Greece: Rhodes and Kefalonia

It was wonderful to be back in the ancient town of Rhodos where tall, medieval stone walls cast much-appreciated shade onto the narrow streets below. Where house walls are propped up with stone arches and Dodecanese-style stone paving lines the laneways.

Walking in to find our accommodation, we came across this very hot cat with its legs splayed out over the concrete wall.

We only had one full day in Rhodes and we had quite a few things to do so we did our walk early in the morning then caught up on our shopping list in the afternoon.

Amazingly trimmed trees shaded this square on Socratous Street, one of the main streets.

The Venetians built the amazing walled town that we see today. Out on the port, three windmills remain of the 18 or so that used to be there to grind the grain as it was unloaded from the boats.

The port also contained a very serious cat shelter!

It's believed that the Colossus Of Rhodes once stood at the end of the pier. One of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, the statue of the Greek god Helios was built in 280BC. It was apparently 33 metres high, making it the tallest statue in ancient history. It didn't last long though as it collapsed during an earthquake in 226 BC.

Today, instead of a colossal statue, a colossal boat was berthed in almost the same spot. Megan had the prime location on the pier and, complete with monogrammed carpet to welcome the guests, was built to impress, much as the statue must have been.

The pier was a bit of a showcase - flags and old windmills lined one side and gazillions of dollars worth of fancy yachts lined the other.

Some years ago, John and I accidentally discovered our first Greek orange pie in Rhodes Town. We had been walking and were looking for some breakfast. We found a cafe but it only had pies and portokalopita, a cake made from filo pastry, oranges and syrup. We thought we'd try it. Oh my god - we thought we'd died and gone to heaven! Since then, we've had quite a few more, both good and not so good, so we were keen to see how the original one held up. After a bit of a hunt, we found the same cafe and ordered the pie (it's really a cake). It was fantastic!

I don't think there are many cities in the world with such well-kept old city walls as Rhodes. They seem to run for miles, enclosing the old city. Now, shiploads of tourists wander the streets and souvenir shops have replaced blacksmiths, however the charm is still there. 

An old moat runs around the outside of the walls.

We walked up the Street of the Knights of Rhodes early in the morning and had it all to ourselves! Built in gothic style in the 14th century, this is where the Knights of St John used to live. The Knights were a Christian military order, who took over Rhodes by force then built the city that we see today. They had to then defend it from the Ottomans and pirates.

Different architectural styles along the street reflected the different places the knights came from.

Gorgeous vaulted ceilings.

At the end of the street stood the Palace of the Grand Master, the administrative centre for the knights. Today, it's a museum. We didn't have time to go in though, sadly.

The ruins of the Church of the Virgin Mary are popular but still spectacular.

We caught a taxi to the airport the next morning to fly to Kefalonia. Kefalonia is a new island for us so we were a bit excited! It's also the first one we've stayed on in the Ionian group. The flights went well but we had an issue with the car rental people when we landed and a bit of argy-bargy ensued, putting a dampener on our arrival.

We did get the car though, so we headed out. It became obvious that Kefalonia is a much greener island than many others we've visited. It's also very large and hilly. We headed north and saw some spectacular views on the way.

Far below us we could see our destination, Assos (also spelled Asos). Kefalonia originally had many towns built in the Italianate style, much like the gorgeous colourful buildings of Halki, however in 1953, an earthquake struck. Only two towns survived with most buildings intact and Assos was one of them.

Assos sits on a pretty bay and extends out onto a narrow isthmus. The headland to the left of this pic is topped by a Venetian fort.

Our hotel was perched on the isthmus with fantastic views of the bay. The village was busier than we expected though. This is the view from our room!

It was so pretty at night too.

Talking to the owner of our hotel, we learned that her family saw the land for sale some time after the earthquake. The original building had fallen down. She saw the views the position had and fell in love with it. She had to build the hotel in the style of the old buildings as local laws require this.

There were plenty of old Italianate buildings remaining here, however they weren't as striking as those on Halki. There were lots of ruins too, presumably form the earthquake.

Other buildings were just crumbling gracefully, as so many Greek buildings do.

One exciting thing about this town is that we found a couple of great restaurants that sell food that isn't Greek! At home, we're spoiled for choice. We can choose almost any nationality of food that we want. In Greece, it's hard to find any food that isn't traditional Greek food outside the large cities. We love Greek food but it's easy to tire of the same choices. Hence we got very excited when we found a place that sold fish curry in banana leaf, hazelnut pasta and steak!

