Sun 09.Jan.2022
Rhodes, Greece
Mid-winter in the Aegean. We have had a run of intermittently rainy days. When the Sun
breaks through, it can be beautiful indeed, but keep that umbrella handy!
Tonight's pictures are another story. They are all from before the new year.
North of the medieval city, the New Town depends significantly on tourism. Restaurants, cafes,
hotels, souvenir shops, the only kiosk that carries The Economist. The adjacent Old (Medieval) City
is the big tourist attraction, a relic of the crusader knights from the fourteenth to sixteenth
centuries.
South of the Old City, you might call this the Real town. You cannot count on speaking
anything but Greek. The crusaders might as well not have existed. Daily life here just goes on.
Ringing the Old City like a bracelet, this zone was stripped bare in crusader times, so that
besiegers had no cover when they attacked the city. Academic descriptions call this zone the
glacis. Today it is a park. I call it the Wood Between The Worlds (after C. S.
Lewis).
Tonight's wiggle water from Mandraki harbor.
One of Rhodes' abundant freelance cats.
Way too abundant for their own good.
Kind-hearted people do their best to keep all the felines fed and sterilized,
but the numbers are way out of hand.
The Mandraki breakwater is home to medieval windmills, modern international flags, and the
old Fort of St Nikolas - a possible site of the famous ancient Colossus. (Modern souvenir
merch always portrays the Colossus standing astride the harbor entrance - historically very
improbable, if only because he would have dreaded the occasional tall-masted ship.)
Going there.
(Crossing the medieval moat.)
Being there.
Winter light!
The municipal amphitheater in the old town has been closed since before I ever came here, but
the sign and the debris change occasionally.