We’ve been to the historic Silent City of Mdina many times, but its “suburb” Rabat was on my list of places to visit. Rabat is also historic. Mdina and Rabat were built on top of the ancient Roman city of Melite. There are catacombs in Rabat that I wanted to visit.
We got off to a bad start with the bus. My plan was to take a bus into Valletta so we could get on a bus to Rabat starting empty from Valletta in order to get a good seat. Unfortunately, bus after bus to Valletta were full and didn’t stop to pick up any passengers. We waited as several completely full buses flew by. Then we crossed back to wait for the bus to Rabat. I knew it would be full and possibly we’d have to stand for an hour. We waited over an hour as two buses that were supposed to come, didn’t. It was frustrating. As expected, when a bus did arrive, the bus was full, but someone offered Christine a seat, albeit an uncomfortable one. This bus went all over the place, making the trip to Rabat very long. But, we did get to Rabat.
We wandered around for a while. Many of the streets in the old city are very quaint. Hard to believe that cars drive down most of the narrow alleyways.
Rabat really is a charming city and not as crowded as Mdina.
One of the popular tourist sites is the Basilica Church of St. Paul’s. There must be 100 churches in Malta named after St. Paul. He was shipwrecked in Malta and stayed for 3 months while preaching Christianity. In the basement of the Basilica is St. Paul’s Grotto, a very sacred space visited by the faithful and is thought to be the earliest center of Christianity in Malta. We didn’t go into the church or the grotto as Christine was having some difficulty walking.
Down the street past Cataldus Chapel was the St. Paul’s Catacombs. St. Paul’s catacombs are part of a large cemetery once located outside the walls of the ancient Roman city of Melite. Several catacombs run together in a vast underground network of various types of burial chambers. There are over 30 hypogea, or underground temples/tombs is the whole complex. Romans thought that burying bodies in the city was unhygenic, so outside the city, they dug down into the limestone to create networks of chambers for bodies.
Since Christine wasn’t walking well, and had seen the catacombs when she was a child. I left her in the visitor center and headed down to the catacombs. It was quite difficult to navigate around as it was pretty dark and any signage that was there wasn’t readable in the dark. I was glad that Christine opted not to go down into the catacombs. The are several entrances down to various burial plots, each containing many different types of dug out places where bodies were stored. All of the burial plots were carved out of the limestone. I can’t imagine how much work it was to make these resting places for dead bodies.
After my visit to the catacombs, we walked back towards St. Paul’s Basilica where a town square is and looked for a place for lunch. He had a nice pesto pasta salad and a cold drink and felt much rejuvenated. We even had sufficient leftovers to take home for dinner. We then walked across the square to a famous shop selling traditional Maltese pastries, Publius Parruccan Confectionery. We each got a chocolate Maltese kannoli. They were huge, so after eating half, we wrapped them back up to have after dinner. Maltese kannoli are slightly different than Sicilian cannoli, so I learned. But any kannoli/cannoli is yummy.
After our hectic bus ride this morning and Christine’s leg cramps, we did the sensible thing and ordered a taxi to take us home. Within minutes we were on our way back to Sliema. We got back home in just under 30 minutes, whereas the bus would have taken an hour-and-a-half. I’m getting used to hiring a cab!
We were both quite tired when we got home. This is me after our day in Rabat.
Can’t believe I posted that picture!
We enjoyed our pasta salad, augmented with chicken, for dinner and certainly enjoyed the rest of our kannolis. It was a tiring day, but I ticked another thing off my “to do” list. I think we’ll have a quiet day tomorrow. I can’t believe we’re down to a handful of days remaining for this trip. It’s going by quickly.