We had arranged to hire a car for two days, after the driving display on the way in I figured that if there were no rules, why the hell not! So we met with one of Marianne’s friends who rents cars and were quickly sorted out with a chevy (which we then later saw a daewoo version of the same car with the same name) little sporty number with a sun roof.

Given the reckless abandon for rules, we decided to splurge for the 8 Euros extra a day for full insurance (I figured that accident chances were high). We were given a list of things to do;

East coast!
Kallithea
Fertility Temple
Acropolis of Rhodes
Ceramics

Kallithea was pretty cool, there was a wedding being setup there so it was all done up and it was pretty fancy looking. There was a beach attached to it so there was a heap of people swimming around.

We then proceeded to climb up onto a rocky outcrop and take a bunch of cool shots of the sea.

At this point we headed off to the fertility temple.

The story that went along with this temple was that in the olden days women who tried everything and couldn’t get pregnant would crawl on their knees up to this temple and light a candle. In modern times this still happens however they have built a road up there so you don’t need to worry about the climb. If you felt pregnant after this you named your child after the temple Tsampika (Ironically this was the name of the rental car salesman).

Yeah right.

So, we made it to the parking lot, and started the climb up the stairs. The stairs were numbered quite conveniently and we could see the top of the climb quite easily from the parking lot. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, almost there, 30, 35 phew we made it. As we both crested the 35th stair the next ledge became visible and so did the forever winding staircase leading off into the cloud layer obscured every bit by tree clusters. At this point there was a decision to be made. It was “real feel” 96ish, both of us were covered in sweat, Jill vowing to start getting back on the elliptical and me saying that no more cheese was in order. We had climbed this far, how much further could it really be?

278 stairs later and quite a few inclined climbs we made it to the top of this little temple. You could see as far as the horizon in every direction, the land was laid out in a breath taking panoramic  There was surprisingly a large group of people at the top wandering around taking pictures and praying.

A few quick snaps and a water tap that exploded into Jill and we were off again down the mountain to get our car.

This so far as been the definition of punishing.

Off to LIndos to visit the acropolis of Rhodes.

This is a world famous site that housed the temple of Athena and it has been known that small children have been bribed to climb the approach to the acropolis by the sweet lure of ice cream.

Upon arrival we quickly made our own parking spot by parking up in embankment. There was four ways to descend. 1) Your own feet (by this stage, Jill had tossed one of hers out of the window) 2) Donkey ride (we read that they weren’t treated well so we passed on this) 3) Personal taxi (Charging a bargain at 4 euros A PERSON!!!! 4) The bus at 0.50 Euro a trip.

We got on the bus.

It quickly departed with Jill, myself and some other dude to the bottom of the hill.

We decided it would be wise to seek out some food, so we rapidly got lost in the sprawling maze like town trying to find some of the recommended restaurants  At this point we were both eyeing the small children that walked by as possibilities for lunch until we ran into a nice little restaurant called Alex’s. We both stopped and proceeded to climb to the top garden (why is beyond me).

We had a very enjoyable lunch of Sea Bass and stuffed Greek peppers and tomatoes called yemista. After we had both recharged we started back on our journey to the acropolis  We quickly assimilated into the masses making the trip up the side of the mountain. At one shady point Jill and I decided to park it to get our breath when we over heard a very loud English tourist say (I can’t believe this damn place is closed).

That made us a little wary but never the less we continued our trek up the mountain. Upon arrival at the gates to the acropolis we ere greeted with a nice little print out (Acropolis of Rhodes closed due to strike. Why this could not be placed at the bottom is beyond me, and why the donkey guys were still taking people up there is also beyond me.

So disappointed we took a few snaps to say that we had been there and trekked back down the hill.

When we joined the group of people at the base (me with Freddo in hand) something was not quite right. So we waited, taxi’s came and went with loads of 4 euro each paying customers and still no bus.

So after about 30 minutes, we gave up and started the long ascent onto the cliff road to reunite with our little blue magical soft roof car. As we reached the top, the bus was no where to be seen, I guess he just had enough and called it a day.

We drove back empty heart-ed that we missed out on the acropolis.

We stopped at a small town on the way back which was known for their ceramics, however we didn’t stay took long after we were shocked by the price of some of the ceramics.

Dinner was had this evening at the “Orange Chair place” which was across the street from Ta Kiponya that we dined at the first night. It was good, and very inexpensive. The orange chair place was different, the meals were more a collection of smaller dishes. We had octopus, grilled pork (that Jill was so happy about she shoot half of it onto the floor for the stray cats to eat (which only took about 30 minutes for one to figure out that there was some discarded food available for consumption).)

It was good and we were provided some lovely panacotta desert which was AWESOME.