Fri 17.Apr.2015
Rhodes, Greece
When you think island, what comes to mind? Tropical,
of course! Well, Rhodes is far from that, but I like what it is.
All these years, and I have just noticed the black vertical streaks under the
drainholes on this bridge across the moat!
These cannon (actually mortar) balls are remains from the
Seige of 1522, when the Ottoman Empire finally expelled
the crusader Knights of St John from Rhodes.
Those must have been butt-kickin' mortars; these stone balls
weigh more than 550 lb each!
Here is what a pool with fountains looks like without any water.
In season, there are curtains of water covering those arches.
Academic writings always refer to the moat of Rhodes as a "ditch", never a
"moat". Apparently they need to keep reminding themselves that it was not filled
with water and/or sea monsters.
Call it a ditch in actual conversation, and you won't be understood.
Everybody calls it the moat, including the official plaques pointing the way to it.
A pair of turistas take photos on the bridge at the D'Amboise Gate, beneath
the Grandmaster's Palace.
The street outside the front entrance to the palace. If you were invited, you
came in this way.
The sign over the entrance says Municipal Aphitheater. I've never
seen it open, or looking used. It is less full of trash than it was
several years ago.
On the Street Where I Live
for the rest of the page.
That is today's vision from a non-tropical, but very historic island.
Still in the Aegean on the
Edge of Europe.
Ciao!