One of the
pretty big islands of Aegean and Mediterranean Seas was named after the wife of
Helios, god of the Sun. According to Pindar’s myth when Zeus defeated the Gigantes
and became the Lord of the Earth, he decided to divide it among the gods of
Olympus. But during the division Helios was absent and he was complaining after
that he was neglected, that’s why he demanded from Zeus a land, which comes out
of the sea. Indeed, at that moment an island started to appear from the depth
of a blue sea. He named this island Rhodes after his wife – a beautiful nymph,
daughter of Aphrodite and Poseidon. She bore him seven suns. The eldest one
governed the Rhodes, and cities of the island were named after his grandsons.
That’s what
the history says (better to say myth). In truth, it’s incredibly beautiful
nature with diverse landscapes (mountains and valleys) and not very populated
area (sometimes we drove for dozens of kilometers without meeting anyone). As
we noticed, terraced agriculture is pretty popular here, there are a lot of
olive groves and goats (who jump in the mountains really quickly). And there
are a lot of Russian tourists. Everywhere. Actually, not the most pleasant
contingent. There isn’t any police – we met them only once near the museum in
Lindos. There is no police at all. That’s how after two hours of driving we
understood that here it’s not only possible to cross the double solid line on
the road, but everyone does it and it’s necessary sometimes, when in this tiny
streets you go after a really slow jalopy or when in small towns the cars are
parked in two rows on the dual highway.
The whole
North sea coast is built-up with hotels, but unfortunately, the crisis is
obvious – the hotels are filled only by a third maximum and in general by
Russian tourists. Probably, another reason is Aegean Sea, which is more rough
and colder then Mediterranean Sea. Nevertheless, prices are not high here,
people are really nice, hospitable and opened: in a random café where we came
to have an ice-cream, Max was offered a candy just because the waiter liked
him, in a lot of villages people smiled and waved their hands to us, were
saying hello and wishing us a safe trip. But still the cats that lived near our
hotel were really skinny and it was impossible to look at their eyes when they
were asking for food.
Anyway, the
life is flourishing everywhere: under the roof of the hotel café there is a swallow’s
nest with four small nestlings that are opening their beaks when their mom
comes to feed them. It seems that we’ve found the main reason of European
crisis. It’s laziness. It’s just impossible to work here! This relaxing
atmosphere kills any motivation to move. When you come out in the sun, you are
feeling this warmth, these unbelievably intoxicating smells of flowers and sea
wind, and any desire to move or to work is falling away at once. We got the
proofs of that theory right in our first day – we discovered a Greek way of
checking the time. If you need to know what time it is, but you don’t want to
make any efforts – just issue a check and the cash register will write you the
time on the bill! I and Nastya were laughing a lot, when the guy who we rented
the car from, checked the time exactly this way.
The
strongest impression of the day is food. Such delicious Greek salad probably
exists only in this one place. So after renting the car we went to the
Butterfly Valley. Actually, there were almost no butterflies because it’s too
early, but the nature there is striking: under the dense canopy of conifers,
closely interlaced trunks and green gross bushes there are ringing brooks and
small waterfalls, and under the big stones there live real crabs. The road was
long and winding, with stones and pebbles, but we passed it all, and in the end
we climbed the top of the mountain, where is a monastery of Saint Peter and
from where you could enjoy a tremendous view of the sea and the mountains
(actually, all views here are tremendous). We were really starving by that
time, Max was tired (nevertheless, I must say that this kid is unbelievably
hardy and patient for his age of 4,5 years), so we were looking for some place
to have a lunch. A monastery café was very simple – there was no menu, no
prices etc. Two nice women who showed us what they cooked today (about 6 -7
dishes that are cooked right away lot-for-lot), prices are counted just orally
– I was saying what we had, she was counting aloud (without writing it down).
So we ordered delicious honey balls, homemade yogurt and Greek salad. After we
finished it (it was impossible to stop eating or trying to slow down) and
cleaned the oil with bread (gosh, I’ve never eaten so much bread at once), we
decided to stay here forever because you would never find such vegetables,
olive oil and vinegar anywhere else…
The
adrenaline of the day is a serpentine road to the ancient castle Monolithos. Actually,
we just wanted to look at it from the distance and to come back to our road to
home, as it was already late and we were still pretty far from our town. But somehow we missed the right turn and came
to the castle. Having decided that we don’t have time to see the castle, we
turned to the other road. It would be wonderful, if the road isn’t that crazy
and winding, the turns aren’t so sudden and abrupt. So we exhaled only at the
bottom of the mountain.
The hero of the
day is my sister, who was driving on that crazy road. She said that she
wouldn’t bear the way back on this road right away (there was no other way back
to our road to home), so we decided to swim and to have a rest first. Sea was
amazing, though pretty rough, and a rocky beach gave us a lot of really
beautiful stones.
All the way
back through these endless turns we felt like being in the computer game:
unreal landscapes around and permanent rotation of a wheel.
The
discovery of the day is “a kiss of two seas” (Aegean Sea and Mediterranean Sea).
To the end of the day we finally got this legen… (wait for it!) …dary place in
south part of the island and deserved a pleasure to observe and even to swim in
this natural phenomenon. Waves of these two seas really go straight on each
other and “kiss”, and splash. It’s warm on the left and it’s cold on the right,
it’s rough on the left and it’s quiet on the right. That was just tremendous!
Pleasures of
the day are people and free, absolutely empty of people museum in Critinia (a
small village on the top of the mountain) which turned out to be really
interesting place with a lot of traditional clothes, objects of village
everyday life and agricultural implements (I really wanted to have a wedding
dress from there). In the same village we went into a café to buy an ice-cream
for Max (my 4 years old nephew) and asked for some non-alcoholic cocktail. A
bartender was a little bit confused, he said that they have only alcohol but
they could mix only juices for us. And actually, it was the best cocktail ever!
And gave to Max a candy as a present. We were conquered by that hospitality.
The
conclusion of the day: perfect bliss with elements of strong emotions. Also the
redundancy of ozone in our lungs.
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