runlindsayrun

Day Eight

Today, we took a half-day tour of Rhodes and Lindos, on the island of Rhodes. It was incredibly interesting. The island has a long history of war and occupation by different countries, and it's only been an official, independent part of Greece since after WW2. During different periods in history, when different people groups lived here, they built their own communities in their own architectural styles - making it the strangest island we've visited so far.

For starters, the city of Rhodes is completely surrounded by an old medieval wall built by The Knights of St. John. The first part of our tour took us to the 'old city' in Rhodes, around the central fortress. Any tour that includes a moat is fine by me. Plus, we got to see catapult balls, which made me happy (not really sure why, it was just cool). The streets were made entirely of black and white pebbles, hand-laid in intricate patterns. It was gorgeous.

From there, we took a bus to the town of Lindos. Along the way, we got a tour of a local family-owned pottery shop where they showed us how they make their famous pottery with local designs. In Lindos, we toured an ancient acropolis...

Crap. Internet time is over. To be continued from London tomorrow night :)

***LATER***

Or from the Athens airport on Friday morning.

So we toured the acropolis in Lindos, which was a freaking long way up, but the view of the beaches and the village below made the journey well worth it. The entire village is a designated historic/archealogical site. Which also meant that our tour bus could not drive us to - or pick us up from - the main village. Our options were as follows: catch a town shuttle bus OR walk 12 minutes pretty much straight uphill. We picked option A, but fate intervened in the form of lots and lots of elderly American tourists who swarmed the bus stop just as the shuttle bus was pulling up. They cut in front of us, bony old elbows out, and Geoff even took a cane to his foot. It was all over so quickly, and before we even knew what had hit us, the bus was full. And so we walked. Sigh.

From there, another 45 bus trip got us back to the town of Rhodes. We found an out-of-the-way family restaurant with an outdoor seating area where we had an amazing lunch - the best gyro I've even consumed, no question. We spent the afternoon just checking out the town, then headed back to the boat (no adventures this time!).

We had dinner with our assigned tablemates again: a couple from Atlanta celebrating their 1st wedding anniversary, a couple from South Dakota celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, and a couple of Calgary nearing the end of a month-long backpacking adventure. We had such a great time with all of them - incredibly friendly and funny. Every meal we shared with them, we were the last table sitting and chatting while the staff cleaned up around us.

Labels: Greece, My Life, The Boy, Travel

posted by Lindsay @ 12:20 PM