Marc's Public Blog

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2024/05/08 Malta Aquarium

π 2024-05-08 01:01 in Aquariums, Malta

Malta has a small aquarium next to Cafe del Mar, worth a 1h visit when you're already there :)

beautiful sharks

there are statues under water when you go diving

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2024/05/08 Malta Mdina

π 2024-05-08 01:01 in Malta, Ntrips, Trips

Mdina is a nice inland medieval city in Malta, and it's packed with attractions. There is actually more than you can do in a single day. Below are bits from 4 different visits across 4 different trips.

main entrance

Surprisingly there is a natural history museum by the entrance:

Then churches with undergrounds:

beautiful

It's fun walking through the narrow steets, although good luck with a GPS :)

And a torture museum:

The catacombs were unique:

The edge of the city with views:

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2024/05/08 Malta's Valetta Area Forts and Museums

π 2024-05-08 01:01 in Malta, Ntrips, Trips

This was actually my first stop when first arriving in Malta: visiting the forts and war museums that do a great job recounting the rich history of Malta over the centuries, and rich history it certainly is... The big forts that are now left for visiting were built or improved by the british after they took over the island to protect it from other attackers, all the way to the Nazis during WWII as, it turns out, Malta has a strategic location in the mediteranean sea

war shelters

multiple cool forts

fancy boats in the harbor

More fort:

Malta's history goes back up to 6000 years!

prehistoric settlements going back up to 6000 years

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2024/05/08 Malta and Gozo's Pre-Historic Sites

π 2024-05-08 01:01 in Malta, Ntrips, Trips

While I was already impressed by Malta's rich history, that did not account for pre-historic settlements that apparently went back thousands of years BCE. There are multiple sites, one of them is underground in a building and only takes very small gruoups a few times a day (apparently to avoid damage due to breathing):

Ggantija Temples

Hal Salflien Hypogeum was next door, hard to get tickets for (usually booked weeks/months in advance), only small groups of 10 or so, and no pictures allowed inside. Very interesting though:

And Gozo had an even older temple, thousands of years old too (actually one of the oldest in the world):

Yes, it looks like piles of stones, but they are very old piles of stones :)

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2024/09/03 Malta Classic Car Collection

π 2024-09-03 01:01 in Cars, Malta, Ncars

Nice little museum and collection:

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2024/09/03 Malta Plane Museum

π 2024-09-03 01:01 in Flying, Malta, Nflying

Ok, maybe not a top attraction in Malta, but I'm a pilot, so I went :)

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2024/09/03 Malta Bird Park

π 2024-09-03 01:01 in Malta, Public

Malta has some terrible small zoo where the animals are treated pretty terribly, but the Bird Park was a wonderful little sanctuary, cared after by a bird lover.

I even made cat friends ;)

And my favorite bird: the gold crested sulfur cockatoo:

I'm an expert cockatoo scratcher :)

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2024/09/03 Malta Wildlife Park, Sad...

π 2024-09-03 01:01 in Malta, Public

Wildlife Park sounded fun, but I found out it's a very sad place that overcrowds animals in ways that are illegal just about anywhere else. Many of the animals looked sad, and I got yelled at for being friendly with the cockatoo that was delighted to get attention (they are high maintenance birds)

like seriously? I paid to not be allowed to take pictures

poor thing

and this poor guy too

[rigimg:1024:2269*|you cane make your own guesses how drugged those baby tigers are and what happens to them when they grow up

poor guy is chained up

it was hot and the mom had almost no space

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2024/09/03 Malta's Sister Island: Gozo

π 2024-09-03 01:01 in Malta, Ntrips, Trips

I went to Gozo for diving, but after the first dive, the rest got cancelled due to too much wind, so I had time to visit the island the rest of the day, and there was lots to see

One day in Malta, I went to Gozo via a Ferry:

They also have beautiful churches, go figure:

They also have castles:

prickly pear

One stop was an underground cave:

More driving around:

Another famous church in Gozo:

More views:

more prickly pears

And then it was sunset and time to go back to the main island:

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2025/09/04 Malta's Popeye Village

π 2025-09-04 01:01 in Malta, Ntrips, Trips

Unexpectedly, Malta had a fun attraction which is the former set of Popeye with Robin Williams, which was turned into an amusement park with re-enactments of the movie. It was actually quite well done and loads of fun:

A fun part was the recreation of a movie bit:

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2025/09/04 Jet ski to Malta's Comino Island

π 2025-09-04 01:01 in Malta, Ntrips, Trips

This wasn't originally a plan, but due to confusing sales people, instead of getting a boat tour, ended up getting a jetski tour to Comino Island. It was fun if you liked jumping up and down in a jetski, less so if not. The views were good though:

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2025/09/05 Malta in 4 Trips in 2 years

π 2025-09-05 00:00 in Malta, Ntrips, Trips

I ended up going to Malta for 4 different trance music festivals as it is working on becoming the new Ibiza, and I should say they are doing a great job on that front. But it turns out it's a country with fascinating history, and the only country with a population of arab origin and a language that is still close to arabic, while being mostly Christian. And not only they're Christians, but they have absolutely insanely docorated churches (as in they must have cost a fortune to build for an island that doesn't seem to be swimming in natural resources). So yeah, that was interesting to say the least.

