Gozo villa holidays - lifestyle

Shopping

If you love browsing shops filled with interesting local trinkets, you'll be in your element in Gozo. For the best shopping, hotfoot it to the capital, Victoria, where around the main square and Republic Street, numerous shops sell Gozo's delicate lacework, jewellery and hand-blown glassware. The square also hosts colourful markets and for more sophisticated shopping, there's a nearby modern shopping complex. In villages like Xaghra and Sannat, you'll also find clusters of gift shops to keep you happy, with Sannat especially known for its lace.

Cuisine

Gozo's cuisine is a fantastic mix of Italian, Eastern Mediterranean and North African cuisines, so your tastebuds are in for an adventure. As well as copious fresh fish and seafood like prawns, swordfish and squid, traditional mains include fentaka, a tomato- and wine-laced rabbit stew and varieties of pastry-baked white fish mixed with chestnuts and vegetables. Make sure you try the local ftajjar wood- pizzas, gbeina goat's cheese and delicious ricotta, fig and almond desserts, all fantastic washed down with some robust Gozitan red and crisp white wines. And for soft drinks, don't miss Kinnie - a herb-infused orange drink that's an institution here.

Nightlife

Unsurprisingly for such an olde-worlde island, Gozo's nightlife is gentle rather than garish. Here, evenings revolve around starlit dinners overlooking twinkling waters - the perfect finale to a day's sightseeing or scuba diving. For something livelier, Victoria and Xaghra have friendly bars around their main squares and for more up-tempo evenings, the capital has a few nightclubs where you can dance till late. And if you're in party mode and here in high summer, make a beeline for La Grotta - Gozo's famous and popular open-air disco perched high above Xlendi.