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Month: May 2023
Archaeological Museum, Old Rhodes, 2023
I got confused between the downstairs exhibit of the palace, which was off limits for the evening, and the actual archaeological museum (the Hospitaller hospital, which still looked a lot like the castle, but was on the other side of the Old Town.) My visit was rushed, but the archaeological museum has plenty of atmosphere […]
Hospitaller Palace, Old Rhodes, 2023
Went back to apartment, fell asleep for 4.5 hours, realised that I did not come to Old Rhodes Theme Park to sleep, and quickly frog marched myself through the Hospitaller Palace and the Archaeological Museum (originally the Hospitaller hospital). The Lonely Planet was right that upstairs was not much to write home about, although they […]
Outside Old Rhodes, 2023
The way out of the Old Town is verdant where it isn’t monumental. Delightful walk up to and through D’Amboise gate. Glancing back at D’Amboise Gate, the moat, and the twin towers of the Suleimaniye Mosque and the Clock Tower. (The latter is branded as Mediaeval and Venetian, but its current incarnation dates from 1852.) […]
Old Rhodes at night, 2023
Old Rhodes, 11:40 pm. Mostly quiet, and the odd car is allowed back in, just a few stragglers at restaurants that are otherwise closed. But the off street clubs are still pumping music, and the one open souvlaki joint is waiting for the 1 am rush. The piazza that riotously greeted me with tourists and […]
Old Rhodes, 2023
I don’t think I can do any better than to replicate my account of walking into the Old Town from my Facebook feed. So I’ve been in the Old Town of Rhodes for a couple of hours now. … OMG HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS PLACE BEFORE?! It is a medieval theme park, […]
Olympos, Karpathos, 2023
In lieu of a separate post on Olympos: I’d already written it on Quora. https://www.quora.com/Is-Olympos-Karpathos-in-Greece-an-authentic-village-or-is-it-rather-about-business/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5 Well, four years after proud Olymp-ian Rigopoula gave her answer, https://www.quora.com/Is-Olympos-Karpathos-in-Greece-an-authentic-village-or-is-it-rather-about-business/answer/Rig%C3%B3poula-Tsambounieris-Talarantas I’ve just paid Olympos a visit myself. Olympos is a village cut off from the rest of the island of Karpathos, which itself is somewhat cut off from the […]
Kasos, 2023
Kasos is a sleepy, small place, with fishermen, old timers drinking beer, women running general stores, a couple of elderly Dutch tourists, and a few soldiers. Linguistically very heterogeneous: I did hear one local with a strong accent, as I walked past, drop a delta (ξα(δ)έρφια)—a local feature which make the local name of dolmadhes […]
Karpathos, 2023
I decided to visit Karpathos on my first holiday trip, for fairly trivial reasons. Karpathos is renowned in Greek linguistics for its archaism and its diversity of dialects. I had written a paper on the dialects of the Dodecanese, in which Karpathos had played a starring role (Nicholas, N. 2004a. Η γεωγραφική ιστορία του «ίντα […]
Sitia, 2023
My home town of Sitia is routinely described as a sleepy kind of place, and sleepy it is. Sleepy enough that I couldn’t write about my time there, until after I’d left it behind, three weeks on: its lazy cafes and brandy bars encouraged nothing so much as more brandy and more coffee. A town […]