Day 5 – The Silent City

Mdina, The Old Capital and nicknamed The Silent City, was our first stop today. Anna described it as a slighter smaller Dubrovnik, and it was definitely less busy. Most of the streets were barren but nonetheless, it was actually a very pretty city. Perfect for a game of hide and seek.

Most of the shops sold antiques and lots of objects that you would find in a craft shop. Ornaments and paintings that one might find in their grandparents house or in some sort of old museum. They did have some cool modern things including the glass balloons with ribbons, I was really tempted to get one but then again, we are flying Ryanair so probably not the smartest thing.

After leaving our parking space, we drove a short distance to St. Paul’s Catacombs. Despite being a great driver, I am hopeless at parallel parking. However, we managed to get a space right outside the catacombs this time, so no awkward parking stories yet.

The catacombs were a series of interconnected, underground Roman cemeteries that represented the earliest evidence of Christianity in Malta. They also all smelled of death and Anna followed me around like a lost puppy, scared that something would creep up on her in the dark. Despite the tunnels being connected, you could only enter the crypt areas and so there was no way you could get lost!

Ta’ Qali Crafts Village is a very popular tourist attraction in Malta where all sorts of crafts and artefacts are made and sold by locals. You can watch locals blowing and forming glass, visit the goldsmiths making jewellery and watch people make sculptures and lace. Unfortunately, it was closed by the time we got there and instead, we walked around the deserted village as they set up the stage and stalls for the beer festival that starts here soon.

The Mosta Dome’s massive rotunda is the 3rd largest in the world apparently and has a huge history with the war. During an air raid in WW2, a bomb fell through the roof, hit a sculpture and landed without exploding. The church celebrate this miracle on the 9th April every year. After a quick walk through the WW2 shelters underneath it, we explored the church with Anna spinning around in the main aisle looking at the roof. I suppose it’s a bit like an optical illusion.

For dinner Anna had promised to rustle up a treat. Some pasta carbonara for the lads. This dish is usually hit or miss with Anna, which the Kilgore family can testify. On this occasion it was a miss. So. So. So. So. Bad. Anna couldn’t even eat it. Somehow, and fair play to her, she managed to mix the eggs and cheese into a wet cement which stuck to the inside of our mouths and didn’t taste far off a mix of wet cardboard and spam. Anna is now banned from making this dish.

Not the perfect cook though…

Still recovering from dinner, we were all set up on the balcony to watch ‘Magic on the Sea – The Greatest Fireworks Show’ from St. Paul’s Bay. Well, it was nothing of the sort. Starting 45 mins behind schedule, we thought they weren’t going to do it at all because of the windy conditions, or because all evening they had been testing fireworks and maybe ran out of them at this stage.

They only released the fireworks in stages every 10-15 seconds. This made it quite boring and as we were 2 miles away, there was a 10 second delay between light and sound. Halloween fireworks back home don’t get enough credit I think.