Rhodes Part 1

At the beginning of the book The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams you will find the sentence “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airpot’”.  And that about sums up our flight from Dubrovnik to Athens and then on to Rhodes.  There really is nothing pretty about the corridors where passengers are herded through security and then eventually to the ‘waiting’ areas in airports.  But we do insist on flying at times, we must in order to arrive at such amazing places as Rhodes.

Our flight arrived after 10:00 pm so we had arranged for a shuttle to pick us up and take us to our hotel.  Thank goodness we did, I’m not sure we would have found it on our own.  Our driver was really great and all the way into town he told us about all the things to see and do while we were in Rhodes.  He was very helpful in pointing out important places and gave us a good overview of the area.  He even called our hotel and arranged for the owner to meet us out in the street because he could not drive into the pedestrian only area where the hotel is located.  After a very short walk through an ancient gate and just around the corner to a cobble stone street we saw Dinos, our host, waving to us!  He took us into his little hotel, up a steep flight of stone stairs to our room and wished us good night.   We had not eaten dinner so we went in search of an open restaurant.  A short walk on the quiet streets took us to the main square in the old town and we were very soon sitting with a Mythos (Greek beer) and a gyros - I was either in heaven or back in Greece!

The hotel is in the part of the Old Town that was originally the Jewish Quarter.  It was a short walk to many restaurants and tourist shops, it was also very close to a very nice beach - shopping, eating and swimming how good is that?  We enjoyed each of these activities in Rhodes as well as lots of exploring, not just the tourist sights, but also the new “modern”  Rhodes which has some very interesting architecture including some left from the Italian Fascist period.  

Entrance to the Old Town of Rhodes

The street our hotel is on.

A church ruin near our hotel

No visit to the city of Rhodes is complete without a walk up the Way of the Knights to The Palace of the Grand Master.   The palace was built at the end of the 7th century to act as the citadel of the Early Byzantine fortress, it continued as such throughout the Byzantine period and after a bit of conversion by the Knights of St. John it became the residence of the Grand Master and administrative centre of their state from 1309-1522.  It is a very impressive building designed around a large courtyard with beautiful carved marble statues in alcoves.  It has gone through extensive restoration work - even since my last visit 17 years ago.  As you climb up the monumental marble staircase past alabaster windows you arrive at another time and place.  There are huge rooms with massive mosaic tile floors, where knights must have met and planned their crusades, long echoing hallways lead almost endlessly from one room to another.  There are impressive displays of different knight’s apparel and paintings of them in their finery.  On the ground floor there were two very interesting permanent exhibitions.  These exhibits encompassed two different periods in Rhodes’ history - from its foundation 408/7 BC to the Roman period, and from the 4th century AD to its capture by the Turks (1522).   We spent a wonderful afternoon here and left feeling that we had seen something significant.  

Way of the Knights
(notice the little boy playing accordion in the corner of the photo - lots of Roma in Rhodes)

The Italian Consulate on the way up to the Palace.

A little courtyard off the Way.

The Palace of the Grand Master

The courtyard.

A reminder of past wars.

An icon in one of the exhibits

The marble staircase.

Mosaic floor

Alabaster windows.

The old town of Rhodes is a good blend of “old” interesting buildings, narrow streets, food establishments and tourist shops.  No shortage of places looking for the tourist dollar or in this case the tourist euro.  These little shops are hard to resist so I must say we did pick up a few souvenirs from enthusiastic merchants.  On the food front we relied mostly on recommendations.  An English couple staying at our hotel suggested a little family run taverna called Yannis, located slightly off the tourist streets.  The grandmother wears a traditional outfit - long skirt and apron and is there to welcome you with a great smile and the sweep of her arms to an empty table.  The menu was not all that different in the choices offered at other tavernas, but the food was of a much higher quality and taste than the typical tourist focused taverna.  We ate there three times and I can say that their Stifado, Moussaka, and Pastitsio were all delicious!  They generously gave us tasty appetizers, cakes and post dinner liquors to round out our dinners.

Our time on Rhodes was divided into two portions, we stayed for three days before leaving for Patmos and then two more days on our return.  Let’s go to Patmos now….