Thu 04.Oct.2018
Rhodes, Greece
California
Our place in California is next to a regional open space preserve in the hills
east of San Francisco Bay. Sometimes the neighbors wander in.
En Route - Madrid
New this year - there are finally flights from San Francisco to Madrid!
What on Earth took this long? It is still a long sleepless sequence of flights to
reach Rhodes, so I added a night at a hotel near Madrid airport.
The hotel is in the town of Barajas, near the airport,
but separated by a mass of freeway interchanges and airport garages impassable to mortals.
The hotel shuttles are often full - no reservations,
you take your chances every half-hour. The Metro works, but is a bit of a walk
in its own right, and the ticket machines - which actually use rechargeable cards rather
than tickets - are a bit intimidating.
I found un-publicised short cut - a pedestrian bridge straight to the terminals,
from a now-unused parking lot, behind a small sports ground!
Why does Terminal 2 need a pair of bright plastic cows in the waiting area?
Damfino. But there they are!
Rhodes
The "main" square. Google says its name is Hippocrates, but I don't think I've ever
heard it called that, or any other name.
The medieval moat, at the Post of Italy ...
... and at the Post of England.
I have The Hoodoo!. The Friday night I arrived here, it was gloriously warm,
the streets were as alive as day, even at 10:00pm. All the shops were open.
So bingo, the very next day, torrential rain moves in, on and off for the next
two days. Now the sun is back, but the temperatures are 10 degrees F or more
lower. I arrived in the last hours of Summer, and brought Shoulder Season with me.
Even the cruise ships seem to be disgorging fewer people than six nights ago.
One o' them cruise ships, parked in the harbor beyond St Pandeleimonos' Church.
The big cruisers dwarf the medieval town.
Fort St Nicolas, one possible site of the ancient Colossus of Rhodes.
The present-day (since medieval times) fort watches over the entrance to the
ancient harbor.
So here we are, Back To The Island for the Winter.
Ciao!