Rhodes Town (Part 1) Sailing there and first impressions

Splendido left Lindos on 20 August to go to Rhodes Town so that they could get their alternator fixed, their guests up to the airport, and explore the town. However, we felt that Lindos was such a nice anchorage that we would stay there and get the bus up to Rhodes Town to do the tourist bit. Our plan was that, after a busy day of sightseeing, we’d be able to relax back on board BV and swim in the clear waters of the bay.

That plan, however, all changed late afternoon on 20 August. A Cypriot yacht turned up, dropped their anchor forward and right of ours and then let out their chain in a wide arc reversing up to our left hand side. With one line run ashore and lots of slack in their chain, the expected change in wind would surely cause our 2 yachts to bump into each other at some stage. Nicky politely pointed this out (as well as the fact that their chain was around a rock) which prompted the chap to pull in a few metres of chain; that merely brought our yachts closer together. In protest, Nicky put out every fender that we have on the port side and we reconsidered our plan. Ultimately, neither of us was happy to leave BV in that situation for a long day out visiting Rhodes Town so we concluded that we too would leave Lindos and head up to the Rhodes Marina.

Anthony Quinn Bay   

We left Lindos early at 0630hrs on 21August and motored most of the way north towards Rhodes Town. Three quarters of the way up the coastline we passed Anthony Quinn Bay where the 1960s film of ‘The Guns of Navarone’ was shot. The Navarone series of Alistair MacLean books is now on the reading list!

Rhodes Marina   

Our slight fears that there may not be space for us in the marina at Rhodes were completely unfounded; the marina was half empty and we ended up mooring on a finger pontoon almost pointing at Splendido. The marina is still under construction but they still charged marina prices despite the lack of facilities. It will be a very expensive place to stop when they stop applying the ‘under construction’ 25% discount to the mooring fees. However, most important for us was that it provided a secure place to leave BV whilst we explored Rhodes Town.

Limin Emborikos   

Splendido seemed all locked up when we went to say hello so we continued on our way, walking the 20 minutes into town. We went past the commercial harbour aiming for the walled city so that we could take a look at our mooring back-up locations should there have been no room in the marina. Limin Emborikos was a non-starter because it seems to be reserved for large yachts.

Anchorage on the outside of Limin Mandraki   

A bit further on is Mandráki harbour where, apparently, spaces are fiercely guarded by the charter companies based there. However, on the outside of the eastern Mandráki seawall there is an anchorage. We saw 4 yachts anchored there and it seemed to be surprisingly sheltered despite being completely open to the east; one to remember for next time, though you need to tuck in close to the shore to keep the channel into Limin Emborikos clear for cruise ships and their tugs.

Marine Gate   

On our meanderings it was difficult not to be blown away by the town’s impressive walls. The castellated skyline with churches and mosque minarets poking above highlighted that the Rhodes has been fought over for centuries; there was clearly a lot to see and potential a real mix of cultures. When the Italians took control of the island from the Ottomans in 1912, they set about restoring the castle and town. That has left us with, probably, the best preserved medieval fortifications in Greece to explore. The Marine Gate looks just as you’d expect a child to draw a castle entrance and inside the walls there is a wide moat and impressive ramparts. UNESCO has classified the mediaeval walled town, the ramparts and 11 surviving gates as a World Heritage Site.

Mandráki harbour, the site of the Rhodes Colossus

We walked up to Mandráki harbour because we had to see the site of the Colossus of Rhodes. Built to commemorate the great siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Pollioketes in the turmoil following the death of Alexander the Great, the bronze statue of the sun god Apollo Helios was built from 302-290BC. Standing 35 metres high, legend alleges that it straddled the entrance to the harbour pictured above (but it is most likely that it did not). Sadly it fell down in an earthquake in 226BC and the bronze was subsequently sold for scrap in the 7^th century AD.

Néa Agorá, an Italian built covered market   

Next to Mandráki is the Néa Agorá, an Italian built covered market with a central circular stone fish market stand. Behind us was the newer part of Rhodes town but we wanted to look more closely at the walled town.

In the moat looking up at the Palace of the Grand Masters   

Following our noses, we ended up taking a turning which led not into the town, but into the surrounding moat.  Dodging our shadow, a child accordion player (who we wanted to pay to stop him from playing, he was so bad), we worked our way around the moat walk looking up at the impressive walls of the Palace of the Grand Masters as we went. Finding a tunnel and gateway into the town we could hear our shadow start up again in the tunnel; squeeze, wail… just awful, but at least, I guess, he was trying.

Once inside the town walls, finding a nice restaurant for lunch was the priority. A ‘traditional’ Greek restaurant fitted what we were after and we had a nice meal with a couple of beers. The food was more expensive than on other islands but the beer was significantly cheaper; we’d expected both to be hiked for the tourists. And Rhodes very much caters for the tourist, as we found when we looked around a little more. There were shops selling summer clothes, mementos and gifts aplenty as well as some more expensive looking outlets selling a mixture of watches, sunglasses, Turkish carpets and ornaments. Restaurants filled the squares with enthusiastic waiters trying to capture passing trade but we were more taken with some of the smaller, more atmospheric restaurants tucked away in the side streets; perhaps we’d been too hasty when choosing our lunchtime stop.

It was, however, easy to step away from the obvious tourist part of town and wander around the maze like narrow cobbled streets. Here, away for the fast food outlets, designer clothes and memento shops, normal life continues for the locals in the same buildings that it has done for centuries.

Mosque of Ibrahim Pasha (L), Church of St Spyridon (centre bottom)   

Ruled by the Genoese during the late Byzantine era, then 219 years under the Knights of St John who had fled Jerusalem via Cyprus to capture Rhodes in 1309, followed by the Ottomans until 1912, the Italians until 1943, the Germans and, since 1945, the Greeks, the architectural mix was fascinating. Clearly the Knights of St John fortifications and palace dominate but equally interesting were the towered merchant houses, the mosques and the churches which had been converted to mosques, and then back again, after the Ottoman rule. 

Rhodes Town, Greece