St Pauls Bay, San Anton Complex Review

Overall Rating

Quiet area. Clean hotel. Easy access to seafront. Great hotel pool which was very clean. Staff extremely friendly and helpful. High standard of catering, given the numbers being catered for daily. Nightly entertainment which, though possibly not to everyone's taste, proved to be a hit with most of the hotel patrons.

No air conditioning. Food in restaurant, although varied, not enough of a Mediterranean choice.

I stayed in the San Anton in early July with my three sons. I really can't fault the place and would definitely go back, although on a self-catering basis next time. It was our first time in Malta and we'd been warned about the heat and also knew that the hotel wasn't air conditioned. However, you get what you pay for and our holiday was relatively cheap by most package holiday standards. The hotel restaurant was fine, although the choice of meals was a little limited, but my sons loved the food, even though more often than not we skipped breakfast. There's a great choice of restaurants on the seafront and it was nice to take a break from the hotel and eat some of the wonderful range of pasta and pizza dishes on offer. The hotel staff, from the receptionists to the waiters and cleaners were extremely polite and helpful - on our first night in the hotel restaurant for dinner, my 11 year old, not seeing anything he liked on the menu, asked for chicken nuggets and chips and this great chef made him some specially!

The resort of St Paul's Bay was beautiful and we also liked the little we saw of the rest of Malta, when I could tear my sons away from the hotel pool! Car hire seems to be relatively cheap, if you steer clear of the holiday reps recommendations and hit some of the local places. We hired a great open-top jeep for 16 quid for one day, with the price going down to something like 12 quid for 2 or 3 days. St Pauls is a buzzing resort, but with none of the "lager lout" mentality. There was an Arts Festival going on the second weekend we were there, with some great live bands etc on the seafront. I think it's significant that a lot of presumably local Maltese were in attendance every night - something we wouldn't necessarily see for such an event in the UK. Actually a lot of Maltese seemed to patronise the local restaurants and bars in the resort - what better recommendation!

All in all, I'd recommend the San Anton and overall the St Paul's Bay area. The resort has a great, relaxed atmosphere and I felt sufficiently safe to let my two eldest sons wander around on their own much of the time. It's also close to some great beaches which are within a few minutes bus ride from the hotel. Valletta has a great street market on Sundays, again easily accessible by bus just round the corner from the hotel. Oh, nearly forgot to mention a great night we had at a local festa - a religious festival with a mammoth firework display. This trip was organised through our tour operator but was definitely worth it. Most of the other tours were however extremely over-priced. Better to steer clear of the tour people and book your own little trips to Gozo or Comino etc through local "bucket shops" (which, incidentally, the tour operators advise against - we wonder why!!)