Category: Europe

  • A Greek odyssey – Day 2

    Continued from Day 1

    The agenda for the day was Lindos and the old town part of Rhodes. We had planned a public bus ride for the former, but I was thrilled to see a poster at the reception – that the hotel arranged a bus trip to Lindos for 22 euros per person. The joy was shortlived, since it operated on every day except Saturday! Such terrible luck!  I asked for directions to the bus stand, thankfully it was only 10 minutes away by walk. All of this had happened the previous night. From the time table, we had decided to get on the 9 AM bus. Despite directions, a map, and 20 minutes in hand, we got a little confused with the route. Thankfully, I spotted the bus station and we hopped on just in time after getting tickets. (5 euros per person) As we sat waiting for the bus to start, we saw an elegantly dressed lady talking to the guy at the ticket counter. We thought she might be a regular and wondered why she was commuting on a Saturday. She turned out to be the driver!

    greece3

    The 1 hr 20 mins drive took us through wide roads in town followed by narrow but clean streets in the suburbs, then a countryside complete with goats to finally, an awesome view of Lindos. (you have to walk back a bit for the kind of shot below)

    20140517_102639

    A 10 minute walk took us to the city square. Unlike the feel I got at Trip Advisor, the place has plenty of options for hanging around, shopping and dining. The Lindos version of the acropolis is a little climb away, and a popular means of transport is a donkey! The entry (to the acropolis, not the donkey) costs 6 euros per person and the place, as well as the path leading to it, offers fantastic views. At the Acropolis, there are temples to various gods. We walked down to the beach, 5 minutes from the square. It had some good lunching options (with a view of the Acropolis) but we had already made up our mind on Kalypso. On the way back to the square, we did find the way to Kleoboulos’ tomb, but since Trip Advisor had mentioned a 2 hour walk, we passed.

    greece4 greece5

    The guy at Kalypso was super friendly and when we said we were from India, immediately wanted to know the name of a particular movie. He narrated a typical brothers-lost-reunited 80s story, ending with a googly – a song he claimed was from the film – which turned out to be Aati Kya Khandala! Classified under #WTF. Though he looked genuine, I wondered how many times he had enacted this scene before! The place, and the food was excellent – a fantastic salad, and vine leaves filled with minced meat, washed down with the recommended local beer, and fresh orange juice.

    greece6

    Some amount of shopping later, we got on the 2.30 bus to Rhodes, which was extremely crowded. We both slept all the way. On reaching Rhodes, we walked around the port and Old Town, and in the process of finding the Palace of the Grandmasters, got utterly lost in the maze of lovely cobbled streets! But we did manage to locate two of our intended dinner options – Island Lipsi and Socratous Garden – (check) utterly by accident. We then bought me a fake Puma ‘jacket’ for 10 euros and wandered into another maze – this time complete with castles and musicians. We desperately looked around for a main road, and just as we found it, also found a signpost which announced that we had exited the Grandmasters Palace! Lesson – get internet from home! (I could find no open outlets of Wind Telecom)

    20140517_160617a greece7 greece8

    D corrected my sense of direction in time and thankfully found the way back to Old Town and the bus station – only 2 minutes away, it turned out! Some more shopping and we walked back to the hotel. I had a bad headache and slept off, and ended up skipping dinner in the process!

  • A Greek odyssey – Day 1

    In what was a departure from our standard departure, we turned left on the world map this time. The Meru we hired for the early morning (or late night) flight – at 4.15 – had a neat hat tip – an ad for Santorini, Sobha’s version, that is! The driver was in an #F1 mood and we reached well in time, prompting us to take a little nap. That almost led to us missing the flight, and we just about made it!

    Since we were in the middle column with no window seats nearby, the napping was continued on the first Emirates flight till it landed us four hours and a functional breakfast later in our other homeland – Dubai, which we were visiting for the first time. [no transit visa required, unlike Malaysia!]If not the sheer scale, a metro between two terminals was enough to wow us completely, and convince us even more of what we Malayalis are capable of, when we have Arab money and manpower backing us! 😉

    For all the awesomeness, getting free WiFi, even for half an hour, was a tedious task which I gave up on. The Emirates  flight to Athens was at 10.05 and took us about 4.5 hours. Still stuck in the middle column of seating, nap time was replaced with in-flight movie time. I saw Up & Down, a Malayalam movie first, out of courtesy for where we were at, and then watched American Hustle! We landed at Athens at 2 PM in the afternoon (local time) and immediately faced Athenian Hustle in the form of a luggage trolley that cost 1 Euro! There seemed to be quite a few lottery sellers inside, making the place quite like a bus stand, but I could already imagine why they might be popular!

    We had a long wait for our flight to Rhodes – about 5.5 hours, but between immigration, meeting our tour operator for all the vouchers and free wifi for an hour, time passed by quickly. After much research, I had decided to buy Wind Telecom data cards, but couldn’t find them at the airport. The Cosmote pack cost over 25 euros. I immediately felt a disconnect, and decided not to buy! At some point in time, we got hungry and chose Negroni from the range of options available for a first taste of Alfa beer and some souvlaki, watching flights go by.

    greece1

    The Olympic Air (recently acquired by Aegean) was tiny and reminded me of Air Deccan. The air hostesses wore a very chic uniform though. I also discovered the species who have been reading mutual fund disclaimers on Indian television ads – Greek pilots. And I’m told Malayalam is fast. Some peanuts and Coke and an hour later, we were at the Rhodes airport, located right next to the sea.  This was around the time I discovered that I’d be carrying our luggage and could expect no help from drivers. When I asked for help, they looked at me like I was speaking Greek. Oh wait…

    The drive to our accommodation – Atlantis City Hotel – showed us what seemed a calm, peaceful, idyllic town, with small well populated and commercial stretches. We wondered if we’d have to travel all this way the next day. It took us only 20 minutes to reach the hotel, and we made our way to the room in the tiniest lift I’ve seen. Wifi was available in the reception and dining area. The room itself was small, but functional and neat, with a little balcony overlooking the street. The location was awesome, and we immediately went out in search of the three restaurants we had shortlisted for dinner.

    Agalma, though more difficult to locate, appealed to us more than the higher rated Kerasma and Tamam. (both were within 300m of our hotel, check this list for options) After beckoning us in, they proceeded to ignore us for a while, but were very apologetic when they brought the menu. I asked for a Cider and D chose the house wine. The cider was great and the wine was a little meh. A Giouvetsi got me victory in the second round too as D wasted most of her salad. But in everyone’s defense, she was quite sleepy and the food took a long while getting to the table, accompanied by apologies.

    greece2

    The walk back to the hotel made me realise how utterly unprepared I was in terms of clothing choices. I thought 19-20 C was pleasant, and had an all-summer shorts+ tee sets packed with not a single jacket/sweater or even a pair of denims, and here I was, shivering! My nightmares, understandably, were about freezing to death and becoming history in Greece!