Greek Cruise Day 7...

Day 7 – Tuesday

Started the day (as has become usual…) with a nice breakfast, and then got ready to go on the excursion of the day, to Rhodes. Which by the way is properly pronounced Rhodos, according to our guide of the day, who spent about 5 minutes explaining that once we got on the bus and on the way to Lindos, the site of the Acropolis… It was about a half hour ride or so, which wasn’t that bad, other than the fact that it got a bit tiresome listening to our guide mangle english grammar… At least he was informative and somewhat entertaining, but it’s really hard to listen to someone getting the right words in the wrong position in sentences over and over again… Anyway, we got there and when we got off the bus, bam… Much, much, much hotter than the day before or any other day before for that matter… I think that the driver at one point said 111 degrees, and it was also as humid as any of the previous days… what a wonderful way to start the day…

Then the fun really began… another climb up a large hill to the Acropolis, and apparently in Greece they say things like “it’s about 346 steps up” which have no apparent association to the reality of how many steps there actually are… I didn’t count, but I’m pretty sure that 346 went by before we were a quarter of the way there… Also, there were about two jillion people all going to the same place at the same time, up a smooth stone walkway about 5 feet wide… And going back to the note from before about the lack of concern for safety, the one side was up against the hill, and the other, with no railing, curb, or any retaining device of any kind varied from a drop of a few feet to probably a drop of 20 feet or more… straight down… So picture two jillion people going up and down a walkway, smooth stone and pretty slippery even in sneakers, bumping into each other constantly, and a 20 foot drop off the side if you slip… and nothing to stop you… I guess a lifetime of living in the states and with our rules and regulations on everything to protect you from everything and even yourself makes it hard to imagine how others live… But we made it up safely (which I wasn’t that concerned about, since the traffic up was on the inside of the walkway…) although it took forever with the crowd… wouldn’t have been that bad if you could just go straight up, but we were going about 10 feet at a time, and the stops seemed to last forever… Once at the top it was very interesting and impressive, and some of the ruins were very well preserved… I almost had a heart attack though at one point when I walked over to a side of the hill and looked over and found myself looking a few hundred feet straight down… It was just like the walkway, only a few hundred feet more of a drop… I mean nothing preventing you from walking right off of the edge into oblivion… One other sides there was at least a shin to waist high wall (which people were standing and sitting on…) to let you know, but here nothing… Needless to say I kept back from all edges of the hill from that point on…

After a bunch of pictures and when we started to feel our skin start to roast, we started the (so enjoyable) trip down the hill, making sure that you either didn’t slip and fall to your demise, or get pushed off by some jackass who didn’t care about anyone or anything on their way to the top… At the bottom we were going to get on a transport bus to where the bus was (at the top of another hill, of course…) but standing in the heat was actually less of an attractive option than just humping it up yet another hill in the heat… Got to the top, on the bus (which at least the air conditioning had been turned on an was pretty nice…) and waited for the rest to return… Then on the way back to the Old City (the part of Rhodes inside the old wall…) and then unexpectedly we stopped at a ceramic store and got a very interesting and informative tour of how hand thrown pottery was made, and also how the plates and vases were carved and painted… It was amazing to watch a 60+ year old guy carve a design into a plate totally by memory and freehand… One of the highlights of the trip for me, since I really like watching craftsman at work… and of course we left with something, a vase and a plate… I actually thought about getting a large vase and having it shipped, since they were so impressive, but everyone else was on the bus and it would have taken a while to decide which one to get…

Then back to the Old City, where I got off the bus and went to the ship, and Ann decided to go shopping (what a surprise…) I got lunch, read a bit, and the took the obligatory nap before dinner… We had dinner Mike and Robyn and Jon and Cathy… Getting to hear Mike’s donkey story once again (and once again LMAO…) and lots of other great conversation and good food… Then after dinner we went and watched a show in the theater, Le Cirque Mariner, which was quite good… We decided to turn in for the night after that, since we had another long day scheduled for tomorrow.