November 14, 2016 - I'm No Rhodes Scholar, But . . .

I'm no Rhodes Scholar, but I have been to Rhodes . . . Rhodes is a Greek Island closer to Turkey than to Greece. During the Middle Ages Rhodes was a staging point for Crusaders and knights from all over Europe visited. Later, Rhodes was ruled by the Ottomans. In 1912 Rhodes became Italian. After WWII, Rhodes officially became part of Greece, though it had always had a large ethnically Greek population. The Colossus of Rhodes was a 100-foot tall bronze statue of the god Helios. It was toppled by an earthquake after standing for 56 years. It inspired the Statue of Liberty, which is of comparable size. This being a Monday, all of the museums were closed. It was also the extreme end of the tourist season, and a lot of things were closed for the season. We did not have a tour planned. We wanted to walk around the Old Town and try to "walk the wall." First we went to a square to have some coffee that came with free wi-fi. I had some issues with BlogPad Pro that needed to be addressed. I hope I can now add to my blog without losing my work. I know the layout is still wanting, but I just couldn't spend half the day fooling around on the internet. I'm in the Mediterranean, after all!

The Old Town is a walled city that stands out as you approach it from the sea.

The streets are narrow, but that doesn't stop anyone from driving on them. Motorcycles and scooters are numerous, too.  Part of the Old Town was heavily bombed during WWII and it doesn't look like much of it has been repaired. In addition, there are ancient Greek ruins that are partially excavated. So, everything looks like it is falling down.  As we wandered some of the back alleyways we saw that many people still live in the Old Town. People live here. You can look right into living rooms as you walk by.

But things are in disrepair. There is a lot of trash just lying around. There are feral cats everywhere (and feral cat poop everywhere).

I realize that the Greek government has no money to pay for maintenance, but you would think that a place so dependent on tourism would make a little more effort to keep up appearances. They are not doing much to preserve the ruins.

Ruins, trash, cats

Despite all this, there are some interesting sights. If you like to take pictures of arches you will think you've died and gone to heaven.

There are also lots of photo opportunities for castle fans.

Part of the moat

Minarets:

Ottoman-looking stuff:

In spite of incorrect signage we found the synagogue in Rhodes. Rhodes seems to be one of the few places we have been to on this trip that still has actual Jews living in its historic Jewish quarter. However, like everything else in Rhodes, the synagogue was closed today.

We found a nice looking bakery and bought some kind of Greek Christmas cookies. They taste like clove or allspice and they have been soaked in honey.

We finally found the point where the "wall walk" begins, but it was inside the locked gates to the (closed) Palace of the Grand Masters.

 

Maritime Law Institute

Not closed: Most of the shopping. There are really only four shops: a leather shop, a jewelry shop, a tacky souvenir shop, and a local handicrafts shop. Each one of these four shops is repeated over and over in the Old Town. And each one comes with an aggressive salesperson.

Shopping street

Not closed, thank goodness: the wi-if place where we had coffee. We went back there for gyros and moussaka after our walkabout.

I would have to say that Rhodes was not my favorite place, though I didn't hate it. It's probably because we were in gorgeous Santorini yesterday that Rhodes just didn't overwhelm me. 

Goodbye, Rhodes