Captain Nic from Symi waved us off around 8.30 for an easy trip to Rhodes. We had to add another hour so as to keep inside the Greek Waters line! You can't always just go the shortest route. It pays to do so too as we are often checked out by Coast Guard boats from both Greece. and Turkey despite them being on reasonably friendly terms at the moment. One test of this is "are the ferries running?".

Rhodes Island seems aa bit greener in places than the others and quite a bit cleaner and tidier. The city of Rhodes was the site of the famous ancient wonder the Colossos of Rhodes. There is some dispute as to where it actually was located. Popular fancy is that it straddled the harbour entrance then fell down in an earthquake just 50 years after being built. it stood 35 metres high and took 12 years to build by Cheres of Lindos. The facts rebuking the theory of it straddling the harbour is that when it fell down in the quake the bits and pieces lay around on the land for a few hundred years before (another story here) a Muslim Calif sold it to some Jews to melt down. If they had fallen in the harbour not only would there still be underwater evidence of this but it would have blocked shipping. Another story we were told by a souvenir shop owner was that the legs were hollow and the locals used to hide in them and pour fire onto enemy ships entering the harbour and burn them. This seems unlikely as at the time there were no wars going on that involved Rhodes. In fact the Colossos was to commemorate the withstanding of Rhodes against Demitrius in 302BC.

When we first arrived most of the shops were still closed in the Old Town but opened gradually over the next few days then all of a sudden when the first cruise ship pulled in. the Rhodes Old Town is pedestrianised and one of the best preserved Medieval towns in Europe - all twisty windy streets, some very narrow and hard to walk on cobble stones. Scattered throughout are rather expensive looking boutique hotels behind stone walls - good luck if you arrive to find your accommodation without a map! Shops, bars and cafes everywhere with a mix of junk, authentic wares and overpriced cotton clothing. The New Town has the designer brand stores.

The Knights of St John Castle was rebuilt by Italians during their occupation of the Dodecanese Islands in the 1920s. They went to Kos after an earthquake there destroyed lots of buildings and took away many, many mosaics for the castle. It was used briefly for a seat of government. A gloomy unattractive building we thought, but it did serve the purpose of keeping the Kos mosaics intact. Can you imagine the work of picking up mosaics and relaying them!! nd not just a few small ones either!

We were stern to on the Town Wall of the Mandraki Harbour just a few hundred metres from the Old Town. A great position with an ice cream/waffle stand just a few metres away!

The only down was probably the only nasty Greek we've come across so far being in charge of charging the water usage. He tried to tell us we had used 7 tons in 6 days! We argued it and paid for 2 which was probably excessive. He did a lot of shouting and arm waving in the middle of the walkway. It was all guesswork as they had no metres and the boat next to us had a bad leak on the line that gushed water for days. Oh well……

Off to Lindos now (half way down the south side of the Island) for a bit of anchoring out for a change.