Deciding to spend a summer in Europe entirely flight-free sounds easy, until you add a small Mediterranean island nation into the mix.
Growing up in Malta in the Nineties was a pretty idyllic time. Temperatures were high, crime was low and the summer holidays were four months long. The friendships I forged over mixtapes at coastal kiosks (since replaced by condominium blocks) are still a huge part of my life, and prior to the pandemic, I returned to the island at least once a year. So it’s no exaggeration to say that, up until 2019, I’d flown in and out of Malta close to 100 times.
As an adult I’d spend evenings on friends’ roof terraces in Valletta, the striking Baroque capital, watching the ferries from Sicily cruise in and out in the Grand Harbour below, and think how romantic it must be to arrive into the city by sea – it’s beautiful by foot, too, but the views from the water would surely be on another level.
Virtu Ferries runs a daily service from Sicily
(Lucie Grace)
So here I was, after 30 years of travelling in and out of Malta by plane, faced with a climate crisis and a conundrum. How would I get to my favourite tiny island for a long overdue visit, while keeping my pledge to be flight-free all summer? Finally, my ferry opportunity dawned – a Virtu ferry from nearby Sicily – and I could finally get excited.
I should begin by shouting from the rafters about how swanky, smooth sailing and downright easy it is to take the ferry to Malta. Maltese company Virtu Ferries has five ships in its fleet, all hyper-modern catamarans that take 90 minutes to get from Pozzallo in Sicily to Valletta in Malta (or vice versa). So I just needed to get to Sicily from where I currently was: Albania.
If you look at Albania and Malta on a map, they don’t look very far apart, in the grand scheme of things. It’s not like, say, Albania to Portugal, which would have been significantly more Med to cross, I thought during my trip to the former, where I’d travelled overland to write about its magical sleepy beaches. Some research revealed that there are two Albanian ports offering sailings to Italy; Durres in the north, and Vlorë further south, where a ship leaves daily at 2pm heading for Brindisi. Given that I’m aiming for Sicily, south it is. I hop on the Starlines ferry from Vlorë for £55.
Finally my ferry opportunity dawned – and it was as exciting and scenic as I’d anticipated
A couple of things to note about ferry travel: ticket prices are…
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