The ship cruised overnight and delivered it's 1,000+ passengers to Rhodes Island today. This is the 4th largest island and includes an old walled city area with the rest of the city spreading out from this area.
We didn't sleep well again, mainly due to a couple of American ladies in the room next door who had obviously been on the turps and were still talking and laughing loudly at 4.30am. When they turned on the TV for extra entertainment I'd had enough and knocked a few times on the wall and they turned it off and quietened down. We slept only to be woken at about 5.30am when the deck crew lay out the deck chairs. They must chuck them down on the deck because the clanging reverberates right through the steel ship.Idiots.
We had breakfast and were on the island by 9am checking out the old section. Most of the shops were shut so we went into the castle which had been largely rebuilt for Mussolini who only stayed there a few times. It was interesting, built from local sandstone - like the rest of the old city - which weathers quite a lot over time. Inside there was a museum area where most of the artifacts were dated between 100 and 1300 BC! We understand that this is one of the oldest archeological areas in the world, with the whole of Lindos (nearby town) designated an archeological area.
By 11am the old city had come to life with tourists from 4 cruise ships wandering the streets and all of the shops open and trying to do as much business as they could. We have found the Greek shop owners much more respectful, friendly and let us browse without undue pressure to buy - a welcome relief after the Turkish experience still lingering in our minds from a couple of days ago.
We find a large family owned art shop with some of the nicest art pieces that we have seen, all individually made by known artists from around Greece. We ear mark this to return to later.
We browsed and Jan bought a sun dress that she liked before we returned to a cool outdoor restaurant that we'd spied earlier. They were quite entreprenurial, handing out a map of the old town area which marked where their restaurant was. We had a light lunch of hors d'oeuves, greek salad and pita bread. It was ok but not up to the exceptional standard experienced in Athens.
We returned to the art store having decided that we "deserved" to buy a nice piece to remember this trip by. A good thing is that we had a little trouble deciding which piece we liked best (within our budget) and eventually selected a piece after lots of thinking about how we'd handle getting it back to NZ on the plane. The piece is a modern ceramic female head and torso that I reckon weighs about 10kg. It looks amazing, having being fired 3 times to seal the various glazes and 22kgold in separate firings. I'm only sorry we didn't photograph it before it was well wrapped for it's journey home. The shop keeper and his wife were a little sad to see it go as it was one of their better pieces from this particular artist. We agree.
Not wanting to lug it around the town, we headed back to the boat a couple of hours prior to it's sailing at 5.30pm. I'm writing this while Jan sunbathes.
Today has been hot but on the boat and at sea there is quite a strong breeze which keeps us cool and comfortable. The town seemed to be fairly sheltered and so was really hot in the early afternoon by comparison.
We will have to dine on board tonight since we will be at sea at dinner time. Rather a stuffy, formal affair where you get seated at large tables at one of two "sittings" in the restaurant and have to dress up for the ocassion - in other words, not really us either! The food on board hasn't been that great so we have been dining in local spots on shore which is generally a better choice and it feels more like we're experiencing their culture and cuisine.
When we got back on board there was a bill on Doug's bed which included "gratuity" of 64 Euros being 8 Euros per day per head for cabin and restaurant staff. Of course my reaction was not good because we feel their service has been dismissive and uncaring, in other words "shite". The accompanying letter of explanation invited us to visit reception prior to tonight to make any changes to the gratuity as it would be billed to our credit card tonight (bear in mind we're still a day and a half away from finishing the cruise). So, after some huffing and puffing by Doug we talked it over. We'd only dined once in their restaurant and were "escorted" abrubtly to our table - one that suited them, not us, and they served us luke warm coffee and cold toast - horrible - both remaining untouched at the end of our meal. Our beds weren't made properly and yesterday when I enquired of the bar staff what kinds of beer they had was told "tap beer from Germany" yet I've seen a number of others drinking different brands of bottled beer. Their tap beer was pretty ordinary - I've had better tap beer in most small restaurants on the islands so the cruise ship should be able to do better. Also they serve it in plastic cups - yuk. Enough complaining - suffice to say, we've loved the on-shore experiences and the cruise has been a method to get around, and a place to [try to] sleep at night. I don't think cruising on a ship and being over-organised by others is really us and a few others we've spoken to feel similarly.
Photos...