Greece - Land of Culture and Great Big Doors

Day 4, Easter Monday, in Rhodes: With the Easter festivities  winding down, we finally got to see Rhodes at its glorious, touristy best. Suddenly there were throngs of people on the streets, coming in from cruise ships docked at the harbour for the day. While this added great buzz to the city, I felt that the city lost a little bit of its medieval, quiet stone-y charm, that we had experienced the day before. Or, we were just lucky to have had that experience in the first place.

We started the day outside of the walls of the city, primarily to get to a travel agent to arrange our flight/boat back to Athens. But it also gave us a great chance to see the Carcassonne-like structure that made up Rhodes' Old Town.

Photo Credit: Dawn LX

After an hour at the travel agent, we decided that we were going to leave Rhodes later that day, so suddenly we were crushed for time and wanted to see as much as we could in the 7 hours we had left in the city.

First stop inside the gates was the Jewish Quarter, where we visited the Kahal Shalom Synagogue - Greece's oldest synagogue. There was a Synagogue Museum attached to it as well, with fascinating facts about the Jewish Community in Rhodes. The Jewish community in Rhodes flourished during the Ottoman Empire and spoke Ladino, a "Judaeo-Spanish" dialect (according to Wikipedia). It's still spoken today in the Jewish Quarter. We picked up a smattering of Spanish-sounding syllables that confused us greatly (we both speak some level of Spanish). It was an educational outing for us, especially on learning about the deportation of Jews from Rhodes to Auschwitz in 1944. 

Inside the Kahal Shalom Synagogue

The elaborate black and white stone-tiled floor

The Jewish Synagogue Museum

In memory of the 2000 martyrs from the Jewish Community in Rhodes and Cos (island of Kos?) who were executed by the Nazis in concentration camps in Germany from 1944-1945

Artifacts inside the museum
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Stepping out into the bright sunshine, we wandered through the alley-maze, until we found the Hora, or the Muslim Quarter, where Rhodes' Ottoman past is remembered.

Barter under the arches

We loved the idea of this old man sitting and watching the tourists go by. We didn't miss a chance to say "Kalo-mera!" (Good Morning) to him, to which we got a friendly wave and a "Kalo-mera" back. [We apologise for mangling the Greek language - we were but tourists]
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Photo Credit: Dawn LX

The tiny Church or St. Phanourios, dating from the 13th Century
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Colourful lanterns on display - good sign that we were approaching the Hora!

Finally here! - this is the Mosque of Suleyman, built in 1522 to commemorate Ottoman victory over the Knights of St John (to be explained later in this post)

We climbed up this clock tower to get panoramic views of the city.

Views from the top of the clock tower: The earlier-mentioned cruise ships, not too far away

The Mosque of Suleyman, dominating the skyline

Watching the world go by, from up above. 

Dawn also found some knights in shining armour who were strangely, unexplicably, unresponsive to her advances. Ah well, life goes on. 

Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Proof that we made it all the way to the top of the tower
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Throngs of tourists.

Based on this picture, it's hard to figure out if it was a cold day, or a warm day in Rhodes. 

The next stop was the Knights Quarter, named for the Knights of St. John that ruled the city in from the early 14th century to the early 16th century. The Knights of St John evolved from the Knights Hospitalier, a Christian organisation founded in 1023 in Jerusalem to look after the sick and poor pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the First Crusade in 1099, the organisation became a religious and military order charged with the "care and defence of the Holy Land" (source: Wikipedia). When the Muslims later re-gained Jerusalem, the Knights were forced out of Jerusalem and operated out of Rhodes, displacing the Genoese who until then had ruled the island.  They were finally forced out of the island when the Ottomans captured the island of Rhodes in 1522. The Knights finally re-located to Malta.  The present-day St. John's Ambulance Brigade is one of the last vestiges of the Order's mission in caring for the sick. 

[Disclaimer: I am not a scholar of the medieval times, so I apologise for the massive glossing over of details here. Comments and elaborations are welcome in the comments column.] 

In Rhodes, the Knights were divided into seven language groups or "tongues" - England, France, Germany, Italy, Aragone, Auvergne and Provence - and each were in charge of guarding different parts of the city. The grand Avenue of the Knights in Rhodes reflected this, where there were separate "inns" for each language group. 

The imposing Avenue of the Knighs

Massive, ornate doors - note Kindle in left hand, with our guidebook.
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Feeling a little dwarfed.
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

This is the Chapelle Francaise or the Chapel of the Tongue of France (belonging to the French-speaking Knights)

The Inn of Spain (presumably taking over from the Knights from Aragon, a medieval Kingdom within current-day Spain)
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Looking back down the Avenue of the Knights
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

At the top of the street was the Palace of the Grand Masters (the head Knight of the Order, so to speak), originally built in the 14th century. However, the Palace was destroyed in the mid-1800s by an ammunitions explosion, and was rebuilt by the Italians in the early 1900s when they occupied the island. It was intended as a holiday home for King Emmanuel III and later Mussolini. Little surprise then, that the structure closely resembled Italian villas, with mosaics, statues and elaborate furnishings. 

One of my greatest takeaways from Rhodes, was the beauty of the doors. Yes, you read right. I loved the grand archways, the wood grain, the peeling paint that told the stories of wear and tear. I lost myself in thoughts of the hopes, dreams, tears and laughter that these doors had been a part of. Doors are in a way, the first introduction of a household to the world. What does each door say about its occupants? Were the knobs worn smooth with the twisting of a thousand hands? How many layers of paint were peaking out from under the top layer? Are they locked to keep prying tourist-eys out, or open for those inside to observe the tourist flows? The doors of Greece became a recurring theme in my adventures... and you'll see this in the later posts of this blog.  

Departing Rhodes, we hoped on a plane towards Athens again, to start the next part of our journey in "Classical Greece". We did spend one night in the port town of Piraeus, where we were charmed by the night life, if not by the gritty port-town feel of the city.

Arriving at the Piraeus Metro stop (Straight from the airport)

Great restaurant where we stopped for dinner in Piraeus. Check out the lamps which were lampshades and re-purposed plastic jugs!

We were told that they had great seafood in Piraeus - and this lived up to the hype. Yum!
Photo Credit: Dawn LX

Onward to adventuring (and munching) on mainland Greece next! We couldn't wait ... especially because we had cool wheels to look forward to! (see Dawn's blog entry for more details).