Malta

Malta was not planned. We were sitting in Palermo trying to work out where to go next, not ready to give up beach weather yet, and one search later we had committed to a week on the island. We stayed at Hotel Juliani, right on the edge of Spinola Bay in St. Julian’s, which turns out to be a hip little beach town — board shorts and flip flops, with a European edge.

Get the sea-view room. We spent several nights on the balcony with a bottle of wine watching the bay, and the moment the door shut you could not hear the party buses going past. There is a bus stop right outside the lobby with clean buses every 15 minutes, which made day trips over to Valletta easy. On the hot days we gave up and went to the rooftop pool with negronis. And Zest, the restaurant on the second floor, served us the best Asian food we have had anywhere in the Mediterranean — a tasting menu of sushi, duck, pad thai and a trio of curries for around 50 euro a head.