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Our last couple of days have been very lazy. We left Gennardi on the bus after a leisurely breakfast and farewells to our hosts, George and Barbara (both Greek). We even got hugs and kisses when we left. A couple of hours later we were back in Rhodes Town and finding our way to our overnight accommodation. Pretty much straight away we went back to the harbour so that we could book our ferry tickets to Symi and then on to Datça in Turkey. That completed, we had a bit more of a walk through the old part of Rhodes. We’d been into the old town a couple of time previously but even then we still found parts that we hadn’t seen previously.
The next morning we had a relatively early start. We checked out of our hotel and asked for a taxi to take us to the port. No such luck. Apparently on that day there was a Greece-wide taxi strike. Thank heavens we’d walked to the port the previous day and knew both where to go and that it wasn’t too far away. If we’d been at the Sheraton things would have been much worse. We’d also given
ourselves plenty of time and so we were able to walk to the port in about 30 minutes carrying our packs.
The crossing to Symi was OK (a bit bumpy according to Deb) and only took 50 minutes. The main port/town on the island is also called Symi and the entrance into its harbour is very picturesque. Symi is like one of those towns that you see in postcards tumbling down the mountainside. The port is full of luxury yachts and motor cruisers and surrounded by restaurants/bars. Our new landlord was there to meet the ferry and transported us back to his establishment (studio apartments) in an electric golf buggy. Afterwards we went for a walk around the town and then up to the high part of town known as the Chorio. Terry’s knee started to hurt and so Deb continued walking to the church at the top of the hill alone. The views from here were great. You could see old terraces built into the mountainside, you looked down onto the harbour and the town and you could see another town in the distance. However, going for a walk in the early afternoon heat was a stupid thing
to do and it knocked us around for the rest of the afternoon.
Yesterday we caught a taxi-boat to one of the nearby beaches and spent most of the day relaxing in the shade or swimming. This was particularly good for Terry’s knee. Today has also been a quiet day.
We caught a bus to the other end of the island to visit a monastery. This was another early start as the bus left Symi at 7:45 and arrived at Panormitis at 8:30. The bus trip was pretty good as we basically followed the spine of the island and so the views were really something. When we arrived at the monastery there was a church service in progress and the small church was packed. We had a quick look around but then went off for a walk to look for somewhere to spend the next few hours. We had managed to come out without our hats and so shade, close to the water, was the top priority. We managed to find somewhere suitable and spent the next 4 hours here swimming and reading our Lonely Planet – we need to do homework to decide where to spend the
rest of our holiday in Turkey. While there we were visited by one of the local goats as we sat and talked. She was enticed down to us by the fact that we were eating apricots and cherries. We can now report that goats can eat cherry pips but that apricot pips are too hard and they spit them out – the scientist is never really on holidays. We also visited a couple of museums before boarding the bus back to town. The ride back to Symi was considerably quicker than the one there and Terry's comment was ......
Tomorrow we head off to Turkey.
We couldn’t post this blog yesterday and are now in Datça sitting by a pool, drinking beer after a pleasant afternoon strolling the town and its market. News from Datça to come in a couple of days.
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Ailsa Abbs
non-member comment
Thought Terry looked a little concerned that the goat may take off with the backpack.
All photos are great and it's almost, I said almost like being with you both.