Rhodes; Monday, 18 October, 2021

I took advantage of not having much booked to have a nice lie-in. During Sunday there had been a changeover in guests, with large numbers departing and coachloads arriving in the evening. Clearly Sunday-Sunday week or fortnight breaks are the hotels normal stay type. It did mean that most people were new to the breakfast routine, and by the time I headed down at just after 9am, chaos was ensuing.

I was able to grab a quick breakfast – picking over the meagre remains that were left after the new guests had ravaged the buffet – before heading back up to my room to pack and then checkout.

After checking out I headed back down to the open-top tour bus stop, this time to try the Red bus, which turned out to be in a much better state of repair and with a better commentary than the Yellow bus. I took it round on a full circuit before hopping off in the centre of town and hopping on the town train – a land train tour of the city. Though in reality I shouldn’t have bothered as it took pretty much the same route as the hop-on-hop-off buses, without taking a detour past the aquarium or stopping anywhere on the way,

Tour completed I found a nice looking restaurant in the harbour and had a very pleasant lunch before heading over into the Old Town to visit the two free museum that were included in my entry ticket for the Archaeological Museum and Knights Palace. The Decorative Arts Collection is housed in the former armoury and has a number of pieces of pottery, ceramic and fabrics that have been decorated locally. Nearby is the Church of Our Lady in the Castle. This building has been an Orthodox Church, a Catholic Church and a Mosque before being converted back to a church during the Italian occupation.

From the church I had a long wander through the Old Town, stopping off at another Our Lady church, this time Our Lady of the Town. Unlike it’s castle namesake this church hasn’t survived history and is instead some impressive ruins – though you can still make out the shape and structure of the building.

I had a bit more of a wander through the Old Town before heading down into the City Moat where I wandered my way along the 2Km or so path that goes along the bottom of the moat, past several of the very impressive gates, before passing beneath the towers and turrets of the Grand Masters Palace.

The end of the walk drops you out close to the New Market which I had a quick wander through, making it back to the harbourside bus stop for the open-top tour in time to pick up the last bus of the day up over the Acropolis and down to drop my off right outside the hotel.

I grabbed my bag from the luggage store and had about 20 minutes to wait before my transfer back to the airport arrived.

Despite getting to the airport nearly 2.5 hours before departure there was still a long and slow queue at checkin as every persons documents were checked again, and by the time I’d finally cleared security there was only enough time to grab some gifts from the duty free and down a bottle of water before boarding started – although they could have waited a little longer as we all just stood on the ramp for 10 minutes waiting for a bus to turn up to take us to the plane parked on the edge of the air field.

However, to their credit, despite all the time taken to check people in, we left on time with – I’m assuming – everyone on board and headed back to the UK to see if the process on the UK end could be any more chaotic.