Day 7 – Rhodes (2007.05.24)
Welcome back, true believers! In the last episode of “How Long Can Two Pairs of Underwear Last?”, our traveling duo was promised that they would finally get their luggage on the magical island of Rhodes. Still, they were wary of a possible trap…they had been deceived in the past and vowed that it would not happen again!
We started off our day with “the usual” – breakfast with the Hassans, although they’ve been getting there earlier than us and getting a good table (um…Lindsay makes us late). Today I found the omelet station, which was “hiding” on the other side of the cafe, so instead of suffering through the watery scrambled eggs, I was able to get some sunny-side loving (along with two other plates chock-full of food – after all, I’ll need my energy walking around Rhodes today). The ship docked at 9, but we had to wait at the theater anyway until it was time for our shore excursion to depart.
Once our tour number was called, the group (me, Lindsay, Abdul, Rozida and about 25 others) followed the leader down to the third deck gangway, where we had to scan our SeaPass in order to disembark. There were several shuttle buses waiting, and the leader pointed us to the one with the matching number. Once everyone was accounted for, the bus started heading for the ancient town of Lindos.
As per the wiki article, Lindos is a major archaeological site. The main attraction is the Acropolis (not to be confused with the Acropolis, which we’ll see later this week in Athens).
If I remember correctly, the name is derived from the Greek for “city at the top”, or “high city”, so it can basically be used to describe any fortified citadel that fits the bill. The only thing cooler than the view at the top was the view from the top. One of the neat things to see was St. Paul’s Bay…from the picture you can’t tell, but there is a small inlet on the left side – those boats aren’t stuck. Also, you might notice that we saw a lot of cats, and we just had to take pictures of them – especially the one that could have been Chester’s brother or the one that could have been Lokai’s sister. Aside from the cats breaking up the monotony, you might think that seeing the same kinds of architecture over and over again would get boring, but it didn’t for me. Lindsay spent most of the time playing with a couple of kittens, though, so maybe she feels differently 🙂
After walking back down all 292 steps, we got back on the bus, and headed over to a pottery maker to see how traditional pottery is made.
Today, they use modern pottery wheels, but the first thing we saw was a quick demo on how it was done in the old days. The potter spun the bottom wheel with his foot, which in turn spun the platter that had the clay on it. We watched as he turned a shapeless lump of clay into a beautifully sculpted vase – or something akin to a vase. It was pretty impressive to watch, especially considering how quick it was done – it didn’t take more than a minute or two. Inside the shop, we watched as the potter’s wife glazed a previously-sculpted piece and painted another. Several people in our group bought some of the pottery, but we didn’t (some of the pieces were cool, but someone didn’t appreciate them as much, I guess).
After the pottery shop the bus took us back to the ship. We split with the Hassans (they wanted to go back to the boat to rest and have lunch), and walked down to the “old town”, which is a medieval town right on the water. It’s mostly tourist stuff now, but a lot of the architecture dates from the 14th century, so it felt neat to walk around. We stopped off for a bite to eat at an outdoor cafe, and split a “Greek sampler for two”, which was really tasty. During our meal, a guitarist was walking around serenading the customers. I was annoyed because he was playing American music, like Dust in the Wind, and commented on that to Lindsay, but coincidentally he started playing one of the “classic” Greek songs that I remembered from the night before. What was interesting was that he was making his guitar sound like a bouzouki (I guess by playing two strings at a time). For me, that made the meal feel authentic…although I also commented that I felt like we were in the Greek pavilion at EPCOT (which either means that tourist-trap areas pander to tourists, or that Disney nailed it…probably a little of both).
After lunch we walked around the old town, heading for the Palace of the Grand Masters, to look at some more medieval architecture. On the way, Lindsay made some friends.
What was really cool was that the path that we took to get around to the palace used to be the moat, although you couldn’t really tell now, since it was all a well-manicured lawn with the occasional flower and tree. After taking a lot of pictures, we started to make our way back to the boat.
The day was wonderful, but was overshadowed, of course, by the fact that we still hadn’t gotten our luggage. Now, as we walked back to where the Galaxy was docked, we were hoping, but nowhere near confident, that we’d have anything to be happy about (well, we were happy, but you know what I mean). After a quick swipe of our SeaPasses and a jaunt through the metal detector, we climbed the six flights of stairs to deck nine. As we made the turn into our corridor, we were asking each other if the luggage would indeed be waiting for us inside our stateroom. Now, the moment of truth.
Turns out we didn’t even have to wait until we got into the room, as all of our luggage was waiting outside in the corridor! Lindsay was so happy, well, you can see how she greeted our bags…it was a joyful and tearful reunion.
After freshening up and changing (into our own clothes, yay!!), we joined the Hassans for dinner at the Orion Restaurant (really the only restaurant, but I like sounding fancy). Dinner was good (did I mention that we were in our own clothes?), and people who knew us and our plight were commenting on the fact that we finally got our luggage. Coincidentally, our seats are just a table away from three couples that were also on the same cruise-tour with us, so they’ve seen a lot of us in our same outfits.
After dinner we headed over to the theater for a quick game of $5 bingo, which we of course lost, but at least we had great seats for this evening’s entertainment. We weren’t sure what to expect, since the daily activity guide listed “Virgin/Higher Octave Recording Artist Doug Cameron”, and none of us had ever heard of him. We figured that if (or when) it sucked, we could leave. So, Stewart gets up on stage (along with the Celebrity Orchestra), and introduces the main act – Doug Cameron. I have to say he was pretty talented. We all enjoyed his music – a mixture of classics from different genres, all with his unique interpretation. Some people don’t like when classics are tampered with (not me, I happen to love Hooked on Classics), but he took a bunch of easily-recognizable tunes and added to them, yet kept them intact. Anyway, he was good, and I bought his CD (signed, of course).
After the show we headed over to the casino for “Casino Royale!”, with Stewart. It turned out to be a raffle, which none of us won. The people who did win the raffle got to play certain games for money…one guy had to pick red or black for a single spin of the roulette wheel…I forget what he won. After that was over, I sat down at a Hold ’em table that was just starting up. I was pretty dominant for a while, but then I got suckered in by the drunk guy sitting next to me who went from having 2nd and 3rd best hands to having the nuts. I ended the night down $60, which was an acceptable loss (to me, at least). Which reminds me, I forgot to talk about a blackjack tournament that I entered during our day at sea – but right now it’s fairly late, and Lindsay is already sleeping (we dock at Santorini at 8 tomorrow morning), so that will have to wait for another day.
Pictures from today can be found here.
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gotta’ “teach” you that not all your pictures should look like picture postcards. even if it is the same clothing, stick yourselves in some of them. big deal if you run into the same problem as david brenner, wherein all his khaki outfits looked exactly the same in each pic.
p.s. i hope lindsay doesn’t start to get palpitations now every time she passes a luggage shop.
I agree. There are more photos of cats than there are of the Newlyweds!