Island of Malta holiday house: Mosta

firstly, this house is perfectly located for those with a particular interest in Mosta, but is also well suited for others interested in the central and northern areas of Malta in particular. It is very spacious and has 2 outside terraces for additional room, but no garden area. I stayed here with my wife and 2 young children, and although it is advertised as child friendly I would have to question this on a number of fronts; the staircase cannot be 'blocked' and there are no handrails; the oven (when it worked, see later) is low level and the facia gets incredibly hot when used; there are no outdoor play areas, and the front door opens onto a very busy 'side road' with no pavement; and there is also an incredible amount of through traffic day and night, almost all of them beeping their car/van/bike/lorry horn morning, noon and night as they pass the house! Within the house, we found a number of centipede/worm type insects, one of which my 4 year old son picked up and presented to me as a souvenir. The walls are exposed and generate a lot of dust, most of which finds its way onto the floor, so whenever my 1 year old daughter went crawling she would have incredibly dirty hands and feet within minutes, which actually meant we spent alot of time either holding her or putting her in the high chair, which was not ideal. The oven (which is gas fired) failed to work for most of the holiday, and we actually gave up trying to use it towards the end of the first week, which meant for the second week we bought mostly take aways. Attempts by the owner to fix the problem were unsuccessful, but he did try; in addition we had a number of power outages, and the kettle and radio stopped working in week 2 as well. The nearest place to park a car is in the next street, which isn't a problem most of the time but can be difficult in the evening and weekends as the locals also use the same street to park if they are going into town. If you are a family, especially if you have young children, I would not recommend this to you, it is more suited to seasoned travellers or those with older children who don't mind 'going native' for a short time. Even then, given my comments above, I would strongly advise against staying here until you have full assurance that the problems we experienced are resolved - although there is nothing that can be done about the location and the constant noise associated with it (possibly not a problem if you live in an urban area already?).