In January 2019, while living in Malta, we rented a car for three days to go explore areas that were too far to day trip using the bus. What we really wanted to do was spend the day exploring Gozo, the second biggest of the Maltese Islands. With a car, we set off on an epic driving tour of Gozo with our kids.
About
Gozo is about one-third of the size of Malta and has less than one-tenth of the population. The island’s landscape is gorgeous with rolling green hills, beach coves, caves, and dramatic rock formations and cliffs.
Getting There
You can reach Gozo by boat from Valletta or Sliema, or you can reach it by ferry from the port of Ċirkewwa. We decided it would be easier to rent a car in Mellieha and then take the car on the ferry instead of renting it in Gozo.
The island is small and it’s very easy to do a driving tour of Gozo with kids in one day. We stopped at seven places on our driving tour of Gozo (each place was about 10-15 minutes in the car away from the prior one). Each one was different from the last and the kids never got tired of seeing each wonderful and different place. We arrived on the island around 10 a.m. and left on the 6:45 p.m. ferry
Ggantija Temples
This megalithic temple located at the top of a hill in Xaghra is one of the oldest standing human built monuments in the world. Historians believe this is one of Malta’s oldest temples (about 5000 years old—which predates the ancient pyramids of Egypt by 500 years!).
We went through the temple’s visitor center quickly with the kids but thought it was very nice and informative. They also had a dedicated space for little ones to color in and what looked like a classroom for workshops. From the museum you walk downhill on a boardwalk for about 100 meters to the temples and to an amazing view of Southern Gozo.
The kids weren’t overly excited about these temples as they couldn’t get pass the fact that they looked (to the kids) like a pile of big rocks. They got a little bit more interested in it once Joe asked them if they thought giants had helped move the enormous rocks (that was the original theory about the construction of these temples, which used huge rocks weighing up to 50 tonnes each).
Ramla Bay/Calypso Cave
Ramla Bay is the gorgeous orange-colored sand beach where Ulysses (of Homer’s Odyssey) shipwrecked, and where Calypso took him into her cave as a prisoner. Ulysses lived there for seven years before continuing his voyage back to Ithaca.
The beach was beautiful and we spent a big chunk of our morning here soaking up the sand and sun. We arrived around 11:30 am and we basically had the beach to ourselves. Calypso’s cave sits on the hill above the bay and it’s easy to hike to it. When we visited the cave was closed due to “geologic events,” which probably meant erosion or that the cave had collapsed.
Marsalforn Salt Pans
The Salt Pans are located just outside Marsalforn town and are the best salt pans on the island. The salt pans date back to Roman times. The way the salt pans work is that people carve out shallow squares in a flat limestone area just above the ocean, then the seawater splashes into the shallow areas and the wind and sun eventually leave behind sea salt. The Knights of Malta also used these. Nowadays people still harvest the salt between May and September only for local use.
You are not allowed to walk on the salt pans but you can look at them from the road. The kids were impressed by the salt pans but they were ready to move on fairly quickly.
Wied il-Ghasri (inland beach)
We were really excited to visit this narrow, cliff-bound inlet. We’d seen photos of it and it looked like a river when it really is the sea water coming into a beach through a narrow channel. It was a short hike from the road and down some stairs cut into the cliff side. The kids loved this spot! They played with the rocks, and really appreciated the natural beauty of the place. This is definitely a must stop on any driving tour of Gozo with kids!
Wied Il-Mielah
A short drive from Wied il-Ghasri there is a enormous seaside rock formation resembling a window. Now that the very popular Azure Window collapsed, this is a great alternative and it was completely empty. The kids enjoyed climbing around on the rocks while Paola ran to the top of the window to take a picture for scale.
Ta’Pinu
We didn’t stop here but saw the beautiful church on our drive to Djwera. The story is that in 1883 a woman from the village of Garb heard the voice of the virgin at the small chapel that was on this site. As a result, it became a place of pilgrimage and later this monumental church was built.
Dwejra (Blue Hole, Azure Window, Inland Sea)
Gozo’s famous Azure Window was the main attraction in this area until it collapsed in 2017. This is where they filmed the Dothraki wedding from season one of Game of Thrones! Even though the window is gone, the area is super fun to explore and walk around. We read somewhere that walking here is like walking on the moon and we can totally see why. The ground is covered in potholes and most of them are filled with water. There are a couple of deep holes that go all the way down to the ocean! Walking around here is equal parts treacherous and exciting. The views of the cliffs from here are incredible and the kids enjoyed driving their toy cars around and jumping around the puddles.
A short walk downhill from the parking lot is the Inland Sea. From here, boats leave through a cave to the sea to tour the rock formations.
There’s also an ice cream/coffee truck here (as well as a restaurant that we didn’t visit), making it easy to feed little ones!
Mgarr ix-Xini
We drove here by mistake and after dark but we got a glimpse of the narrow water inlet that was once used by the Knights of Saint John as their main harbor in Gozo. The pirate Dragut also found this spot handy when he attacked the island and captured almost the entire island’s population to sell into slavery in the mid 1500s.
We loved Gozo and would recommend spending at least one night there if visiting Malta. We would do it if we hadn’t already booked our lodging through early February. If that’s not a possibility, this driving tour of Gozo with kids will help you tackle the island on one day. We drove from place to place but you could also walk a lot of the circuit as the distances are short. Note that we had previously visited Victoria on a separate daytrip, and the citadel there is also a great place to visit with kids!
To learn more about the places we’ve visited, go to our places page. For more on Malta, go here.
