Tue 27.Nov.2012
Rhodes, Greece
Your latest dose of day-to-day sights in Rhodes, mostly seen while exercise-walking
around the old city and its immediate surroundings.
The walks are doing their job so far. The scale in the New Town district,
which prints your weight on a paper slip like a cash register receipt, says
that I have lost a bit over three kilos in the six weeks since I began doing this.
It sounds like more if you call it seven pounds.
That is three kilos net, including the half-kilo that I gained at first, before
I got the hang of diet control.
Three weeks ago, the harbor front could be an obstacle course of tourists from
the cruise ships. Now it is a wide open walkway. Even on the rare days when a
ship calls, it produces only light traffic. Most souvenir shops are shuttered
up for the season. My favorite familly-run restaurant has shut down until
February, and the proprietors gone back to their home island of Karpathos
for the holidays.
I finally learned about these tendrils that hang from many of the ficuses
(fici?). They are not some opportunistic aerophyte, they are part of the ficus
itself. Their job is to absorb mointure from the air in an often-dry climate.
Sometimes I choose a walking route through one of the tunnels from
the moat, through the wall and into the city.
From the moat-ward end of the tunnel...
Approaching the city end ...
... we emerge opposite this door.
On little Akousilao Square, just east of home.
Best buddies.
Moon over the moat at the Post of England, the section of defenses maintained
and manned by the English-speaking division of the Knights of St John.
Evolution of the fortifications: left, we see the main body of the city wall.
Right of center is a square tower that originally stood unconnected, outside the wall.
Left of center, you can see newer stone work, connecting the tower to the city.