Rhodes

We arrived in Rhodes by boat following some fairly famous predecessors such as Julius Caesar and Suleymein the Magnificent. In fact it seems everyone has been to Rhodes and left some mark there – Minoans, Myceneans, Dorians, Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Marmalukes, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Venetians, Ottomans, Italians, British and now tourists from every corner of the globe.

It is a remarkable place, especially the old town of Rhodes. It is completely surrounded by mediaeval walls, with a double moat, built by the Knights of St. John in the period 1300 – 1552. The complex is capped by the Grand Master’s Palace. Inside the town there are narrow lanes, often with buttresses across them as neighbouring houses help support one another. It has wonderful natural harbours, with fortresses protecting the entrances. In fact in ancient times the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to one of the harbours.

We stayed in a small hotel, the Pension Minos, in the Old Town near to the St. John Gate. This part of the town, unlike much of the rest of it has very few tourist amenities. It is home to many Rhodiots, who we would see in the evenings sitting on their stoops, or on chairs outside their doors, sometimes chatting but more often just sitting. The pension was of mixed charms – sometimes we called it the Pension Minus. It was run by Miss Maria, who we didn’t see for a couple of days, because she had a bad back. Her son-in-law Ioannis welcomed us and showed us our room. He showed us how to work the air conditioning and the satellite TV, on which he assured us we could receive almost any channel we wanted. Well the AC was at best anaemic, little more than a fan, and although the TV had hundreds of channels most seemed to be in Arabic, Farsi or Italian. I was surprised to find Arabic and Farsi porn channels. To find Italian ones was no surprise - in fact mainstream Italian TV seems to be mostly soft-core porn and sports. In this multi-channel paradise I couldn’t even find World Cup broadcasts – for that I had to turn off the satellite and rely on antenna TV, on which I found a Turkish channel broadcasting all of the games.
Ioannis asked for my passport when we arrived – this is fairly standard in Greek hotels – they fill in all of the registration details for you. But usually you get it back within a couple of hours. At Pension Minos it took 3 days. For the first two days we could not rouse anyone. When finally I ran into Ioannis and asked for my passport, he seemed surprised and said “What you want it now?” When I replied in the affirmative he muttered something about Miss Maria and went off. We waited around for fifteen minutes or so, and then decided to give up and leave. On the way back to our room we saw him sitting in a small room watching television!
We did finally run into Miss Maria. She was quite gracious and asked about our well-being. She had lived in Vancouver and her daughter was born there. But she didn’t seem to do much, but sit around in the garden under the lemon trees. But she did give me back my passport.

There were very few people staying at the pension and I got the impression that it was just limping along, which is perhaps not surprising given the level of service. In fact the only people who seemed to do any work were the cleaner, who was very gracious and went out of her way to show us to the San Francisco Gate, and the daughter who served breakfast in the roof garden – but not before 9::00 am! She had a young daughter and had to mind her child while serving, while no doubt Ioannis stayed in bed or watched TV and Miss Maria sat under the tree of idleness!

But the location of the hotel was great and it had a roof garden with panoramic views over the whole of the Old Town and harbor. We did some sketching there.
We rented a car for three days and so got to see some of the island outside of Rodos Polis. Around the island there are a number of places where castles or acropolides (?) have been built on top of tall monoliths of rock. The most famous is Lindos, and it really is very spectacular. From a distance one sees a castle perched on top of a very tall steep rock, surrounded at its base by a town of small whitewashed houses. In fact the castle one sees is just the outside wall, built by Crusaders. Inside there are the remains of a Byzantine castle and inside that an acropolis, which was partly restored by the Italians during their tenure of the island (1912-1945). In ancient times Lindos was an important city. It founded colonies as far away as Sicily. The acropolis of the Lindian Athena was well-known throughout the ancient world and received visitors from all over.

To reach the acropolis is a long hike uphill. Given the heat and our advanced years we decided to do it the easy way, i.e. to ride up on the back of a donkey. It only cost 5 euros per person and was well worth it. Even from the place where we de-assed, it was still quite a walk uphill and up steps. But we made it and it was well worth the effort. There was a very elaborate temple complex there in ancient times. One can certainly get the feel of what the layout was like, and one can see why it was considered a magical place by the ancients.

