GreEce - Rhodos city (September 2017)

We go to Greece and the island of Rhodes.
​We are staying in a small hotel called Pearl and are located quite centrally in Rhodes town. A tiny room with small bathroom, quite okay if you only are going to sleep there.

We are crazy hungry when we installed ourselves, and the first bite of food will be at a small restaurant near the hotel.

After dinner, we take a walk to see what it looks like and where we're going to meet up with the dive center the next morning. Many alleys and streets, but we finally find down to the harbor. We find "Waterhoppers" that we intend to try this trip. On the way back to the hotel, we realize that there are many streets and quite difficult to find. Lucky you have some modernizes because we realize after a long time that we do not succeed to find our way back to the hotel and have to use our mobile gps to find our way back to the hotel.

Up early and have some hotel breakfast. It's not that big, but it feels nice. We watch a dog walking around the street with his tennis ball. He stops at every hotel breakfast down the street and seems to get something in every place. We look and giggle over his assertiveness and what looks like his daily routine :)

Then we start rolling away with our big dive bag down to the harbor where we are going to meet up with a guy from "Waterhoppers", he will be our guide this trip.
Great to breathe under the surface again in crystal clear waters, but perhaps not so impressive when it comes to sights. It feels pretty dead. We manage to find a couple of comrades down there anyway.

After the dive we went home and changed then out again to see the town and locate a place to have dinner. We scored a high score right away. It became a restaurant called Mama Sophia, which we eat at every night. And for me who thinks the movie "My fat big Greek wedding" is hilarious, and we sat and giggle the whole first night and was then completely sold. The owner of the restaurant was very similar to the father in the film and immediately began to tell us what the word Stefan came from in Greek and a lot of other things, the second evening we were family. With a lot of other tourists also, of course ;) The man (Stavros) who owned the restaurant had start to work in the kitchen as a 9-year-old kid in the family business and run on ever since. The employees work 5 hours, 7 days a week during the season I can only guess how many hours each day he works when he welcome every single customer, buys raw materials and cooks with slow cooking every night 6–12 hours depending on meat.

Then we walk around and look at the inner city. It is stunningly beautiful, with thick walls and idyllic little streets. I have to say, it's the finest city I've ever been in.
Dive day two it's clear water and nice with rock formations.
Good food at "Mama Sophia" again of course :) Klefftiko it was tonight and city walk.
We go to Plimiri and dive on the cargo ship Giannoula K. and are located at about 22 m. Best diving this trip.

We think the city is so nice, so we take a day off to just walk around. It has probably not happened before that we canceled a dive day to just wander around for a whole day.
The next dive day was fascinating when we got to see purple little snails, very difficult to see if you did not look close.

Last evening with dinner at "Mama Sophia" Greek salad, Moussakka, meat plate and then Stavros gave us galaktaboureko. So good!!! I'm really going to miss the food.
My thoughts after the trip is that the city is amazingly beautiful, and you can walk as much as you want and enjoy. Water status, on the other hand, I hope the Greeks do something about it. The water is clear, and you can see far, but the aquatic life is almost completely dead. You keep on crying your eyes out every time you see an octopus hanging out to dry outside a restaurant. These wonderful intelligent animals!

As one of our Greek diving guides said, "The fishermen here don't like life more than they can pick up from the sea". And I'm afraid you can see it!

Second dive day with clear water and nice rock formations.

The littering of the sea and the beaches with plastic were also visible. Hope the Greeks soon come to sans and protect and start to build up the environment again, it is a beautiful place and they have a cool mythology.

Good food at "Mama Sophia" again, of course :) Klefftiko it was tonight and city walk.

We thank you for this time and will miss the food so much!