A lovely apartment with a spacious living area. The location is in a very quiet residential neighbourhood just above the main village/bay/beach. You can walk if needed to get to shops and restaurants but in the height of summer with those hills to come back up, and at 35degrees, it’s much more practical to hire a small car (as we did).
We drive quite large 4x4 vehicles at home but deliberately chose a small (Hyundai i20) automatic car here (godsend given the many many hills!) and it was ideal. Many roads and parking spaces are small, so other than the challenge of fitting luggage into the boot at the start and end of your visit, go smaller! A week of travelling up and down the island and across to Gozo only used a half tank of fuel (€42) with 2 adults and 2 older teens as passengers!
The lovely welcome pack was ideal and took away the worry of our first morning breakfast. The supermarket (Welbees, previously called Valyou) is less than 5mins away in the car with free underground parking. There is also a Lidl but it’s in Mosta (11km /15-20mins drive). Stock up on lots of bottled water as whilst the tap water is drinkable, it is desalinated so isn’t to all tastes!
We catered in the apartment for half the time and ate out the rest and it was well equipped for this although if there are more than 4 of you then you’d need to borrow the outside chairs (right outside the entry door) to sit at the inside kitchen table as there are only 4! The air conditioning is coin operated (you’ll need €1/€2 coins only to work this) and is in both bedrooms. We had the units on from about 2100-0930 each night cooling to 20/21degrees and it was no more than €3 per night. You can keep track on the credit left with a display screen at the front (the meter is on the wall by the entrance door). It did mean that we all slept very soundly in the comfy beds!
The pool is lovely and the location catches the late afternoon sun and sunset. Travelling at the hottest time of the year (late July into August), we found it was ideal for a 3/4pm onwards dip after time out exploring or time at the beach! The pool is however very deep. It is shallow upon entry but only about the first 25% of it, so just be aware if you have young children. It was great for our 12 and 17 year old who are confident swimmers and the poolside toilet and shower is great too for keeping the mess outside the apartment!
The apartment was great for the four of us and served as a great base for us to explore. The longest we spent in a car was 45 mins to drive to the beautiful harbour in the south at Marsaxlokk and 45 mins to the MCP car park on the edge of Valetta at busy morning rush time (it took 30mins when we we left at a more leisurely 11am!). The beach at Mellieha bay is sandy, clean, safe and really shallow for quite some distance, it was by far the most enjoyable beech we visited as even on busy days it didn’t feel as oppressively busy as Cornish beaches in the UK!!! There is a big free car park at the end of the bay furthest away from Mellieha village and we found the sunbed and parasol hire at this end was best (thicker sunbed cushions!) plus the kids loved to snorkel next to the rocks on this edge where they saw many fish and crabs! In most places the cost of two sunbeds and a parasol was about €15 for the day. Some places reduced this by €3/4 if you arrived after 2pm during the week days.
Quite a few places close (especially restaurants/cafes) on a Monday, so keep this in mind. We had some great meals in Mellieha, including Il Mithna (windmill, just beautiful and amazing food) and One80, (with beautiful views on the terraces of both the church and the bay). Debbie’s cafe also serves a fab breakfast although the portion sizes are enormous! The ‘kids breakfast’ was even a struggle and the pancake stacks have 3 plate sizes pancakes with plenty of toppings!
The apartment was really great value for a break in peak summer holiday season and Joanna was a very responsive and caring host without being at all obtrusive. We barely saw the guests from the other 2 apartments and only shared the pool once, and it’s more than big enough for that! It was certainly much much better than a hotel, or apartment complex stay and felt much safer given the neighbourhood!