Thursday, July 3, 2008

Saturday, June 14 - Rhodes

Today we docked on the island of Rhodes, which was significantly larger than Mykonos. Darryn and I got local maps from the tour lady on the ship and set off adventuring. We walked the old town first and marveled at the architecture and then slowly made our way up to the local beach. We found a marina with local boats offering one-hour and half-day cruises and the like, and we thought why not, since we had until 7pm that night. We wanted to get to Lindos, which was apparently a great little town south of Rhodes. Unfortunately, all the cruises had already departed that morning, so we had to settle for a one-hour boat ride around some of the closer beaches. We were ready to jump onboard and pay our money when the mean Greek boat dude told us he was no longer doing one-hour rides but rather half-hour rides because there weren't enough people for the former. When the people on the boat awaiting departure heard our conversation they protested and said they too had wanted the one-hour ride but were told the same as us. Together we made six people, more than enough to set sail. But the Greek dude wouldn't give and I got the shits and we walked off.


We continued towards Elli beach, where we had to pay 4 euros each to use a frickin' beach umbrella and chair. Anyway, Darryn went in the water (alas, too cold for me) while I amused myself with the video camera. After a lazy nap in the sun we set off with the intention of finding a bus which could take us to Lindos, but instead found a really awesome old fortress and castle, partly deserted due to an archaeological dig still in process. We tried to climb rocks and trees and then amused ourselves with a game of hide and seek. Then we walked around the fortress and discovered a small opening that gave into the old castle itself. We got all Indiana Jones and climbed through, scraping our knees and what not, and took a walk around the dark, cob-webbed archways and overgrown courtyard. It was so fun. After exploring some more we went back to the new town with all the fancy shops and found ourselves an Internet cafe with great crepes (chocolate and banana and chocolate and strawberry) and checked our emails for an hour. Well, we did more than that. We got to reading some cool articles and in the end I ended up entering the New Yorker cartoon caption competition with Daniella's old address (because you had to be a US citizen to enter). It was quite hilarious (the idea, not my caption). After that we took off back to the ship for dinner and a cocktail party thrown by Trafalgar (which was, ahem, crap).

Dinner was arranged seating, which was pretty unfortunate. We got to sit with Lyn and Willy though so that was okay. It was Greek night so we had to eat Greek food. Trouble was it wasn't very Greek and the lamb I ordered tasted nothing like that night we dined in Athens's Psiri district. Anyway I felt a little sick and ordered a plate of potatoes. I was happy when dessert came around though, because being Greek night dessert was, of course, baklava and various assorted Greek delicacies. After dinner we went to the cocktail party, got our free cocktail, didn't drink it, and went back to our cabin.

No comments: