rhodes,greece

i decided that we should change our approach to travel. instead of deciding to go somewhere and ending up paying prime time money (ie. going to morocco at the ultra high season of christmas/new years week) we should see where the cheap flights are going and pick one that fits in our schedule. we wanted to go to a greek island and i found cheap flights to rhodes direct from paris. 

it has been a cold summer in paris. last month felt more like april than july. overcast and wet and spring temperatures. we were looking forward to greece. rhodes boasts 300 days of sunshine every year and was supposedly the domain of the sun god, helios. yay. chances were good we would get some sun.

it was high season, but i was able to find a fairly reasonable apartment right on the sea, in a fishing village. the fact that greece is going through economic troubles and has been on the news with riots in athens actually benefited us. people become scared of news like this and stay away. i knew that the islanders relied on tourism and all would be calm there. otherwise, rhodes is “one of the most popular tourist destinations in europe”.

we spent a week of hanging out at the beach in front of the apartment, visiting archeological sites and ancient towns, taking a few hot hikes and visiting various other beautiful beaches with crystal clear warm water. rhodes town is an ancient walled city which was the home to the ex-crusaders who became the “knights of rhodes” before they were kicked off and went to malta to become the “knights of malta”. lindos is an ancient picturesque town with an acropolis on a hill.

rhodes has a long history. it played an important role in the ancient greek empire and then was overrun by everybody in power down there from the romans, byzantines, venetians, genoese, ottomans, italians, to the nazis. now it is overrun by british tourists...

our town was called chiraki or hiraki. a former fishing village, it is now a string of tourist restaurants, bars and apartments lining a bay. the beach was lovely and convenient. the

apartment was nothing special, but it was clean, on the boardwalk with a balcony facing the beach. the water was warm, the weather was hot. chiraki was only there now for the tourists but it wasn’t too crowded since there were only as many tourists as the housing would permit. people didn’t come to visit this beach just for the day. the people who were here, lived on top of each other. there were greeks, italians, french, brits and american greeks. people lived on their balconies and back porches on the boardwalk. it was like their back yards. it was like their little street. kids biked on the boardwalk. restaurants had their kitchen in the building and their tables on the beach side of the boardwalk. waiters would have to cross the 3 paces of the boardwalk with care. it was part of this town’s accepted culture that the boardwalk was the public way and the waiters would just laugh as they narrowly avoided a kid flying by on his bike with training wheels. in the early morning, the local ladies could be seen swimming wearing their sun hats. if i stayed here for a while, i’d end up doing that too. the sun is pretty strong. 

i swam every day, but not until the last 2 days did i use a pair of goggles. it totally changed the experience and when we went to one particular beach with a few more fish, i didn’t want to leave the water. overall, the food wasn’t as good as i had remembered it from 20 years ago. it was good but not great. having an apartment was convenient since we could cook a little for ourselves. i made lots of greek salad and we ate relatively healthy breakfasts of fruit, yogurt and granola. 

i had been to rhodes 20 years ago, when i was living in paris. there was an australian couple living in the same building and they had invited me to take part in a sailing trip to the greek islands. the woman told me i didn’t need to know anything about sailing because her husband was a champion sailor. her father was coming to join us, and he too, had been a champion sailor. i was happy to see what life on a boat was like and it sounded like fun. another young woman friend of theirs was joining us too. unfortunately, we didn’t have any wind and the water was a bit choppy. we ended up motoring around, which infused the time with the smell of exhaust. i felt a bit sea sick throughout the trip. in addition, the benefit of having one champion sailor on board was negated by having another champion sailor on board. the two alpha males, one in his prime and the other of the previous generation, perhaps insecure about his losing his dominance, bickered and argued about every little technical detail of sailing. it was like watching an animal kingdom show. finally, i had enough and jumped ship in rhodes. i hadn’t stayed long, since it was too touristy for me at that time. coming back now, i recognized the town and remembered this story.

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