A Return To Rhodes

Tuesday 13 September 2016. Thomson Dream diverts to Rhodes for the day. We had been scheduled to spend the day at Syros, Turkey, but the wind was a bit too much for the single tugboat at Syros to bring us safely to dock. Our captain took the decision to divert and, as we love Rhodes, we are not too disappointed.

So we can pile off the ship happy that we will be able to wander round without getting lost. Moored opposite us on the narrow jetty is Costa Riviera. We exit the port by a different gate than we have been used to and walk along the coastal road towards the city.

The Marine Gate was the main entrance to the city. It has reliefs of St John and St Paul and the Virgin Mary. We decide to carry on walking around the coast road though.

Some of these boats are shops. Racks of shelves on the back swing open like doors to double the width of the ship and they sell goods made of shells and sea sponges and loofahs.

There is a small fortress on the corner of a dog's leg on the coast. It gave command of the approaches to Rhodes from the sea and withstood sieges from the Ottoman Turks.

It was the entrance to the city used by St Paul on his travels once he left the Holy Land. The bridge to the fortress is still known as St Paul's Bridge. From here the coastal path leads to the old harbour, now more a marina for private and fishing hire boats.

The two columns are said to be sited where the legs of the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the World once held up the mighty statue, so large that ships could pass between his legs without their masts bringing tears to his eyes...

We have a rest on a bench before heading into the town itself. We walk back, retracing our steps for a little while before entering the city here, on a path we aren't too familiar with.

We find ourselves walking round the main fortress in a part of Rhodes we haven't seen before.

The castle was the stronghold of the Knights Hospitallers, who moved to Rhodes following the loss of Jerusalem to the Saracens. The fortress is huge and it's a fair walk around the massive walls.

It is very hot. Small lizards bask on the warm stones, but scurry away as we approach. The dry moat that we are walking round is a perfect killing ground. Cannon embrasures are angled to cover the approaches from either side.

We are approaching the town and I start to recognise bits of wall towering above us that we have walked on top of on previous visits. We pass under the arch into the castle outer bailey and then through a tunnel under the main gate. You can see a couple in the distance on the left about to pass through the tunnel. Look for two grey dots (I did say they were in the distance) between the tree and the woman in the red top under the shadow of the arch. It is dark in the tunnel but not so dark that I fail to spot the large square murder holes in the ceiling. Hot oil or rocks could be dropped down these onto the heads of any invaders.

We come onto streets that we had trod before. Maris had told us to look out for a cafe called the Blue Lagoon near the castle. We would know it because there was a parrot in a cage near it. This one is called Mama Mika but it fits all the other criteria and the under tablecloth had a blue design of fish and shells so we wonder whether it had changed names. Our drinks come in glass wellington boots that are quite heavy!

There is no shortage of cafe bars in Rhodes! They line the streets everywhere. We take a turning from the main street and again find ourselves exploring new territory.

And then back to the main street leading down towards the ruined cathedral and the Marine Gate.

Pottery, dresses, jewellery, carpets, wall plaques are just some of the goods on offer. The cafe owners will quite happily watch you turn down half a dozen invites from cafe bars further up the road. Each time you refuse one of their neighbours makes them more convinced you are waiting until you reach their cafe bar...

We make our way back to the port. We walk past the gate where we usually had left and entered and reach the gate where we came out this morning. Which is locked... Back to the usual gate then! There is some restoration work going on to the old windmills and walls of the docks.

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Rhodes and a Lost Colossus

Ok yes, I know you've been waiting on tenterhooks. We shall see the site of the Colossus of Rhodes in just a minute.

It's the first of October and we are in Rhodes, having walked along the coast road and through the Gate of St Paul in a quest to find the spot where the giant statue, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World stood.

We are walking along the sea wall on the far side of the Mandraki harbour. We pass a short row of windmills, which you can't help but feel were well placed! This wasn't a gorgeously sunny and calm day! We reach a castle on the corner of the sea wall and there we are - at the site of the Colossus.

We return down the sea wall and walk round the inland end of the harbour and along the landward side, passing this large impressive market... What? You want to see the site of the Colossus? Oh...

Well ok, this is it. The photo from this side is much more impressive than the ones I took from the seaward side. Now the Colossus, as with another five of the Ancient Wonders, has totally disappeared. It was ancient as the title suggests. It predates photographs and everything... No one seems to have drawn the thing either, or at least, no contemporary drawings exist. There are lots of speculative drawings. Some say it stood over the harbour entrance with one foot on either side. If so then the two columns, sporting male and female deer, occupy the spots where the feet stood on top of huge base columns.

Others say this would have been beyond the technical capability of the time and the statue would have collapsed. Actually though, it did... Let's give a brief tale. The Rhodians were suffering one of their many sieges and were overjoyed when the cavalry arrived in the form of Ptolemy's naval ships in 304 BC. He expelled the besiegers and Rhodes melted down their abandoned weapons and built the Colossus in the form of their favourite god, Helios. He faced out to sea and held a torch, much akin to the Statue of Liberty. Ships sailed between his legs and those with tall masts made him anxious...