I have enough pictures and places I've seen there that I wrote sub-reports you can find here:

Valetta Area Forts and Museums

Gozo's Pre-Historic Sites

Malta Bird Park

Malta Classic Car Collection

Malta's Sister Island: Gozo

Malta Plane Museum

Malta Wildlife Park, Sad...

Jet ski to Malta's Comino Island

Malta's Popeye Village

And here are the leftover pictures:

first trip and hotel was Bora Bora of Ibiza fame, for Rong, Malta

I did mention beautiful churches. This one was a mostly random undescript one in the middle of a non major city:

I rest my case

The island also had history going back to the romans:

Great views from the water:

Nice coastlines:

Caves:

Old medieval streets:

And friendly cats :)

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2026/06/01 Malta Trance Festivals: Rong vs Euphoria vs Captured

π 2026-06-01 01:01 in Clubbing, Festivals, Malta

People fairly often ask me which Malta trance festival they should go to, and why. I've listed them in the order they appear in the calendar, and been twice to each of them. First, I can recommend all 3 of them, and given what has become of lumi, all 3 are welcoming festivals in a lovely country (Malta) with either chill enough or super nice security folks and policies. As you can guess this matters to me. Yes, Lumi has more trance in 4 days than all 3 of those festivals, but can you really see 4 DJs every hour, including when they are in on bad stages with no space, bad sound and/or terrible sound bleed? I realize some people actually like the anxiety of missing sets, stage hopping and agonizing on which of your favorite 2 or 3 DJs, you're going to miss for the next slot (on that Note, Dreamstate Socal which is my favorite trance festival worldwide, is also terrible on this issue with up to 6 stages and some epic sets I missed because I couldn't see them all).

So, before I dig into these 3 malta trance festivals, my other favorites are:

Dreamstate Socal is #1 to me for the night and lights, costumes, atmosphere

Dreamstate SF is #2 because it's 45mn from where I live and still 2 days, therefore beating all other one day dreamstate events

In Asia Unkonscious is fantastic and run by lovely people (and yes, that counts)

in the UK, Timescape is 3 days and lots of lovely trance and DJs too, run by the energizer powered Rick "never sleeps" Weekender :)

Now, let's go back to Malta

Rong vs Euphoria vs Captured

Rong Malta simply wins on "lineup, lineup, lineup". You want to see all your favorite big name trance DJs. Rong is where it's at, it costs more but it pays for them, and if that's what's important to you (I won't judge, I melt for many of them), Rong is where it's at. Its main drawback in my opinion is Uno is too small and I'm not a fan of that place anymore, especially with their new likely low paid contracted staff, especially security. Similarly Cafe del Mar has become too small for that crowd. Days at Uno had 2 stages, the rest of the days, just one stage.

Euphoria Festival Malta is indeed the cheapest and most grass roots of the 3. It does have the most DJs, and 7 days next year, 7 days! Yes, many of the DJs are not "big name DJs", but so what? They are lovely and they play trance, isn't that the most important thing? It's really a nice and a breath of fresh air to enjoy festivals that simply have more of a family and friends feel and where you're going to get real trance. As of 2026, a bit of psytrance was also added, which is a plus for me :) (but Captured has more). EW had one night with 2 stages, rest of the days were one stage.

Captured Festival Malta would go in the middle, it had more of a mix of DJs between lesser known, cheaper to book and easier to meet before/after their set, to bigger name DJs that cost more, come with riders (a list of expensive alcohol bottles to provide before/after the show), that are less likely to mingle in the crowd. Depending on the day, it was 1 to 4 stages of music (the most of all 3 festivals). This was the only one of the 3 to have psytrance (on day 3 only).

For comparison, Lumi would fit here as bigger even (4 stages for all 4 days and 11h/day), and most DJs (too many for me) in that amount of time.

All 3 festivals have boat parties now, and all 3 go to multiple locations around the island. Captured spends more time at the Gianpula complex, and that happens to be my favorite location in Malta.
Euphoria will stand out as the 'cheapest' of the 3, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. How is Euphoria different? It's actually a small festival in size, and purposely so. It's meant to be affordable, and to focus on trance music and fun. There is no VIP, no backstage, and DJs, when not on the decks, are part of the crowd and the party. What else can you ask for? This is the lumi from 10 years ago, before it got too big, and that I never got to attend before it was too late. I don't have a time machine, and I did ask Craig Conelly :) to go back and experience these nice and small lumis, but that didn't pan out :) With EW, I don't need one anymore, those are the lovely vibes that are hard to find anywhere else today.

So, the winner is...

Haha, nice try, I'm not going to give you a winner. All 3 of them are good for their own reasons, all have their own drawbacks, and all are worth going to. I had a great time at all 3, but in different ways and for different reasons. Go to all 3 if you can, or the one that is at the time that matches your time off schedule.

I think I'll be pragmatic and maybe point to your time off calendar as well as your budget. All 3 are fun in their own way, and none of them are a bad choice, and by that I mean no showstoppers or things that really would turn you off like some of the stuff at the trance festival that shall not be named anymore :) If some of you think I might be hard to please, actually I'm happy by default, and you have to give me clear reasons to be unhappy with unnecessary BS. I am sensitive to clueless security (I used to be a security engineer, so I know a thing or two about the topic and call easily tell clueless from real security), and BS like fake festival money which is thankfully absent from all 3 today. Also none of those 3, unless that other festival, did any nickel and diming, which I hate.