Exhaustion. Rhodes was an intense, long day of incredible experiences. We started the day with a little old town wandering before we were picked up by George, pronounced “Yorgos” in Greek, who turned out to also be the captain of our scuba ship.
This little statue is where modern archeologists guess the original Colossus of Rhodes once stood.
We came across this old cathedral ruin on entering the town. It was apparently bombed in WW2 and a street ran through the middle of it for a while.
The whole town was surrounded by a quite high wall with various gates that we found as we wandered.
We headed to Kalithea beach and did two dives with many schools of fish and some trips through some sea caves. It was my first ocean dive ever so I was a little overwhelmed on the first dive. I struggled to keep neutral buoyancy and stayed close to the dive leader the whole time. The second dive I was much more comfortable and enjoyed it more. After the two of them I had suffered so much cumulative nausea from the rocking boat and sea floating that I had to break for shore as soon as we got back. I am getting way too sensitive in my old age.
Lunch on Ippoton Street. This street housed the residences of the Knights of St. John Hospitallers from different countries. Every door represents the hotel of a different country. Some were obvious and some were mysteries.
The Palace of the Grand Masters was filled with 600 BCE ish mosaics from the island of Kos, brought in by the Italians to deck out the vacation residence for Mussolini.
Honestly Rhodes was a better Mykonos than Mykonos in my opinion. More bright bougainvillea on picturesque cafes, more actual attractions, history, and overall scenery than Mykonos.
After hopping a taxi back to old town we spent the last few hours checking out medieval streets, seeing the palace of the Grand Masters and the Hospital of the knights of St John. Rhodes has an Ancient Greek history, but pretty much all of the surviving ruins are from the medieval Knights of St. John hospitallers, mixed with quite a bit of Ottoman influence.
Trying to keep my insides quiet before the dive.
The open courtyard of the Palace of the Grand Masters.
Garrett's wide angle setting makes the pics very distorted.
Exploring back streets trying to find the Hospital
A very medieval town overall
The garden at the Hospital. It was an unexpected delight.
As the ship pulled away from the island we got a view of the surrounding areas and it seems to be more of a resort heavy island as well outside of the old port too. I could return to Rhodes and find it every bit as much appealing the second time. Another ancient 7 wonders of the world checked off my list, although the wonder, the colossus of Rhodes, doesn’t actually exist anymore. We stood on the harbor where it once stood and I felt the importance of the city and its history in that little snippet of a day we had there.
No comments:
Post a Comment