Saturday 7.10: All Rhodes lead to a Castle in the Sky

When I first told Dr. Parr, my faculty adviser, that I was going to Greece, he said first that I would have a smashing time, next that it would be unbearably hot, and third, that I should go to Rhodes. So far, I have had a smashing time, the heat has actually been bearable in places where I could take a good shower, and I have finally gotten myself to the place where all roads lead.

However, upon first arriving in Greece and looking up the feasibility of island hopping, it seemed like if I were to go to one or two islands on the weekend, it would not be to Rhodes. After all, it is one of islands farthest from the mainland (only 11 miles away from Turkey, actually) and would be very hard to get to by ferry if we were only going for a weekend. This is considering anyone would even want to skip out on the fun in Mykonos and Santorini to take a 10+ hour journey to Rhodes. However, while we originally planned to go to Santorini this weekend, the plans fell through and our backup was to go to Rhodes, with airplane tickets provided by Aegean (1 hour flight ftw).

A little background: Rhodes is the largest of the Greek islands, around 50 miles long and 24 miles wide at its widest point. It's closer to Turkey than it is to Greece, so the vegetation and climate is also more akin to that of Asia Minor than to the Mediterranean. It was famous in ancient times for the statue of Colossus [the sun god, Helios], marking entrance to its port, and because it was so big, it became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Unfortunately, supposedly due to a number of earthquakes and other disasters, the statue fell and basically disappeared from the face of the earth (perhaps around the time Atlantis, if there was one, disappeared) and all that's left are the stories about this gigator statue that inspired the design of the Statue of Liberty.

Today, Rhodes is known for its medieval town (Old Town) complete with castles and knights, Lindos, containing the Acropolis of Lindos, Butterfly Valley, water parks, an ostrich farm, and it's beautiful beaches. Seeing that we really only had 1.5 days on this huge island, there was no way we could do everything, but I think we made a pretty good run for it.

Saturday: Old Town and New Town

Freshly back from my trip to Epidaurus, I showered, packed, and headed out the door an hour later at 3:00 AM to catch our 5:20 flight. With Shivani, Marj, Ray and I was Ray's friend Naz, sort of a breath of fresh air into the group. Marj, Shivani, and I had gotten close enough that we could basically look at each other and tell what the other was thinking, but it was nice to have an outside perspective on everything. That being said, our first hours together consisted of napping whenever possible; on the bus, on the flight, on the bus to our hotel, etc. We arrived in Rhodes at 6:30 AM, made our way into the town of Rodos at a darn dratted early time. We were lugging all our stuff around, but still managed to be blown away by the blue of the water in the early morning.

See those mountains shrouded by mist a little bit? We're about 90% sure that's Turkey. Anyone up for a swim?

Gradually, we made our way to the hotel (Europa Hotel), but it was so early in the morning that they didn't have our rooms ready yet (this also may have been because we had booked our rooms at 2 AM that day...) so we dropped off our stuff. Ray and Naz took off to the beach, Marj and Shivani went shopping and I took a nap at the pool in the shade. Great nap until little kids started coming the pool and yelling. In the end, we all went to the beach and got...tanner. :D I felt like the little Coppertone baby in my beachwear. Because I got there a little later, it didn't make much sense for me to find a bathroom and change and go swimming. Boo...the water was quite fantastic, but: hot sand! hot sand!

After checking into the hotel, our original plan was to go to Lindos for the afternoon, but that didn't quite work out because we would have only been able to spend a couple of hours (read: 2 hours) there, which didn't seem quite worth it for the hour of travel there and back, so we decided to visit Old Town instead. Great call.

Here we are at the gates of Old Town, the medieval town of Rhodes. When I say medieval, I mean with knights and castles and everything. Very western European. I say this to you, Chris Kizer. :D And when I say castles, I mean castles. With moats and everything.

As we were walking about in the moat, we found a little side entrance that we were probably not supposed to go into, but we did anyways...

It led into the main castle area of Old Town and we explored the museum and the history of Rhodes. They didn't let us take pictures in the lower exhibits, but there were influences from the Romans, Egyptians, eastern Europe, Asia Minor, and it was a big culture mush, which was awesome. The entire upper floor of the castle had been destroyed in the earlier history of Rhodes, and the Romans rebuilt it as a summer palace for Victor Emanuel III. They imported all these mosaics from the nearby island of Cos, and even got some pieces from East Asia (yeah China/Japan).

Now, I realize some of you might be thinking, Angela, whatever happened to the List? Well, due to the little detour I took in Rome, it's been on the back burner, but, while we were walking through the tourist town part of Old Town, I finally found one of the things I had been looking for since coming to Greece. If you remember back to my Italy posts, there were a bajillion beautiful fountains. But Greece isn't known for its fountains and there aren't many that are that impressive. But when I saw this one, I was like: this is going to be my wish fountain. So,

It's a very Turkish fountain, I feel, but it was the most beautiful one I had seen in Greece. Note how those birds on the fountain don't move at all...pigeons here are like squirrels. Not afraid of anything.

9. Make a wish on a coin thrown in a Greek fountain.

THE LIST LIVES! Of course I won't tell you what wish I made. Otherwise, it wouldn't come true!

Super tired and sleepy, we then stumbled back to New Town, which was a surprisingly modern town with a lot of shopping. Deciding that food would probably be awesome, we stopped by this restaurant, L'Escargot, by the coast. We ended up watching the sunset while enjoying a great meal and some really great conversations (including Harry Potter/LotR/Disney/movies discussions). It was one of the most chill exploratory days I have had in a while, and watching the gorgeous sunset was really great way to end the day.