look, Look, LOok, LOOk, LOOK! OPA!!!

And so began our introduction to Rhodes. The guide for our private tour was -- in a word -- unique. He talked pretty much non-stop for the entire day; was very nice, took us to some lovely places -- but oh my....

He tried to teach us some Greek. We weren't listening. But bless him,he did try. His favorite was to suddenly point and yell out, "look, Look, LOok, LOOk, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK!!! and when he finally had our attention, yelled OPA!! for whatever sight he thought worthy of our attention.

We started out going to Lindos, which is located on the eastern shoreline. We took a little side trip to visit an out of the way pottery place -- I'm sure our guide took a cut of whatever we bought, but their stuff was beautiful. Not sure what I'm going to do with what I got -- but it brings back good memories, none the less.






Lindos is a cute little Greek town -- from a distance looks like all the neat pictures of Greek towns you see on Webshots (my favorite cheap date). The exciting part was climbing 292 steps up to the Acropolis which gave an amazing view of the harbor which includes St. Paul's Bay where the apostle is said to have landed. The wonderful part about going in January is that there were NO lines. Of course, not too many shops were open either....











And more....













The cute little town...with the typical roadway and sidewalk decorations made out of pebbles




Rhodes, of course, was the home of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colosseus of Rhodes which doesn't exist any more. That brought a huge discussion amongst us as to what we could name....not much, as it turned out. The great pyramid at Giza - the only one still around -- and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There are four others -- but you are going to have to do what I did...use your friend Google and find out the rest of them!

We then went to the Old Town of Rhodes which was a fun medieval walled town. We wandered down the Street of the Knights and visited the old Hospital of the Knights -- um -- I'm glad I wasn't a nurse there! There we had some late lunch and said a grateful goodbye to our guide...look, look, look, LOOK, LOOK!!! OPA!!







Our guide explaining the doors to the city....OPA! Or would that be OPEN!!



Linda, Carole, Bob, Will, Tim, and our intrepid guide in front.






The hospital

Dare you to lob one of these at your enemy!

Yup -- the Body Shop -- go figure!

And finally, farewell to Rhodes...but not before a bit of drama with Tim who decided to find an internet cafe where he could chat with Jen for a bit. This involved getting very bad directions from people in the Old Town, walking for ages....and getting back to the ship just about the time I was beginning to panic.

You see, I had memories of a particular 'nuther cruise in the Caribbean when Tim and Torrey went out of an evening in Barbados and were booking it to make it on the ship in time. Last ones on the boat -- hysterical mother -- nope, not a good show at all.