Rhodes - Day 4

After all the touristy stuff of yesterday you'd have thought Phil and I would be done, but no, today we are heading out to Rodos, Rhodes' main town/city. So, after another hearty breakfast we load up the car and head north towards Rodos and eventually arrive at the Diagoras Stadium where it'd been recommended we park for the day. Kudos to Phil for driving, the centre of Rodos is not a place where foreign drivers should readily be unless they are on a suicide mission :)

Once we'd parked the car we get out the trusty tourist guide and map and head on into the old town via Idaninou Gate and have a little bit of a walk before we hit anything that looks like a land mark we might want to visit. The first thing that struck us is that cars actually manage to drive around the streets of the old town and secondly that the greek authorities allow such activities in what is in effect an ancient monument. But what do we know, we were just tourists for the day.

After a little while we hit what would be considered the main tourist drag of the old town which would be the intersection between Apellou street and Agisandrou Street where the usual overpriced tourist trappings lay in wait. Having realised we were entering the belly of the beast we quickly back tracked and chose a restaurant to have lunch away from the main area where the prices were a bit cheaper and the crowds less ominous. I had a very nice pastisio and Phil had souvlaki (skewered chicken) and we loaded up on water since we were both sweating a cob.

Food eaten and drinks drunk we ventured back into the main centre and wandered up Apellou Street narrowly avoiding eager restaurateurs beckoning calls of "yes please you sit here and eat" or variations there on and decided to visit the archaeological museum / knights hospital. The museum was very impressive, and more importantly nice and cool within the confines of the thick stone walls and it was all going very well up to the point where I dropped my mobile phone on some ancient greek cobbles and the screen cracked.

This was a real arse considering I'd been using the camera lots since I had the phone and I wasn't sure if I'd cancelled the insurance or not. A quick call to Vodafone and it appears my slovenly ways have paid off for once because I'd not gotten around to cancelling the insurance as I'd planned to so it'll be easy enough to pick up a replacement when I get back home.

Moving on from the museum when then walked up Ippoton Street (the knights street) at the top of which was the palace of the grand masters which Phil was eager to look around. They had some interesting exhibits on display, my favourite being the display case with all the ancient jewellery in (obviously!) As we were traversing the many rooms Phil got a call from his parents who were also in Rodos asking if they could drop Jen and Mark off with us so that we could take them back to Lindos as Jim and Sylvia were going to wait for Martin to fly in with Cat and drive them back later in the evening. So we arranged to met up outside the Palace and when we were all in situ Jen, Mark, Phil and myself all headed back to the car for the trip back to the hotels, leaving Phil's parents to look around the museum to waste some time before picking Martin up.

As we walked back it happened as such that we walked past Phil's parents hire car and noticed that it had 2 flat tires, not good news. So we had to arrange for the hire company to come out and replace the car before we left so no one was stranded in Rodos for the night. That done we get back to our car which had 4 functioning tires thank god and I drive us all back to Lindos.

In the evening we venture back down to the shops in Lindos and have a look in an art shop selling oil canvasses. We spy two that we love, and so buy them. I get gold coloured horse racing scene and phil gets a monochrome landscape, both of which will look fab when we get them framed.

Posted by Abi on the October 10, 2009 9:10 PM