Monday, May 26, 2014
The alarm did went off this morning (I made sure it will by setting two alarms 15 minutes apart the night before)! Today was our last day in Rhodes so have to make sure we visit Lindos and we did 🙂 We got up at 7 and we reached the town before 8 am. The bus station to Lindos is operated under a different company than the one we took to get us from airport – hotel – Rhodes Town. The bus station is called the East Side Bus Terminal. From the bus station that we got off, on the same street, we turned so that Alpha Bank is on our right hand and walk toward the front of the street; that is where the East Side Bus Terminal is located.
The next bus is at 9 am, I heard that the Acropolis of Lindos opens at 8 am but that would mean to take the 6:15 or 6:45 bus…too early to get up!
Since we had one hour to spare, we walked to the urgg yes the Sea Gates again LOL! It was probably our 4th time there but each time we got different photos 🙂
Morning walk around the Rhodes harbor – peaceful, a great way to start my day!
After some nice photos, we went back to the bus station hoping to get some breakfast so we could proceed directly to walk up the Acropolis once we reached Lindos. Instead of the tourist trap places in the middle of the Old Town, right next to the bus station are local fast food….breakfast: 6 euros compared to 20 euros!!
The ride felt so long..I think it was around 1 hour to get to Lindos. We passed by many smaller villages and many unfinished homes – with only the frame. The bus stopped by a few stations and every station it approached, I looked out to see if I can see the Acropolis. After few winding turns, I finally can see the Acropolis!!! We got off the stop and followed the crowd to walk down to Lindos town. The walk wasn’t bad at all but walking up…we decided to take the local bus! The advantage of walking down was that there were some spots for photos like this one where you could only see the white houses on the bottom of the Acropolis.
Once we got into the town, we stopped by the visitor’s center and grabbed a free map. The streets have signs pointing to the Acropolis, you can either walk up or ride the donkey up but those poor donkey I would rather walk! There are also two paths, one that the donkeys take; we were about to follow the donkeys but a very nice old guy pointed us the other way, he said it’s faster! Actually, the walk up wasn’t bad at all, make sure you bought a bottle of water before the hike…you’ll need it!
Mid-way up, we stopped to have a drink and took some pictures of the beautiful town:
Ladies selling cloths:
We made it up, it was so much easier and faster than I thought! On the top of the Acropolis, I saw the beach with crystal clear water bay! Love the shade of blues and turquoise!
The Acropolis is built on the top of the hill as like the other acropolis.
The admission is 6 euros per person. One more stairway to go!
Here it is…the Acropolis of Lindos!
To be honest, the scenery up here is more interesting than the Acropolis itself….the remains are actually reconstructions.
I especially like the view of St. Paul’s Bay from the Acropolis, incredible!
Cactus like plants?
Reconstructions….
Another photo of St. Paul’s Bay (not the last one)!
It was only 11 when we got up here and it was steamy hot with. I found some shade and dodge right in there to rest then ran out for some photos and ran back to avoid getting sunburns!
This was my favorite photo of St Paul’s Bay with the columns in the Acropolis…a mixture of nature and human creation 🙂
Me…for a few seconds haha!
We were done with photographing the landscape from the Acropolis and headed down, stairway going down:
In no time, we reached the bottom to the town where streets filled with shops!
The souvenirs here are a little bit more expensive than Rhodes Town but there are some cute shops like this one:
My stomach was complaining and without any particular restaurant planned, we saw a Tripadvisor sticker in front of this restaurant named Dionysos. Can’t go wrong with the Tripadvisor recommended! One thing special about Lindos is that there is a lot of roof garden restaurants! We walked to the third floor for a table with the view of the town and the Acropolis!
From our table, we could see another other roof garden restaurants…it was pretty amazing the way they designed them! Just by looking at the photo, I could feel a sense of relaxation, what a great place to have lunch don’t you think?
The opposite side of the views of the roof gardens is the….Acropolis!
We ordered the steam mussels, they perfectly cooked it, the wine sauce was very good, it was one of the best mussels we had in our Greece trip!
Hubby ordered the seafood spaghetti (this time it was him who ordered it, not me). The dish was huge and we both loved it! The sauce was not the creamy kind but filled with seafood flavors – delicious! The seafood spaghetti I had previous days were light seafood taste compared to this one. I gave this one a 4.5 stars, the best I had in this trip!
On the other hand, I ordered the chicken gyros plate. The pita bread was so soft and chewy…really like it. The chicken is juicy but a little more flavoring would be better.
The cost of our lunch in a lovely setting: 34.5 euros with a Fanta and mineral water. Greece was really inexpensive compared to my previous trips to Italy and France!
A church in the middle of town:
Colorful scarves hanging on the wall of the street:
Cute little bell and beautiful gate:
We checked out the souvenir shops in town and decided to catch the next bus to leave -3:30 pm. We watched to the entrance of the town and there we took the local bus up to the main bus station, it was 50 cents euro per person. I heard that once it was free and it suggested a donation but hardly people ever donate so now they made it mandatory to pay the 50 cents fee. It was totally worth the 50 cents than to walk all the way up in a hot sunny day without shade!!!
The bus heading back to Rhodes is on the opposite side of the convenient stores which means no where to sit and no shade! We waited under the shade on the other side and walked across when 10 minutes before the bus depart. Once we got on the bus, thankfully we sat on the right side, and the bus driver made a note of the nice view. OMG!!! I quickly took out my camera and snapped a few photos inside the bus!!! For those of you who will be visiting, you can walk up the road from the bus station, there’s a viewing spot there to get the best view of the coast, the Acropolis, and Lindos town underneath!! Once you get off the bus station, face yourself to Lindos, and walk left. Within minutes, you can have a view like this that I took inside the bus while it was driving!!!
The one hour ride back, I was so tired from walking that I felt asleep!!! It felt 2x as long to go back LOL! We arrived back to town again and walked to the Old Town. We sat down in one of the cafe in Sokratous, another tourist trap!!! It was like 6 euros for a Fanta!!!! I regretted it…should bought a cup of gelato and sat under some shade! Anyways, we did our last shopping and then headed for an early dinner at Fainos. It was Tripadvisor recommended but we were disappointed 🙁
We ordered the shrimp saganaki, a local Greek dish, shrimp cooked in tomato sauce with feta cheese. It was okay…
We had the grilled meat for 2…it was more than enough to feed 4 people! The food quality was good but some meat were overcooked. Perhaps we had high expectation for grilled meat after we had a most memorable dish in Madrid last year – all their meat were grilled to perfection especially the chicken. The chicken here were a little bit overcooked!
Dinner cost: 46.2 euros….we are not complaining though!
We went back to the hotel after our dinner, first thing off to the 7th floor to check our emails and connect with our family to let the know we will be heading to Mykonos tomorrow! The piano at night with all the lights lit up and the pool on the back!
Goodbye Rhodes! We did enjoyed our 3 full days in Rhodes, if we stayed longer, we would do a few more day trips to the near by islands and Turkey! Rhodes was our first stop of our 2 weeks Greece trip and it did not disappoint 🙂 The most surprising was Symi – it was truly a hidden gem that I highly recommend to everyone! The most memorable about Lindos was their roof garden restaurants. Lunch under the white canopies on top of the roof garden with the view of the white houses underneath was a total relaxation! Last tips: we went there end of May and the sun was already hot so bring a lot of sunscreen and constantly re-applying it!!!
