Mdina’s Rabat

Outside of the fortress walls of the former capital of Malta, you’ll find the town of Rabat (suburb in old Arabic). This place turned out to be even more quiet than Mdina, as very few tourists seemed to wander this way. If I ran into 10 people, that’s the most. But I’m fine with that 🙂 As in Mdina the streets are narrow ones, but with a little more vibrancy to it, with colourful sculptures and balconies, and banners waving in the air. Even though the town seemed pretty dead, there were a couple of small shops open, from which I happily emerged with a filigree Maltese cross pendant necklace 🙂

Getting to Mdina and Rabat was an adventure in its own right! An adventure that included a local bus with a hole in the floor, and, due to the very bumpy ride, had no shock absorbers…? A good thing I was stuck on it with good-humored fellow travellers, who also came in handy when we found ourselves “in the middle of nowhere”, and started to wonder if we were at all on the right bus. It took about half an hour to get there from Sliema, but for some unknown reason it felt a lot longer…

Update: I recently revisited Rabat, and things have changed, but not as radically as in Mdina. Rabat is still fairly quiet. Most people I ran into at the main square, which is also where I spotted a few restaurants. Can’t remember seeing any last time, but I guess with people come businesses 🙂 Now there are renovated, vintage buses that run the route up to Mdina, and, ergo, Rabat. Or you can get on the regular, modern ones.