The waiter's t-shirts were a bit naughty!

Most cats here don't seem to be desexed. At least four of this group were clearly siblings - and at least one was pregnant.....

Our first walk was the obvious one to do. A paved road leads all the way from the village to the old fort on the peninsula. The path was easy and we had a lovely walk to the top. 

Looking back on Assos from above. I've marked our room with an arrow.

We are often amazed at the stupid poses people make for photos. I'm getting my best Instagram pose on at the entrance to the fort.

There were some gorgeous ruined buildings inside.

There was even a jail built to house prisoners during and after WW2, however it was abandoned after the earthquake of 1953. In a nearby building, bags of cement had also clearly been abandoned. As the bags disintegrated and the cement got wet, they formed concrete pillows!

The south gate. The fort was built in 1593 by the Venetians. They planned to make it into a city but it suffered from a lack of water and locals didn't want to live there. It never became the city that was envisioned for it.

There were many old olive trees inside the fort walls.

The next day we walked out of Asos and up to some villages above us. We just picked a route on our mapping apps and it turned out to be a fabulous walk! I've unimaginatively nicknamed this one The Old Olive Tree Walk as we came across many really ancient olive trees!

The old trunks were split and gnarled. Some were twisted and contorted into interesting shapes.

We've seen a 1,000 year old olive tree in another part of Greece before, and these ones weren't far off that one in size. They would have been here well before the Venetians that built the fort!

From above we could see a superyacht in front of the fort-topped peninsula that we walked up yesterday.

We came across a mob of goats that were a different type to most Greek goats that we've seen. These were larger, had long hair and huge horns.

There were a few reo fences but they had gates we could pass through, thank goodness.

We had mostly been following the old road between the villages but we turned off it to explore another small village, Drapanitika. We then followed what was obviously the old walking path between that village and Vassilikades, our final destination. It was a lovely old, stony path.

I love how they put dates and the owner's initials on houses when they build them. This was built in 1884 for someone whose initials were PF.

There were some stunning oleanders near the villages.

By the time we finished we were dripping with sweat. We had read that it's possible to swim to a hidden beach from Asos so we had to give that a go. It turned out to be a long way but we made it ok.

We explored a cave on the way. Most Greek islands are made of limestone and many caves dot these coasts.

The hidden beach was set strikingly beneath a cliff.

We didn't have it to ourselves though. Two yachts and a superyacht were there. On the beach, the superyacht people had a large shelter set up complete with table, chairs, food and bar!

It was a bit over the top but I guess that's what you get with these boats. John later researched the boat and learned that it's possible to rent it for a mere half a million Aussie dollars a week, plus expenses! We're not sure if that covers the 13 crew as well.

Hanging out with the rich and famous, haha.

We found a couple of these weird stones - they float!

That night we had dinner at the fancy restaurant in town. We got there to find that all the tables were on a deck overlooking the sea in a spectacular location - but they all faced the sun which still had an hour or two to go until it set. We sat there sweltering until at last the sun set. The food was wonderful though.

Continuing on with our mission to do more walking, we worked out a walk through a number of villages on the hills above us. It was wonderful! 

This gorgeous old abandoned building oozed vintage charm.

One village seemed to be full of abandoned houses, presumably due to the 1953 earthquake.

Not your standard graffiti. 

The goats on Kefalonia are so healthy. These ones also thought we were very interesting!

I got friendly with this dude hanging from a tree. We have no idea what he was doing there!

Entering a village lined with oleanders.

It wasn't until after I took this photo that I noticed something in the bottom left corner......

I guess that's putting an abandoned building to use!

Old building and a very green island.

The abandoned buildings were so gorgeous!

This one looked like it was still structurally sound. Anyone tempted to do it up?

Of course, where there are ruins, there are figs, I've now been looking for ripe figs for nearly seven weeks, but it's still too early. Most are just baby ones like these. I can see that we're going to leave Greece before fig season. I'm devastated!

About 10 minutes before we finished our walk, we found a really lovely-looking kafeneion so we thought we'd stop for a drink. 

A lovely lady served us. A few minutes later a car pulled up and a couple got out. They were Australian. We got talking to them. The woman inside heard us talking then told us that her 89 year old grandmother lives in Melbourne. She proceeded to show us some old photos of the town, including this one taken when helicopters brought in food and medicine to the village after the 1953 earthquake.

