Most people meet Paradise Bay by accident. They have driven to the top of the island for a boat, they are early, or the crossing they wanted has gone without them, and somebody points out that there is a beach right there. That is the honest way into this page, so let us write it for the situation you are actually in rather than pretend you planned a day here.
It sits at Malta's northern tip, beside the Ċirkewwa ferry terminal, and you get down to it by a long flight of steps. It is small. Those three facts decide everything about whether it is worth your hour.
What Paradise Bay actually is
It is a pocket of sand rather than a sweep of it, tucked in at the end of the island where the road runs out and the water starts. The scale is the thing to understand before you arrive: a bay this size does not need many people in it to feel full, so the same number of towels that would vanish on a big beach will make this one look packed. Arrive at the front of the day and it is a small quiet cove. Arrive in the middle of an August afternoon and it is a mosaic.
The steps are the other half of it. They keep the casual crowd down a little, the way a staircase always does, but they are not a filter so much as a toll. You go down them carrying whatever you brought, and you come back up them carrying the same thing, warmer and slower.
The hour before a crossing
This is the case for Paradise Bay, and it is a good one. Ferries for Gozo work out of the terminal next door, and waits at a ferry terminal are the most reliably wasted time on any island holiday. Here the wait has a swim in it. You can be in the water, out of it and back up the steps inside a sensible slice of an hour, which turns dead time into the bit of the day somebody remembers.
Two cautions, both obvious and both regularly ignored. Nobody at the beach knows or cares when your boat goes, so keep your own eye on the clock and give yourself far more margin than the walk seems to need. And do not do this with a vehicle you have queued to put on a ferry, or with luggage you cannot comfortably carry down a staircase and back. This is a plan for people travelling light with time in hand, not a plan for a family unloading a hire car.
Getting there
By car
You are driving to the Ċirkewwa ferry terminal, which is the thing this bay sits beside, so navigation is the easy part: any map routes you to the terminal and you are there. From a base near Anchor Bay and Popeye Village it is a short run north, which is why this bay is on a site about the film set at all.
By bus
Buses run to the ferry terminal, which is convenient, since the terminal is the thing this bay is next to. We are not going to name a route or a frequency here. We have not sourced either to a standard we would defend in print, and the north of the island is precisely where a wrong number hurts most, because the alternatives when you miss a bus are thin. Look the live routes up with Malta Public Transport, and look at the last one home while you are there.
Parking
We have no sourced parking detail for Paradise Bay: no capacity, no charge, no claim about how easy it is to leave a car near the top on a busy afternoon. None of it appears here and we are not filling the space with a guess. What does follow from the layout is worth saying. The bay is reached by steps down from above, so whatever you arrive in waits up there while you are on the sand. If you are pairing the stop with a crossing, settle where the car sits while you are on the water before you commit to the swim, because that is a different question from leaving it for an hour.
Getting down, and back up
The steps are the access, and we know of no gentler way in, so treat the staircase as the price of admission and pack for carrying rather than for a full beach day. Water for the climb back is the one thing worth adding to the bag.
When to go
Early, more than anywhere else on this site. A small bay rewards being first by more than a big one does, because there is simply less of it to go round. Late in the day works too, once the crowd has drifted off and the light softens over the water at the top of the island. The stretch in between, in high season, is the version of this place that people come away unimpressed by.
The cost, and where the bookable things actually are
You will find no booking panel here, and that is not an oversight. Not one of our partners sells anything at this bay: no ticket, no tour, no hire. A page like this is where a travel site is tempted to bolt on a loosely related product and call it a recommendation, and we would rather leave the space empty and explain why.
What there is to book sits a few steps away at the terminal itself, in the form of boats. The Blue Lagoon on Comino is reached from Ċirkewwa, and that page carries the real inventory, the real price band and the timing advice that decides whether the trip is worth taking. If you want the other thing this corner of Malta is known for, the ticketed one, Popeye Village is back down the coast and is the subject of our front page.
What else is close
For a proper beach day rather than an hour, Mellieħa Bay is the large shallow one back towards Anchor Bay, and the easiest sand in this part of the island to arrive at with children. Golden Bay and Għajn Tuffieħa are further round on the north west coast, and offer the same trade this bay does, steps in exchange for quiet, on a bigger scale.
The honest downside
It is small, and small beaches do not cope with a crowd. If your holiday photograph of Paradise Bay is the empty cove you saw online, understand that the photograph was taken early or out of season, and plan accordingly rather than turning up at noon in August and blaming the bay.
The steps are the second honest problem. They are fine if you are carrying a towel, and they are a real consideration if you are carrying a child, a cool box and a parasol. This is not the beach to make your base for the day. It is the beach to use well for an hour, which is a genuinely different thing and, done at the right moment, a much better one.
Common questions
Where exactly is Paradise Bay?
At the northern tip of Malta, beside the Ċirkewwa ferry terminal that boats for Gozo work out of. The crossings to Comino and Gozo leave from right beside it, which is what puts a small bay in the path of so many people's day.
How do you get down to the bay?
Down a long flight of steps from above. Everything you take with you goes down them and comes back up them later, which is worth remembering before you pack for a day rather than an hour.
Can I swim here before catching the Gozo ferry?
That is the best use of the place, and the reason it earns a page. It is right beside the terminal, so a spare hour becomes a swim rather than a wait. Keep an eye on the time yourself, because nothing at the bay is going to call you back up.
Is Paradise Bay big?
No, and that is the single most useful thing to know about it. It is a small bay, so it fills faster than a large beach does and a modest crowd feels like a large one. Early is worth a great deal more here than it is elsewhere.
Is it suitable for young children?
The steps are the deciding factor rather than the bay. Carrying a toddler and a day's kit down and back up is a job, and on a small beach there is less room to spread out once you are down there.
Is there anything to book at Paradise Bay?
No. None of our booking partners sells anything here, so this page has no booking panel and no price on it. The boats that do sell tickets leave from the terminal next door, and those sit on our Blue Lagoon page instead.
Last checked: 14 September 2026. No ferry timetable, bus route, step count or charge appears on this page, because we have not sourced any of them to a standard worth printing. Check crossings and transport with the operators on the day you travel.
