Our holiday on Rhodos is over and I wanted to share some final pictures of our final week there.

On the Wednesday nine days ago, after we had visited Kalithea, we picked up an already roasted chicken from a nearby supermarket, baked some potatoes and made a salad to eat on our hotel room balcony when there suddenly was a loud knock on our door. Mr Esther (finishing dinner preparation) answered the door while I was out on the balcony setting the table, already in pj’s after taking a shower. I heard a cheerful hullabaloo, went inside to see what was going on and came upon a huge surprise: my two brothers who both live in Israel were standing there and grinning! While reading updates in our family chat about our holiday, my younger brother Yo had thought, “why not also pop over to Rhodos for a surprise visit for a few days?”. The flight time from Tel Aviv is only 90 minutes, after all. Yo had wheedled info from my kids on text to find out where exactly we were staying, he shared the plan with my oldest brother Day, and their plan unfolded (booking an Airbnb not far from our hotel). It was an awesome surprise!

My brothers had just eaten, but joined us for our dinner and helped pick the chicken clean. The next few days, during the day, we did what we had planned and they did what they wanted to see. We visited the butterfly valley, for instance (mentioned that in my previous post), while Day and Yo went to sightsee in Rhodos city (something we had already done). In the late afternoons and evenings we all met up for dinner and drinks and catching up and laughter.

Day also rented a quad and went off on his own with that for a day but in the afternoon took my daughter for a ride; the next afternoon it was my son’s turn for a ride as we all headed up to Filerimos monastery together.

The kids, Mr Esther and I had been to Filerimos in our first week and this time Mr Esther and I actually went inside the monastery with Day coming with us…

… while Yo and the kids strolled around the grounds…

Yo and Day had arrived on the Wednesday and left again on Sunday morning. We had another half week of Rhodos left where we mostly explored the less inhabited middle and south part of the island. We stopped by the ruins of a castle, which also gave us beautiful views…

… with later in the afternoon a stop for an hour or two at a beach…

The inland has beautiful hills…

… and on our way back to the hotel one evening we stopped at a restaurant in the hills during sunset for dinner. It was so beautiful to eat there!

The inland / south has also seen its fair share of fires, still visible in the landscape…

We’ve been to a monastery inland which houses the most sacred icon on Rhodos…

… and we’ve been to the south tip of the island, which is a very windy beach with lots of surfers. We didn’t swim there…

… but took a dip on another beach instead on our last full day on Rhodos…

Our last day on the island was this past Wednesday (August 8th). We had to vacate our hotel room at noon, transfer to the airport would be happening at 4 pm. So, we left our suitcases at the hotel and walked the 10 minutes to the beach. No swimming (we had no towels with us, plus sand and salt in hair and on skin are a drag when you still have to fly) but we relaxed by the seaside on beach chairs with this view over the blue blue sea and view to Rhodos across the bay…

The kids loved such a sun and swim drenched holiday and for a change didn’t want to go home! But alas, all good things must end some time and after two and a half weeks we journeyed home again. We arrived at home just before midnight on Wednesday night and now have many new lovely memories to look back on.

Some more to share of beautiful Rhodos, like the ruins of the ancient town of Kamiros…

A lizard we watched for a while…

We saw some old, small, medieval churches with still intact 15th century frescoes (and at one monastery were required to dress modestly, hence long pants and long scarf around my daughter’s waist)…

We’ve tried out a few beaches (also snorkeled)…

We’ve seen pretty sunsets…

We’ve been back to the city of Rhodos…

… and visited the antiquities museum and the grand master’s palace (with mosaics mostly recovered from the island of Kos)…

… we saw a small medieval 10th – 12th century (opinions are divided) church with frescoes…

We went to Kallithea Springs…

We’ve seen scores of butterflies (which apparently technically are moths) in a Butterfly Valley. Camouflaged they are easy to photograph, in flight rather difficult (and that’s when they reveal the red underneath their wings)…

And there are always goats to be seen, even on the road following their farmer driving a truck…

This isn’t the last of it, there are more pictures, but those are still on my camera. Leaves more to share & blog about in time! 😎

We’re having a grand time on our family holiday! It’s evening as I start typing this post on the large balcony of our hotel room. My view as I type is this (click to enlarge) and on the right you see me in a corner of the balcony at my laptop (picture taken a few days ago)…

Not such a bad place to be blogging! It’s been very hot here (not surprisingly), but with daily dips into the pool or into the sea, it has been very doable! We also go sightseeing, but find shadow spots, drink lots of water and just take it easy.

So far, we’ve been to Filerimos monastery (not inside but on the grounds), which is in the nearby hills and gives beautiful views of the stunning surroundings…

We stopped in the village of Archangelos to take a look at the church there…

We’ve been to Rhodos city…

My daughter made a clear statement at one point of what she thought of me taking pictures of her, but couldn’t resist petting a street cat that came to claim her attention and she did want a picture of that…

Speaking of street cats, there are so many here on Rhodos. I’m a cat lover and it’s not always easy to see the miserable ones but we have also seen cats (like the one my daughter petted) that seem quite alright. Here are some of the cats I’ve taken pictures of in several places on Rhodos…

Mr Esther and I have also felt brave, leaving our kids alone at the hotel for a few hours, at the pool…

… while he and I drove to the village of Psynthos…

We had a lovely lunch at a local restaurant (had the best dolmades I have ever tasted in my life there!) and watched the world go by for, oh, I think two hours!

It’s amazing how much can be observed in such a small village over that amount of time! The street cats know exactly where to go to get some food. The red cat stopped by each restaurant on the square and was rewarded at least once, two other cats were rewarded by our neighbours at the table next to us (by the time they came near us, we had finished eating)…

Two boys were having a hell of a lot of fun on a bike…

Deliveries were made, like from this truck that drove through the village with watermelons…

At one point a car parked in front of a neighbouring restaurant, a monk stepped out, walked to the restaurant, talked with the people there, and one of them came to the parked car, opened the boot and started unloading sacks of (I think) potatoes. The monk then proceeded to help set the table at the restaurant for what I presume was the family who owned the place…

There was a group of young men at the restaurant opposite ours who sat there at least as long as we had been sitting at our spot, chatting and playing cards…

… and a little old lady who’d been walking around took some rest in the shade under one of the very old olive trees…

I love people watching!

We also visited the very beautiful (but touristy) town of Lindos…

… and went for a 90 minute ‘cruise’ in a glass bottom boat…

That day was Mr Esther’s and my 19th (!!!! Where has the time gone?) wedding anniversary (and 26,5 years together). The mini cruise took us right by the rocks that were featured in the Gregory Peck movie The Guns of Navarone; these are the rocks where the team had to climb up at the beginning of the movie and the kids took a picture of us there…

We later climbed up to the Lindos Acropolis, which the captain said was older than the Athens Acropolis. Not so much of the original build has been preserved but some of it has been restored. It was very beautiful there, with beautiful views over the Mediterranean…

We also visited an Ostrich farm, which served Ostrich omelet and Ostrich burgers!

My daughter was invited to stand on Ostrich eggs, which are apparently so strong they can take up to 150 kg of weight (I didn’t dare test that theory myself)…

And at the farm, my son was the goat-whisperer. I swear, every goat he petted loved it and leaned into his touch…

We’ve been here for over a week, have swum either in the pool or in the sea pretty much every day, and we’ve already seen quite a lot. It’s a whole different world from where we live, it’s pretty and fascinating and there will be more to come! We have another week and a half to go. 🙂