A Medieval Moonlit Night in Lindos

One night in June 1400AD the grand master Jean Bonpar de Lastic arrived in Lindos with his wife, ostensibly to check the progress of maintenance work on the castle. But what he was more concerned about was protecting the island of Kastelorizo from the Egyptian fleet, and he was here to recruit!

On the evening of Sunday, 17 June 2012, the people of Lindos celebrated the knight's visit with street performances, live music, and free wine and ouzo. Most of the townsfolk seemed to be in costume, and a great time was had by all.

The taxi back to Pefkos cost us only €8.

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Pefkos to Lindos

Our last Sunday on the island of Rhodes (17th June 2012) and we didn't have our rental car any more, so we caught the local bus from Pefkos to Lindos. It takes less than 15 minutes.

Lindos Bay

During our previous visit we'd busied ourselves checking out the bars and shops in the narrow streets leading up to the Acropolis, as well as climbing up to the Acropolis itself, so we'd only seen the beaches from on high. They are a delight. The bay of Lindos is well sheltered, as you'll see in this video, and the views are fantastic.

Clean beaches, good food, happy people. What else could you ask for? Oh yeah, lashings of Mythos!

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Lindos Acropolis, 10 June 2012

The Climb

You need to be reasonably fit and steady on your feet to walk up to the acropolis at Lindos. We took a break at every available shaded spot on the way to rehydrate and recuperate. Of course you can get quite far on one of the donkeys – the local taxi service – but do bare in mind that you will be dropped off at the bottom of a steep flight of steps, and there will be more steps to follow.

The views from the path are magnificent. However, there are places where there's nothing between you and an awful long drop except for maybe a bit more path, so you'll enjoy these particular views a lot more if you don't share my fear of heights. Illogical, I know, it's the falling and hitting the rocks below that I should be wary of, but in these situations I stick to the inside of the path to allow braver souls to pass by on the outside.

The Acropolis

The acropolis is well worth the climb. There are not only remains from ancient Greece (including the Doric temple dedicated to Athena Lindia), but also from Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman occupations. The Knights of St John also made their mark, the acropolis having been an important stronghold in medieval times. The building work continues today as various structures are renovated.

I made this short film, a video tour of Lindos acropolis, and the photos above were taken by Genie.

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Pefkos to Lindos

Lindos, to the north of the peninsula, is easily reached using the regular coach service from Pefkos. The journey lasts less than 15 minutes. When you're dropped off outside Lindos, the most notable feature is the magnificent acropolis built into the top of the massive rock around which the town of Lindos was built. Walk downhill for 5 minutes and you reach the main square, with views out to the sea. This is as far as the taxi service can take you. The streets of Lindos were designed with horses in mind, with maybe a small cart. They are narrow and bustling with life. The local taxis take the form of donkeys.

Streets of Lindos

Here's a short video of Genie and I getting lost trying to find our way up to the acropolis, which is actually very well sign-posted but easily missed when you're both viewing the world through a camera. I have much more footage of these streets and will probably be making Streets of Lindos follow-up movies, maybe even including a few donkeys, but I do like this rough-and-ready edit as it gives a good idea of the light and shade in the streets.

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Glasgow to Rhodes

Booking

Genie and I booked our trip to Rhodes online. We'd been to Greece only once before – to Alykes on the island of Zakynthos (Zante) in October 2010, which we'd booked through Thomas Cook. That had been our first ever "package holiday" and was a great success, so we took the same route again and looked at last-minute deals on the Thomas Cook website.

After researching Rhodes online I reckoned we ought to be looking at accommodation about half-way down the east coast: Lindos or Pefkos. The whole of the east coast of Rhodes island is sandy beach broken up occasionally by rocks. My wife and I are in our 50s and the peace and quiet afforded by these more "out of the way" places appealed enormously. We booked for Pefkos, staying at Stella Hotel (self-catering). A good deal, as it turned out.

The Flight

Our flight was from Glasgow International airport on 6th June at 6.45 am. As we live in Dunkeld, Perthshire, we decided to travel by train to Glasgow the evening before and to stay at the Holiday Inn Express, which was inexpensive, comfortable and remarkably quiet – really handy for catching our flight the next morning. It's only a two-minute walk to the "check-in". Supper was bought at the airport's Tesco and eaten in our room watching rubbish TV, which reminded us why we chose to get rid of our telly 20 years ago.

Rhodes

Landed at Rhodes airport mid-afternoon and two hours ahead of UK time. Within 20 minutes we were on an air-conditioned coach to Pefkos, and an hour later, settling in to our apartment at the Stella Hotel.

Stretched our legs and checked out some of the local beaches and restaurants. The sunset was stunning from the beach.