Third day. Collection of the weirdest ways to get sunburnt, or The Greeks are jeering at us.

Let’s continue our Rhodes chronicle. This morning we woke up BEFORE  Max (it doesn’t happen often) and were disappointed with gloomy sky and stormy wind. But it turned out that there was nothing to worry about, because in spite of the wind it was warm and nice and because afternoon the weather has cleared up and we even were able to enjoy the sunset. Though we enjoyed the storm as well today. I’ll tell about it later.

 So we left not so early. We refueled and bowled along to the capital of the island – city Rhodes. But our nice trip didn’t continue for a long time because we entered the city, found the part called Old City and realized that there isn’t any logic or sense in road signs, parking signs etc. We have been told before that on Sunday parking in the city is free, but it wasn’t obvious at all: just everyone was parking as wanted. Like honest citizens we made “a lap of honor” around the walls of Old City, till we finally found a normal place to park.

Through Marine Gates we entered this marvelous oriental/medieval corner, that reminded us Istanbul so much with its tiny, paved with pebbles streets, bright colors of the roofs, wonderful cobwebs of flowers, souvenirs and clothes markets and sunlit domes and minarets. Right away we plunged into this mix of Medieval and Oriental summers. Max actually wasn’t that impressed by the idea of walking around these streets and exploring medieval castles, so he was whining and complaining. But Nasta somehow managed to show him some interesting details such as emblems of different countries and knights orders on the walls.

We passed the medieval street of knights (Ippoton) with tons of emblems on the old walls: on the both sides of the street there are buildings of former residences of 8 nationalities. Then we entered Palace of Masters (or Kastello). Actually it’s pretty dreary place and it isn’t that old. The Palace was build in XIV century but during the Ottomans dominion was destroyed by the explosion of powder that was kept in the basement. It was restored only in 1939 by Italians. Today you can see there a collection of furniture of XVI–XVII centuries, statues, vases and striking mosaics of Hellenistic and Roman ages. It’s very beautiful but it’s hard to use in real life. Though as my sister said: “Was there anything comfortable for real life at that time at all?”

 After the Palace we went to walk around ramified streets and courtyards of Old City. We passed Socrates Street, observed very beautiful but half-ruined the oldest mosque Mehmet Pasha and decided to find a hamam. It took us about ten minutes, then ten minutes more, than ten more… So Greeks just can’t draw a right map. Obviously. We had three maps and all of them showed different things, and all of them were way far from the reality. We were wandering and wondering, till Max finally just refused to go anywhere more and we decided to have coffee and to have a rest somewhere in the shadow. We met a nice old Greek who invited us to his café “Oasis”. First of all, they had amazingly delicious cappuccino: I don’t know what they put in there but even my sister who isn’t big fun of coffee asked for a second cup. Secondly, we not only had a coffee but also sang Russian songs and danced sirtakki (well, Nastya was dancing and I was making pictures). 

So when we ordered coffee and milk shake for Max and comfortably disposed in our chairs, came a middle aged man with a guitar and with the owner of the café they started singing Greek songs. Their voices were really great! We decided to encourage them and gave the guy euro. And that’s how it started. He suddenly started singing Russian songs from “Mohnatyh shmel”. We naturally took up the melody. And the whole café was enjoying the show. After “Shmel” we  went to “The long road”, and after it there were Greek songs and dances, and the owner of the café asked Nastya to dance with him sirtakki. After it he gave her a flower and kissed her on both cheeks. He also gave me a flower and thank us for support. Also they brought us incredibly delicious oranges as a present. When I dropped a half of orange by accident, the waiter brought up three more. All in all, we left best friends.