The west coast of Rhodes is very different from the east coast. The east coast is fairly flat and there is an hotel or a resort almost anywhere where there is half decent beach. We drove across the island passing through a number of small villages. At one as we rounded a corner into a small plaza, there was a women beckoning to us and smiling in a strange leering kind of way. It was a bit disturbing and felt slightly indecent especially since she was quite old and not very attractive. But we soon found out that she was trying to entice us into her taverna and not into her bed. Indeed on looking around I found that on the other side of the road there was another (younger) woman doing the same in front of her taverna. In Greece anywhere where there are tourists there is usually someone outside trying to coax you into their establishment, but it is almost invariably a man. But in this village they had somehow decided that it would be more effective for a woman to do it. I wonder if one taverna used a woman and started increasing its trade at the expense of the other, and the other then followed suit.

After an agreeable lunch of lamb chops grilled on an open fire, which the cook would oxygenate from time to time using a hair dryer, we drove on towards the west coast. The coast is steep and forested and there were some magnificent panoramic views over turquoise bays blending into the ultramarine of the Aegean. We followed a sign to a place called Monolithos, Soon we came to a place where a number of cars were parked on the dusty side of the road. On the other side was a sheer drop and a view to a huge rock, perhaps one to two hundred feet tall, on top of which there was a mediaeval castle. There was a bay on each side of this monolith. The castle was at about the same level as the road from which we viewed it, but to reach it one had first to descend almost to sea level and then climb up a couple of hundred steps. We decided against it – it was too hot and we were still digesting our generous village lunch.

Castles such as these abound throughout the eastern Aegean. Many were built by Frankish knights trying to establish their own fiefdoms in the east. Some were very well organized such as the Knights of St. John and the Knights Templar, but I believe there were others who, tired off killing Saracens, decided to grab a bit of real estate for their own benefit. The castles often survived even after the Crusaders had left, because they were useful places of refuge for villagers when they were threatened from the sea. Apparently pirates and brigands were a perpetual threat to settled communities on the islands. For this reason villages were often located inland some distance from the sea.

Anywhere in the islands where there are tourists one will find people trying to sell things to them. In these small villages their goods were locally made products – honey, olive oil, nuts and wine, and there were many small stalls near to the viewpoint of the monolith. We didn’t buy anything, but my guess would be that the honey would be delicious, and likewise the nuts and olive oil – certainly what we have had in hotels and restaurants has been outstanding – but I wouldn’t be so sure about the wine. I think most of the local wine which is sold in restaurants in carafes or jugs is only from last year’s harvest. It certainly tastes very new. It’s OK, but perhaps not worth bottling. But I have enjoyed the retsina. It must be served very cold. There seems to be much less of it around that there used to be in Greece. I recall when almost the only wine one could obtain was retsina (both red and white) under the label Demestica. Now waiters seem a bit surprised if you ask for it, and ask whether you have tried it before, afraid perhaps that you will send it back once you have tasted it. On our excursion in Crete we were in a village tavern and were sitting at a table with a Japanese couple. Judy asked the lady if she had tried retsina and offered her some. She tasted it and grimaced and said “Ah, like Chinese medicine!” Once or twice we have bought retsina at home or had it in a Greek restaurant, and I haven’t enjoyed it that much. But it tastes good in Greece. Maybe it has something to do with the heat, and it being served very cold.

Rhodes is only an hour and a half or so from Kos by ferry. But to get to Kos we went by air by way of Athens. The reason for this is to do with the crazy policies of airlines. I had booked a round trip flight from Athens to Kos before we knew we would be going to Crete and Rhodes. When our itinerary changed I thought we would just use the Kos-Athens leg of the ticket. But when after much difficulty I was able to speak to a live Olympic Airways employee on the phone (no reply to my many e-mails) I found that no, if we didn’t show for the first leg of the trip, they would cancel the whole ticket. This in spite of the fact that the fare was calculated as the sum of that for an outward journey and a return journey. Rather than cancel and buy a one-way ticket it turned out to be cheaper to buy a one-way ticket from Kos to Athens. And so we left Rhodes by air after a very agreeable visit.