It stood for not much more than half a century and then Rhodes was hit by a massive earthquake in 226 BC. The statue fell (luckily) onto the land so the harbour could still be used. What to do with the remains was a problem. The statue had broken into pieces. They were so large that even broken and on the ground the Colossus drew sightseers. Pliny the Elder said that the thumb was so large most people could not wrap their arms around it.

It lay on the ground for 800 years. One story says that the Arab force which conquered Rhodes in 653 sold the remains to a Jewish trader who broke it up entirely and carried it off on the backs of 900 camels. We are dealing with very ancient history here. Most of the written sources come from a thousand or more years after the statue fell.

Around this spot a chap barged into me and apologised profusely. When I answered and he recognised a fellow Brit, he started talking to us. He had been working as a guide there for 6 months and was from Wythenshaw, Manchester. He warned us about some African women working along the harbour wall. They were offering to tell fortunes. One chap declined and had his hand grabbed and the woman was dragging him back as he tried to walk away. "They are not nice people..." said our new friend.

We entered the old city by the gate near the ruins of a temple to the goddess Aphrodite and walked along the narrow streets, enjoying the atmosphere and the bustle. "Look Fran, that's a mighty fine bustle over there..." [SMACK]

The shops are many and varied. There are a lot of jewellery shops and I spotted the little music shop where I bought some guitar picks on a previous cruise. It was still there with lutes, ukeleles and tambourines hanging outside.

We considered having lunch and exploring further but then my ultra weather-sensitive sensory system (bald head) felt a spot of rain and we made our way back to the harbour and the Thomson Celebration. By the time we reached it, it was going dark with threatening clouds and was spitting as a prelude to heavier rain.

We had some lunch and made our way up to the Horizons bar where I had a high vantage point view over the city. The sketch pad and pencil came out, though I ignored all the modern building and drew in vegetation where they intruded on the impressive presence of the forts and wall of the Knights Hospitallers.

The rain came and did so in such earnest that it was almost as if a mist came down, there was so much water in the air. People were scurrying from building to building along the harbour trying to get back to the ship. We had considered going out again. We changed our minds!

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All Rhodes Lead to... er... Rhodes

Monday 26 April 2010. We sail into the harbour at Rhodes.

This is another of the sites of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Colossus of Rhodes was a giant statue of the god Helios. He held a bow in one hand, a torch in the other and straddled the entrance to the harbour, with a foot on either side so that ships had to pass between his legs. He had an expression that said "Mind that mast! MIND THAT MAST!!!"

The statue was built of iron and brass between 292 BC and 280 BC and survived all of 56 years before an earthquake brought it tumbling, the statue breaking at the knees and then falling into pieces as it fell. I've used dates from Greek sources here as Wikipedia unhelpfully and somewhat confusingly says that it was built "between 304 and 293 BC, which took 12 years and was completed in 282 BC"...? There was no sign of it as we sailed in, perhaps just as well, as the statue would surely have closed its eyes and gulped at the sight of a mast standing 12 storeys tall... In fact the rubble stayed in the harbour, a hazard to shipping for an amazing 800 years before it was sold for scrap and taken away on the backs of 400 camels.

Even without a gigantic man's gigantic dangly bits dangling gigantically over our heads, the approach to Rhodes is impressive. The Knights Hospitallers came here to avoid the persecution of the Knights Templars in 1307 and built impressive defences which were to become the most solid Christian fortifications of their time.

The city is only a short walk from the harbour and we had elected to make our own way again rather than book an excursion. We found ourselves in a procession of cruisers, skirting the city wall to a convenient gate into the streets of the city.

The medieval city is so well preserved it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and justifiably so.

It was a joy to walk through the streets of the city, which are light, airy and interspersed with occasional piazzas, the greenery of trees and plenty of street cafes and bars where you can just sit and people watch with a glass of something cool or warm as to your taste.

We are inside the city but the towers of one of the main gateways can be seen over the roofline of the Greek steak house that also offers pizza and spaghetti and all sorts of other traditional Greek fare... er…

We found a table at the cafe on the left - which was the same as the cafe on the right - and happily spent 40 minutes or so just letting the mind detach.

There were plenty of craftware on sale in shops from finely embroidered linen to leather goods (Fran as an ex-leatherworker can never resist stopping to just sniff in the rich aroma of leather - it's a fetish I've yet to exploit, but who knows...)

The connection with the Knights Hospitallers is acknowledged in the presence of several shops selling swords, armour and other goods that are likely to be confiscated by customs or ship's security personnel.

This was a very relaxed day and we had the luxury of not being tempted to try to see everything as there is another trip to the area in the offing later in the year and I want to go up to see the remains at the Acropolis of Rhodes then.

For now we retrace our steps back to the gate through the walls and stop to buy the inevitable fridge magnet (I can just about remember when the fridge was white...)

We sat on our balcony for the afternoon and I listened to music on my i-Pod before taking the headphones off and almost falling asleep. The thing that stopped me was the iPod slipping from my grasp and hitting my shin which deflected it to cleverly miss the railings of the balcony and shoot straight off the side of the ship... I grabbed the headphones at the last minute and somehow, unbelievably, the headphone plug didn't come out of the socket. I was a bit aghast with relief as I brought the i-Pod safely up and back onto the balcony! Otherwise someone on the dock below might have been brain damaged by music...

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