The last days of Rhodes

II can feel myself slowly starting to relax. Yesterday we had a slow start to the day just lazing around our cute little apartment in the old town. All the doors and windows open to let in the glorious weather, and all the sounds of the neighbours going about their business - I guess at home it would drive me nuts, but here it seems charming and quaint - I think it definitely helps that I can't understand the language!

We then spent most of the afternoon visiting the Archeological Museum. An amazing building built within the walls of the city in the 14th century, it started out as a hospital, and was designed to be bio lunatic - suited to the local weather, and cool in summer. It certainly made it easy to spend time there.  

The round stone stacked up are cannon balls - about 30 cms in diameter, and would do serious damage.

One display of Rhodian antiquities is on loan from the Louvre. As with so many places, the best art and sculpture was taken to other countries over the centuries by marauding hordes, foreign rulers, and treasure hunters. But there were still fabulous galleries filled with pottery, jewellery, statues, plinths, and burial riches. It was amazing to see the plain and ornate safety pins for holding clothes together. And there was a lovely internal garden with ornate mosaics - apparently family and guests would sit on benches around the mosaic drinking wine while admiring the art.

Then a swim under the battlement walls

Followed by a kebab in town where the big fat old man tried to rip us off! Ha, we were having none of it  -  mind you we did end up paying 3€ for a small bottle of water!

Spent the evening drinking Retsina with our host Heidi - a Swiss-German who has lived in Greece for 30 years. Interesting to get a local perspective rather than a purely tourist one.

Today is our last day in Rhodos and we went and did some touristy things - we caught the tourist train for a 45 min trip around the city. I was expecting to sit back and admire the things we'd already seen, but it also took us up into the hills above the town where we saw a small acropolis, and gorgeous views of the coast.

Then we went across to the harbour and took a short cruise - it was cool because the one we booked was cancelled ( problems with the skipper apparently - ha, it's Sunday morning lol), so we got upgraded to another boat that was twice the price - and there were only 4 of us onboard.  There's lots of fancy (expensive) yachts and launches in the harbour so we imagined that we were part of that crowd!

Off to Naxos tomorrow.