After we continue our search of a mysterious hamam, which accordingly to map was everywhere around us, but we haven’t seen it at all. Finally, we got completely lost, wandered to a labyrinth of stone streets, so narrow that only one person was able to go through it, where there wasn’t not only any tourists, but even local people (it was siesta). Suddenly, through one tiny street we came right to the hamam, but we didn’t have any forces to have a bath, so we came back to our car and went to the post Mandraki. It’s the place where long time ago stood Colossus of Rhodes, and now there are statues of deer, symbol of the island. Near one of these deer we sat down and spent about half an hour without moving, just observing the sea. Max was playing with his toys, Nastya was reading my notes about the place, and me… I was just sitting on the parapet and didn’t do anything wrong. Though, it turned out that I attracted attention. That was funny: a group of young guys came to the sea and started looking at something there and discussing it in Greek. One of them stood not far from me and was staring at me. I was pretending that I didn’t notice it. My sister was giggling and enjoying the show. Finally, he came up and asked if I’m a model and didn’t believe when I said no. As a result he asked me if he could make a picture with me together. My nice sister told me to demand from him to pay 5 euro. But I was kind that day. And asked only for 4. Kidding… J Actually, we had a nice conversation and the guys (they were from Crete) went away.

After about an hour we realized that we had breakfast at 9 am, and it was 5 pm already, so it would be a good idea to have dinner. That’s why we went to the beach Faliraki passing through an Apollo Acropolis on the hill, that actually consisted only of 4 columns. After that the main task was to leave the city in the right direction. It sounds pretty easy, right? But in reality it’s almost unrealizable. At that there are only 2 possible directions out of the city! But. The Greeks place road signs in random places without any logic. Generally, you can notice them only AFTER you turned. And it’s your problem if that wasn’t the right turn for you. In most cases there aren’t any signs at all, so you should orientate only with a help of your intuition. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes we were just swearing, because it’s impossible to orientate unless you know the city as your five fingertips. Basicly, for last 5 days Nastya passed also the course of super-quick reaction and practiced an ability to guess the right direction by intuition. That was really hard! When we finally left the city (after 3 times being lost) we breathed with relief.

We went to Faliraki and chose the first reastaurant we met on our way because we were starving. and again – you should have so much pleasure from food, it’s not right! But it was a great pleasure. We ordered Greek meat plate with different types of sausages and chops with some incredibly delicious sauces, plus mozzarella sticks. After that we had magically cooked “gyras” (very delicate chicken, pita, tasteful potatoes and vegetables) and “stiffado” (meat with asparagus in tomato sauce, potatoes and rice). When we finally finished, the world around was floating in some smoky fog of delight and intoxication from the food. The cook came out of the kitchen and we expressed out thanks to him. At that moment they brought us a desert on a restaurant. We were so overfull, we couldn’t move, but you think we haven’t eaten it? Nope, we finished it in five minutes: it was melting in our mouth right away. So we talked to a manager of the restaurant, our waiter and went out so languid that we were too lazy to walk several meters to the sea and we went there by car.

It was a storm on the sea. Actually, it wasn’t that strong – only 3-4 points of intensity. Though it was impossible to swim, because you can’t come into the water and start swimming. That’s why we had fun all the ways we knew, especially Max who was absolutely happy to run away from huge coming waves and screeched when the wave splashed all over him. Me and Nastya also kept up with him: we were trying to stand as close to these huge waves as we could, buried Max in the sand and were saving his toys from the water. As a result, in the evening all three of us were washing ourselves from the sand for a long time. It was endless happiness. Only when it started getting dark we went home.

And yes, joyful Greeks. First of all, maps are absolutely USELESS in that country. And if you turned right once on “your” direction sign, there is no guarantee that you’ll get your destination safely. No, you’ll meet millions of crossroads without ANY signs and  only Lord knows where you should turn. Finally, we got absolutely lost in one of the small towns so we had to ask locals (who actually were not that good at English) where we should go.  After that we took wrong roads about more dozens of times and lost a hope to understand where we were and where we should go, and why a single track road suddenly changes to double track one and vice versa.  And when finally when we saw a plane flying pretty low above the ground we cried with happiness because they fly so low exactly above our hotel. That’s how we deduce the Greek way of orientation on the spot “by guesswork” and “by planes”.

P.S. As for the weirdest ways of getting sunburnt, Nastya contrived to get red strips on the legs because of lying with crossed legs for half an hour. And I’ve got sunburnt toes where they were not covered with sandals.