Rhodes

Friday, June 13, 2008

Rhodes 

The day started off with a bang, or actually a buzz that was ignored.  When we finally awoke, we had 25 minutes to get ready and check in for our excursion, which was to be an extraordinary beach.  We pulled our hair up, threw on our bathing suits, grabbed a towel, and ran out the door.  We arrived at the check-in theater, just in time to sit down and wait.  We were pretty excited to finally be going to a Greek beach! We went to the bus, climbed aboard and waited for the tour guide to begin the journey.  This never happened; she never said a word, not even a hello.  The bus driver blasted the radio and we all sat in silence the entire way there.  They drove us through all these ghettos, run-down streets, and places that looked down-right sleazy.  The drive, which was supposed to be no more than 25 minutes, was close to an hour.  When we finally arrived, we were expecting this spectacular, high-end beach (Tsambika, in the Aegean Sea).  We were sadly disappointed.  The driver took us to the far end of the parking lot and parked the bus.  This is the point in the trip that the tour guide would give us a few hints, last minutes instructions, and the departure time.  None of this happened; she just got off the bus.  Everyone sat for a moment, not really knowing what to do, and then we figured we were supposed to get off.  As we exited, she just stood by the bus, again saying nothing.  The couple behind me finally asked her what time we needed to return to the bus, had they not asked her, I would not have had a clue, nor anyone else either. As we walked towards the rented lawn chairs, this older man started yelling at Ariel in Greek, as if we could understand what he was saying.  Where was the tour guide…oh yeah, gone, not to be seen for another two hours.  We finally figured out that he wanted us to use certain chairs, all of which were on the far side of his area, 3-4 rows back, and none in the front.  We found a spot and got settled in.    Ariel wanted to take a walk, so off we went, heading down the beach.  As we were walking, three ladies started their walk right in front of us, extremely close to us, and then their spouses closed in on us from the backside.  I couldn’t take the view of their sagging, large behinds, so we stopped and walked very slowly, hoping it would put some distance between us.  Every time we slowed down, the men behind us would too.  It was kind of freaky.  We got to the end of the stretch of beach, turned around, and headed back-thank goodness they all stayed there so we would not have to continue viewing their backsides.   Since we had rushed out to meet the tour guide this morning, we didn’t eat breakfast and were starving.  We started checking out the various “cabanas” for food selections.  The one we were supposed to be using had NO FOOD!  We went to the one next door, ordered, and wait 30 minutes for them to make it.  I swear they must have had to go to the store to buy the ingredients!  The food was OK, nothing great. We finished eating and went to get in the water.  It took quite some time since it was freezing!  Until you got knee-deep in the water, the bottom was all shells, then it was soft sand.  We stayed in the water for a while, until Ariel claimed to see a jellyfish.  We laid on the rented lawn chairs for a little bit when the majority of the people on our tour started packing up.  We had another 30 minutes before departure so I couldn’t figure out why everyone was leaving already.  We packed up too.  When we got to the bus, someone took our seats, typical of the rudeness we have experienced on this trip.  I dropped our backpack on another set of seats and headed to the bathroom.  The line was fairly long and not moving; probably because the girl in the ONLY bathroom decided to change out of her bathing suit rather than just putting her clothes over like everyone else.  I was getting a tad irritated, there were no men around, so I went into the men’s room-who cares, it was adjacent to the women’s room and there was only one.  I was in and out faster than the girl who was dressing.  When I came out, a woman asked if it was OK to use the men’s room, my reply was I wasn’t going to wait and didn’t care. 

We climbed back into the bus, sat in our seats, and sat waiting, and waiting, and waiting.  There was one person missing from our bus and three from the other bus.  Guess who that was, no, not the tour guide, but the ship’s photographer and his new little pack of girls, whom he had video-taped and took pictures of all day.  He was supposed to be filming all the cruise passengers, which did not happen.  He made us wait for him for an additional 15 minutes, which really pissed me off!   We eventually proceeded to go back to the ship, with the tour guide and bus driver talking to one another the entire time.  Again, no information on the island, the people, traditions, important facts, places to see, tips on purchasing, or the like.  Again, through the worst parts of town, ghettos, dirty, and disgusting areas.  The whole way back we couldn’t figure out why the cruise line would choose this island since it was so ugly, dirty, and financially poor, from what we saw on our tour.   By the time we got back, both Ariel and I were no happy campers.  We were not even going to go into town we were so angry.  We rounded to corner to go to the dock when we saw many, many people walking back from the town, and noticed the walls and castle in the background.  We decided to at least go look at the town, just to say we did. After dropping the beach bags in the room, we headed out. We rounded the corner to the town and saw a beautiful beach, which really made us even more angry, since we were told that there were no beaches close to the ship.  We went under the archway, entering the town, and were mesmerized with its beauty and charm.  We strolled through the little shops, picking up purchases along the way.  We ended up seeing all the sites on our own, which did make us feel better.  This part of Rhodes was very nice, we enjoyed this part very much. I wrote a very pointed letter to the cruise line tour director telling him how horrible this particular tour was and that I was NOT going to pay for it.  At the time of writing this, we had not heard back from the manager. The evening performances included a magician, who was OK; and the ship’s comedian.  I had seen him previously, so several of his jokes were old hat for me.  His act ended up being funny, to the point that Auntie and Grandma started laughing so hard they cried. Overall, I would not recommend visiting Rhodes, yeah the shopping was good and the prices were reasonable, but the rest of the island, from what we saw, was awful.