Hi All,
Another night spend on a super ferry. Santoniri wasn’t the ferries first port of call and there were people already spread out laying across the seats leaving only a few and not enough for the oncoming people. You learn relatively quickly whilst travelling around the Greek Islands that floor space along with rows of chairs with moveable arms rest are prime real estate so we made a beeline for the very back row of the seating section and secure our space for the night on the floor. We locked our small bags to the seat in front of us and put our large packs in another unoccupied space. It turned out that someone had already ’reserved’ that space but it was too bad for them. Such is the law of the jungle on the ship.
We arrived at Rhodes with a breathtaking harbour view of the old Venician fortress that dominates the harbour before piling out of the ferry.
Rhodes is the largest island in the Dodecanese. According to mythology and lonely planet the sun god Helios chose Rhodes as his bride, and bestowed light, warmth and vegetation upon her. The blessings seem to have paid off, for Rhodes produces more flowers and sunny days than most Greek islands.
An old man caught up with us recognising the Australian flags on our packs and offered a room in his Hotel but we declined and headed for the transit bus to somewhere after taking his card. The bus took us from the port to the one of the entrances to the medieval city about 2km away and started looking for accommodation through the narrow streets. We had a few looks at accommodation with great views of the palace but it was too expensive so we went looking for the old mans pension based on the map on the back of the card. It wasn’t easy to read and after about 30min of confusion and backtracking I left Vanessa at one of the main squares with the packs and went looking around. It took a while but I eventually located the place which was surprisingly nice and quite cheap. Once I refound Vanessa we moved into a room in the 700 year old house which opened out onto a cobbled street deep in the old city with views of an old church. The Michael Angelo hotel
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The old town is one of the world’s finest examples of medieval fortification with 12m thick walls. This is true but the walls are actually filled with dirt rather than being solid rock but certainly are imposing. What makes it really fantastic is that you can walk around both the inner and outer walls of the town and we did both while wandering around and discovering.
Cobbled Odos Ippoton (Avenue of the knights) within the fortress and part of the medieval town is lined with magnificent medieval buildings. The 15th century knights hospital now houses archaeological museum which we peeked into through out doors but didn’t actually go in. We are museum weary at the moment.
We jumped on a bus for a ride in the new city. It was a circular route so we didn’t know what to expect other than eventually getting back to the same place again. It was an interesting ride as it took us to a poorer side of town and filled up with rowdy, cheeky and harmless school kids some with colourful English. My name? I chose Spiros for the reply when asked by a lively boy. What is my favourite music?
We had a problem in the evening as we had no supplies and had not found any supermarket so decided to eat out. The old rule for finding good food is not to eat around the main tourist squares and streets. There was so much choice so we decided to try a lonely planet recommendation which was well away from the tourist area. It turned out to be a great choice. It was Best meal that we have eaten in a long time. The mood with set with a free ouzo and olives for us. Why olives? Sip the ouzo then eat an olive. We ordered herb bread ,calamari ,dolmades (stuffed vine leaves) and fresh green beans, grilled octopus and Greek meatballs Greek salad and at the end got more free ouzo. The staff ,father and son, were genuinely interested in their customers and seemed to love what they did for a living. The son who would have only been in his late 20s said that people and been come to the restaurant for over 30 years just for his father Octopus. If we lived in Rhodes this taverna would definitely be a place that we would frequently visit.
The next day we wandered around some of the nearby coast and on the way took a ride in a glass bottom boat. We asked the young girl selling tickets about the type of fish we might see but she seemed genuinely confused about the subject so we let it go. It was not exactly the ride we expected as we didn’t see many fish along the way but it was nice to bob around in the harbour anyway. We walked around on a nearby pontoon and found lots of fish to watch just around the area. Not quite sure about the glass bottom boat being a drawcard.
We walked further around the coast to the beaches which have more colourful sun umbrellas than grains of sand and maybe only a few less fat white elderly European sunbathers turning into lobsters. There was even a concrete diving platform in the ocean about 50m off the beach!
The harbour was dominated by large cruise ships. One was called Costa fortuna super liner and the other was also from the costa company but we didn’t catch its name. These ships both left the harbour in succession and not long after their places were filled by others. We had a look online and found that the price of travel on the ships was quite reasonable.
We contemplated briefly the idea of cruising over to Turkey which was only a 45min ferry ride away but thought that that would be a little foolish and frustrating.
We caught the afternoon ferry to Crete. It was yet super ferry for a long haul journey via what seemed to be every greek island that the captain could find to dock. We hadn’t found any food and being too tight to buy it on the ship had nuts and biscuits for the meals on the journey. It was a 15 hr pleasure cruise with very few passengers aboard and lots of space to spread out as was sleeping on the seats rather than the floor. Yes beds were available on the ships but we are keeping the backpacking faith.
Needed more time to do the island justice.
Bye,
David and Vanessa
