Rhodes, Greece – 08/14

(TJ) We ended up staying at a small place in the old town of Rhodes. It was nice to get away from the standard hostels for a while and the price was cheap $30 with a private bath room. Rhodes is very touristy: its claim is that it has the largest intact medieval walls in the world and that it was the site of one of the 7 ancient wonders of the world, the Colossos of Rhodes. Package tours are in full effect on this island and cruise ships also dock here. Since we stayed for a while we got to check out the old town and new town areas and also some of the other ruins up and down the coasts and work on our tans, or in my case my summer oranging. It was nice to chill out for a while, we found a really good place called Taverna Kostas to eat moussaka and saganaki and other things that were bad for our hearts, we went to a couple of times, as a bonus we were served beer by a eight year old who spoke excellent English.

(Michelle) Our “Pension” was a family run hotel with about 8 rooms. The owner was waiting to recruit some guests from the ferry, so that worked out well for us, since we only had a loose reservation at a questionable hostel. It was in a great location, we had to walk down this little medieval looking alleyway that no tourists walk down to get there. There was a little patio outside our room for anyone to use. If we were ever sitting there, the owner would feed us fruit from his garden. We are not sure where this mystery garden existed, but it was somewhere else on the island. I ate my first fig. Turns out I am not allergic to figs. TJ was wondering how many figs it takes to make one Fig Newton, since there is not a lot of fig stuff in a fig.
TJ made friends with the son of our hotel owner, Yannis. Yannis was about 35 and spoke some English, but his brother didn’t speak any English and he would just look at us funny from time to time.
On the second night there was a problem with a double booking. TJ and I were having our nightly seat on the patio with Yannis and enjoying some random fruit of some kind with our evening cocktail. A German couple arrived asking why somebody else was in their room. The guy already had the key because the owner had given it to his father two days before when he made the reservation. The father was Greek, but the son was raised in Germany by his mother and only spoke German and English. The hotel owner spoke only broken English so he wasn’t sure what they were saying at first. It turns out his wife booked the room to somebody else the next day without telling him. It seemed at first that the German couple was just going to be S.O.L even though they booked it first. However, shortly after, his Greek father showed up with a posse and after an hour of heated Greek discussion, it was settled and somebody else in the pension got the boot. We were all (including the German couple) very confused by how that happened. At first, I didn’t understand the little Greek hand toy they sell in all the souvenir shops, but I never wanted one so bad while watching that go down. All the men had one in their hand during the whole discussion. Fortunately for us, we were not the ones who got the boot.
I highly recommend the restaurant that TJ mentioned above. The food was great, it is in the old town further off the main drag, so not overcrowed, there is nobody standing outside trying to talk you into eating there (like every other restaurant in Rhodes) and it is run by this very nice family. We ate there several times.