Let’s continue to wander the Old Town in Rhodes for a while. It’s so much calmer at this time of year, and if you’re lucky enough to be there on a warm, sunny day, so much the better. The monuments are open, i.e. the museum and the palace, but I’ve not seen the old mosque and library open for a while now, not even in summer. The Palace of the Grand Masters is a great visit and all you’re likely to encounter at this time of year are school parties, which, in my experience, always tend to be polite and well behaved. Once, when on Kos, visiting the Asklepeion, we encountered a couple of coachloads of teenagers arriving not long before we were leaving and had to walk through the flood to get to the gates. In some counties, that would be ‘head down and hope for the best,’ here, it was, ‘Good morning,’ ‘Kalimera,’ ‘Kostas, get out of the way of the gentlemen,’ ‘Have a good day, Sir,’ in both Greek and English as if we were royalty.
Apart from the monuments, you have the architecture to enjoy, and there are places where you can indulge your interest in architectural archaeology. For example, we found protrusions on the outer wall, or inner-outer wall, to be precise, and I was wondering what they were for. They look like they were once a matching pair holding up a balcony, but they were at an odd angle, there was nothing but a wall on one side, air on the other, and no signs of anything ever being attached to or supported by them. Just, roadside ornaments, perhaps? Hard to see in the photo, but if you have any ideas, leave a comment on our Facebook page.
The lanes themselves are remarkable pieces of engineering when you think someone had to collect every stone, bring it and plant it, and the lanes are never uniform. Some are walk-sideways narrow, others wide enough for cars, though there are few of them about once you are away from the main streets. You have to remember you’re walking through someone’s village and directly past their often open front doors, so try not to gawp. Instead, gawp at how well many of the area’s buildings and features are, and gasp at how others are managing to stay upright. For the intrepid, you can even find tunnels to explore.
You also get to see cats, of course, as this is Greece.
