Paceville: the launch pad
Three or four streets, around thirty venues, and entry usually free. This is where you start, because clubs do not fill before midnight and the three hours before that have to happen somewhere. The bars are loud, young and cheap: beer at three or four euros, a cocktail between six and ten. Nobody comes to Paceville for the drinks list, they come to be in the middle of everything, three minutes from the club doors.
Sliema and Gżira: the seafront terraces
Across the bay, the Sliema seafront lines up terraces facing Valletta. The mood is calmer, the average age higher, and the prices about the same. It is the right area on a night with no club in it, or when you want dinner and a drink without ending up in foam. Gżira, right next door, has the same views for slightly less.
Valletta: wine cellars and rooftops
The capital plays an entirely different tune. Pedestrian streets, wine bars in vaulted cellars, rooftops looking over the Grand Harbour. Nothing here closes at four in the morning, most shut around one. It is the night you have when the group wants to breathe, or the first evening before the real run. Expect to pay a little more than in Paceville, especially on the roofs.
What a bar night costs
A local Cisk beer runs around three euros in a bar, four on a tourist terrace. A cocktail is six to twelve euros depending on the area. A full bar night at five or six drinks comes to thirty or forty euros a head. Noticeably less than Ibiza and a little more than Albania, which puts Malta squarely mid-table for the Mediterranean.
Happy hour, the real lever
Plenty of Paceville and Sliema venues run two-for-one between six and nine. That is not a detail: across a group of eight starting early, it is the equivalent of one club entry saved per person. Times vary from bar to bar and shift week to week in high season; they are posted at the door.
The sequence that works
The pattern most groups follow: drinks in Sliema or on a St Julian's terrace around eight, down to Paceville around ten for the bars, then a club from midnight. Some slot in a sunset pool party, which conveniently ends around eleven. It is the densest Maltese day there is, and it needs no taxi at all.