Returning to our car, we headed to a beach. We had done a bit of research and hoped we found one that wasn't too crowded. Holy Jerusalem Beach (named after the nearby church) was as good as we could have hoped for. One section had umbrellas but most of the beach just had a few scattered people on it.

A string of tiny, rocky islands ran off the point so John and I swam all the way out to the largest island (a fair distance) then worked our way back along the coast. After reading in the Lonely Planet that Kefalonia was "teeming with colourful fish", I had bought a snorkel and mask the previous day. The snorkel leaked but the mask was pretty good. It did me no good though as there weren't many fish to be found.

We found some interesting rock formations though.

Needless to say, we were pretty tired at the end of the day! I was now sleeping much better since I started using earplugs, thank goodness.

As we drove out the next day, we saw a tourist's car parked on a narrow part of the road. Parking is really hard to find in Asos. This place wasn't marked as being a no parking area, but someone had stuck a piece of paper on the window saying, "You can't park here sir" and a long black line was squiggled down the entire side of the car. Glad it wasn't us!

We had an exciting day lined up. We were skipping the walking as we were hiring a boat. It was just one of those little boats that you don't need a licence for.

The boat rental place was at Fiskardo, the other town that wasn't ruined by the earthquake. We arrived early. Fiskardo looked very touristy, even before most places were open for the day. Cafes, restaurants and souvenir shops were jam-packed along the small harbour. John had a coffee while we waited for the boat rental place to open. I looked at the menu and things were very expensive. I nearly fell over though when I saw that they had gyros for about 25 Aussie dollars! They're usually about $8.

The boat shop opened and we stood in the sweltering heat (at 9am!) while we learned about where we could and couldn't go, how to use the anchor, etc. Finally we were on our way. We had only gone about five minutes when John saw a turtle ahead! We later learned that there are six turtles in the area. They are too old to breed. They're about 1.5 metres across! This one stayed on the surface for a while, taking a few breaths before diving down.

We weren't allowed to go more than three nautical miles in any direction, however, that included the island of Ithaca (or Ithaki), which we were keen to visit. 

Ithaca was very hilly and covered in trees.

We didn't want to visit the port, and chose a beach in a nearby cove instead. We expected to have company but we had it all to ourselves - for five minutes anyway!

The water was lovely.

Sitting on the very stony beach. Coincidentally, we visited Ithaca on the same day that "The Odyssey" was released worldwide. (Odysseus came from Ithaca.)

We crossed the straight, returned to the Kefalonia and headed to the furthest beach we were allowed to go to. We then turned around and pulled in at various beaches that took our fancy (which generally meant the ones that didn't have huge boats in them already.)

Some had ruins.

While I snorkelled, John hung out in the boat, not confident that we had the anchor thing under control.

John could see fish from the boat so I had a look. They were hanging around in the shade of our boat. This is the most fish I've ever seen in Greece!

We could have kept the boat for the full day but after half a day we had had enough sun so we pulled back into Fiskardo, which was very pretty from the water.

Just as we finished paying (they don't ask for any pre-payment or to see ID or anything before they hand the boat over to people!) a huge ferry full of day trippers turned up. We quickly raced to a restaurant and ordered a late lunch before everyone else arrived. Over the next half an hour, two more huge ferries arrived. There were tourists everywhere! It was chaos in such a small place. We got out of there as quickly as we could.

We returned to Asos and I had a swim at the beach. After seeing how busy Fiskardo was, I had a new appreciation for the relative peace of Asos. I bobbed in the water looking at the lovely buildings arranged in a panorama around me. High up the hill above me was one of the colourful villages we walked through yesterday. The water was warm and the sun was shining. I do appreciate how incredibly lucky we are to be able to do these trips.

We had time for one last walk the next morning before we had to check out. We returned to the peninsula where the old fort was but this time we walked right around the peninsula and along some of the old walls. It was a really hot day so we didn't overdo it.

We kept to the shady sections where possible.

The ant trails here are pretty serious!

Safety fencing, Greek style.

The walls went on forever! Ok, well about 3kms anyway.

Right near our wonderful room was a tiny beach. I hadn't paid much attention to it before but, as we walked past it at the end of our walk, I realised what a lovely little beach it was. It had shade, clearer water than the main beach and only a few people were there at that time of the morning. I hadn't planned on having another swim but I decided to and it was so lovely!

We were so sad to leave Asos. It really was such a lovely place. I'd love to come back again outside of the peak season one day.

Kalispera.

Eva and Yiannis