Later, we heard from our Utah friends that they loved their Malta-Barcelona pairing. "Our time in Malta seemed a little jarring at first," Patricia Richards said. "It was so arid, and it sometimes felt a little cramped with all those stone walls on either side. But our appreciation increased when we realized how accessible everything was. If you want to see something in Valletta, you just walk in. Barcelona, though, from Las Ramblas to the Gaudi architecture sites, was a sea of people wherever we went."