of the island, and according to Wikipedia, 88% of Maltese people speak it. In our experience, everyone we spoke to did. And it was fluent and clear – we never struggled with communication at all.

Take the kids to Littlefinger’s Brothel (and many other filming locations).

With it’s varied natural scenery and unique blend of architectural styles, Malta is a popular location for filmmakers. Just a few of the many movies filmed here are Troy, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Da Vinci Code, Gladiator, and 1980’s Popeye (in fact, the village film set from Popeye is still maintained to this day, and has become a popular amusement park!).

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you might know that some very important scenes from the first season were filmed on Malta. The epic Gate of Mdina is featured as the site where Ned and Catelyn Stark say their goodbyes, and should be visited whether or not you follow the show.

You can find scenery from the Red Keep, much of King’s Landing, Daenerys’ life before the Dothraki, and of course Littlefinger’s Brothel and the square outside of it where Ned Stark fought Jaime Lannister.

However, don’t get your hopes up for seeing the epic scenery where Daenerys married Khal Drogo, which falls under the next category….

You might not get to see the sites you planned this trip for.

Let’s be real. When you look for the most iconic sites to see in Malta, the same few pop up over and over again. And you might not get to see either of them.

I really hope that I’m not the bearer of bad news here, and that you already know that you can’t visit the Azure Window. This 92-ft. natural limestone arch, featured in several films and every postcard of Malta ever, collapsed into the sea in March of 2017. The collapse was inevitable and more or less anticipated, but tragic none-the-less to lose such an iconic symbol of the country.

The other place you might be dreaming about is the Blue Lagoon. (You and every other tourist.) This small, perfectly photogenic bay with it’s azure waters sums up everything about the landscape of Malta. But it’s on Comino, meaning you’ll need to take a ferry or a boat day-trip (the more popular option) to get there. And while that’s definitely not a deal-breaker, the crowds might be, if you are visiting Malta with baby.

You’ll need to go early (ideally on a weekday) on the ferry to have any hope of getting a spot on the beach, and bring your own food and drinks, as it is a haul to the only hotel on the island if you want to buy food beyond what the beach kiosk sells. If you take a boat day-trip, you can usually buy food on your boat, but they will not take you to the beach – instead, they drop anchor and you swim directly out from the boat. Not ideal with a baby.

There are also sometimes jellyfish in the Blue Lagoon. Locals will be able to tell you if that is the case, but you won’t know ahead of time.

If you’re set on taking your little one to the Blue Lagoon, consider going during the off-season. This practical guide to visiting Malta in winter has lots of great tips if you go that route!

For us, we decided not to make the trek to the Blue Lagoon. It’s just not amongst the best things to do in Malta with a baby. If we visit Malta with a baby or toddler again in the future, I would love to find childcare and spend an adults-only day at the Lagoon!

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And that’s it! I hope you’re planning a family trip to Malta right now, because it is amazing. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or any further suggestions for everyone else!

Photos are mine except for these: Azure Window by foursummers on Pixabay, Blue Lagoon by Mike Nahlii on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Originally published October 2019. Updated April 2022.