Early in the morning, we checked the Malta bus app – Tallinja to see the next bus going to Marsaxlokk and also where to catch the bus. Valletta bus station is not huge but it divided into 3 different bays so you need to know which bay to catch the bus:

Bus number 81 or 85 goes to our destination for the day – Marsaxlokk (I will not even try to pronounce the village names in Malta although they are in English LOL). With our 7 days bus ticket, we can explore the whole Malta if we like, very affordable and convenient. I have read that bus can be extremely crowded in summer peak tourist season, we were there early in September and it was fine except a few times the bus was full heading back to Valletta after dinner.

At the bus station, there are many vendor stands selling from magazines to sandwiches. We bought the steak and onion pie from this woman’s stand and it was so tasty! For €1.50, it was the best value ever, I wish we have this in Boston, I will definitely stop by each morning for breakfast! We were so impressed by how the outer crust can be still so crispy while inside, the beef still has sauce!!! The photos of the stand and the pie were taken from a separate day just to show you!

Remember this vendor stand, the best!

The bus came and it took around 40 minutes to get to Marsaxlokk, a fishing village. Although it’s only 6.8 miles away, the bus line has so many stops along the way that it seemed to take forever to get there. This is true for all bus network in Malta, just way too many stops that yes it’s convenient but consume a lot of time traveling from one place to another.

We arrived Marsaxlokk and can immediately see its colorful fishing boats on the beautiful harbor! When I was deciding where to add to Portugal, it was a photo of the colorful boats on Marsaxlokk harbor that made me know of such a country 🙂

Marsaxlokk Parish Church:

A local was fixing his own boat, the front of each boat has eyes on it as a lucky symbol for smooth sailing.

We walked out to the little pier and looked back with the colorful boats and the church and houses as background, so beautiful!

We waited a little bit for the clouds to move out for the sun to come out; the sun make a big difference the colors!

 

That’s a mini boat!

Along the edge of the harbor, there are many restaurants with outdoor tables and advertisement…..we tried to avoid those kind of restaurants; mostly are tourist trap…maybe cheap but won’t be good quality!

We walked around the whole circumference of the harbor and made a lot of stops for photos of different angles.

Marsaxlokk is a very picturesque cute little village, worth a day trip from Valletta! If you happen to be in Malta on a Sunday, do not miss Marsaxlokk’s Sunday fish market!

Walking down the harbor, there were a few guys approached us for boat trips to St. Peter’s pool and other swimming spots or a cruise of the harbor ranging from 8 euros to 20 euros (depending on the duration and where to). We kept the prices in mind to see if any of interest; of course, we are definitely not planning on going to swim!

A closer look to the eyes of the boat 😀

The harbor was not that big, it probably takes 15 minutes or less walking from one end to another end but plenty of photo ops. It was almost lunch time so we decided to have lunch first before going on a boat trip. We walked to the Parish Church to Ta’ Victor but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be opening soon!

We went into the church to check it out in the meantime; it is a nice little church!

It was still not open when we got out so we decided to go another one, right around the corner – Tartarun. Both are highly rated in TripAdvisor. In a fishing village, we must try out its fresh seafood right? We ordered the fisherman’s pot, yummy:

Fish soup, although not as good as Tapa Bento’s but pretty good and most importantly, no fishy taste!

Seafood spaghetti, it was decent, I wish it has more shrimp taste!

Our lunch was better than yesterday’s and cost us €56.60 included a €5 tips…..a lot more expensive than in Portugal but I think for the food we ordered, it was below other Western European countries’ prices.

After lunch, we walked all the way back to the other end of the harbor for the boat trip – the captain was showing us photos of the boat trip so we thought it was good presentation.

It cost €8 for the 15 minute cruise around the harbor and some information/history about Marsaxlokk harbor, very well worth the money! The boat (one of those colorful boats on the harbor) was much wider than I thought, it was comfortable that he put cushions on the seat and blankets on the floor. Jason and I were super excited taking turns to take photos!

We even took a selfie with Jason’s phone haha!

Private boat trip for €8, now I think of it, was super cheap!

The captain/tour guide said that long boat is the oldest boat in the harbor over hundred-year-old!

The power plant – powered by gasoline fuel.

There’s a little beach on the other side of the harbor!

The boat trip provided a different angle of the harbor and the colorful boats, so glad we took the trip!

The statue on the harbor that depict the fishing village’s life:

It was around 2 pm and we headed back….along the way we stopped at around the church that we saw on the way to the fishing village; we thought it’s a very nice church to photograph. We got off and took a pic of this street of the uniform Malta houses:

This is the church!

The front gate was closed when we arrived so we tried to walk to the back to see if there’s another entrance…nope..all closed 🙁 I’ll tell you why later when we found out the reason!

We got back and rest a bit before heading out at 5:30 pm for dinner. We looked at TripAdvisor on restaurants in Valletta and really most are Italian cuisine. We looked for Asian restaurant but couldn’t find any 🙁 Since we have the unlimited bus card, we could venture out of Valletta for dinner. We decided to go Club Sushi at Saint Julian’s. There are frequent buses heading toward Saint Julian’s so it was convenient….the trip took 30 minutes.

We got to the restaurant around 6:30 and only two tables were occupied so it wasn’t an issue without a reservation. We ordered the salmon cubes as appetizers, it was quite good, I like the sweet and spicy sauce!

Jason ordered a special roll to try it out, it was okay not impressive or anything.

I ordered a spicy pork rice bowl, it was pretty good or could it be that I missed rice?

Jason ordered a beef teriyaki beef, his was better.

And the Korean seafood pancake, it was delicious!

Finally, a filling dinner after the past two day’s not so good dinner! It cost €53.50 plus €5 tips total €58.50, not bad. We walked out of the restaurant and it started to rain, oh no! We had to wait for the passing rain probably a few minutes before walking back to the bus station. The bus came but was completely full, no way we could squeeze into it! Another bus came but did not stop, maybe it was full too! We waited for the third bus and finally got some room to get in. We go back to our apartment, I did some work, and then went to sleep. That was our second day exploring Malta, the colorful fishing village I finally get to meet after seeing it from online photos; it was as pretty 🙂