Greece Part 2, Rhodes: Old World Heritage town and lots of wonderful beaches

Our flight to Rhodes was delayed a couple of hours, so we arrived pretty late in the evening. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel. Hotel Anastasia is a renovated, old Italian style villa in the new town area: beautiful, spotlessly clean and with air conditioning! After chatting a bit with our hostess Stefania (good time to practice our Italian), we went searching for something to quench our thirsts and maybe fill our bellies. We were quite hungry, but most places were closed or closing, so we stumbled to Johnny's Pub. We had some chilly draught beers accompanied with peanuts and potato chips (quality nutrition).




Our first day was mostly spent in old town Rhodes. This world heritage site looks like a big fortress (including a large moat) with classic turrets and medieval stone walls. We walked on top of one of the inner walls around half the town and ended in a quiet neighborhood. Here we meandered around narrow cobblestone streets until we found a nice cafe to have lunch. The waitress was a cute British girl who had visited Rhodes, fallen in love and married a local Greek man. Her husband was a seafood purveyor and we met him as well when he delivered some fresh octopus to the restaurant. She invited to return that evening for live traditional music and dinner. We came back that night, but I was disappointed because the music was different than the Cretan folk music.

Here she is showing us how to eat the roasted eggplant salad:



The next couple of days, we rented a car and drove around the island to see various ruins and enjoy the beaches. The water's color was amazingly blue and we spent lots of time just hanging out on the beach. On one such occasion, we spotted a beautiful woman coming out of the water with her snorkel gear and a small trident with which she had speared an octopus. The poor animal was still fighting by wrapping its tentacles around the arm that held the trident. I wish I had captured it all on film because it was like a goddess, a female Neptune if you will, coming out of the blue Mediterranean.

I obviously got the memo about what outfit to wear to match the blue water:



One of the evenings spent in Rhodes, we stumbled upon Stefan's bar. I took a picture of it because one of our good friends is named Stefan, but the owner came out and started talking to us. Stefan was warm and welcoming and invited us in for some raki, the local drink. We ended up staying there most of the evening and then came back a second evening for more stories and refreshments. Stefan is quite a character! Having lived in Germany and Connecticut, his language skills were amazing, although we never did figure out how he knew Finnish.



More pictures here!