One extra day in Greece

Posted on Tuesday, July 12th 2016, 1:10 by Alexandra

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.

So, our flight was delayed by 12 hours yesterday. Instead of being home at 2 pm we came home at 4 am. We were tired, and I couldn’t really sleep tonight, so 10 hours work today was not very fun.

We got picked up at the hotel at 8:30 am, we checked in and waited for takeoff at 11. We got information that it was delayed until 12:30, but at 11, we were told that we had to wait for 12 hours and that we would be driven to a new hotel where we would get a room, lunch and dinner and then driven back to the airport at 9 pm. So our day consisted of a lot of bus rides and waiting. We had lunch at the hotel right when we got there. It was not very good. Then we had to wait until 2pm to check in. Until then, we walked around on the hotel area and looked at the pool area. It was cute, but not many sunbeds. The room was not very nice, definitely not 5 stars. We put our stuff in there, changed into swim wear and then went down to the pool and were actually lucky enough to get two sunbeds. The pool was 3m deep, and that was fun. We read some, played around in the water and just waited for time to pass. At 7 pm dinner was served and it was pretty much the same food as for lunch. The people working there were not very nice and even rude and tried to charge us for drinks when it was supposed to be included. Right after dinner we went down to the beach (this hotel was just a stone throw away from our luxury hotel) to watch the sunset before packing again and leaving for the airport and hoping for the best. The transfer was supposed to come at 9pm, it arrived at 9:45 pm and the plane was supposed to takeoff at 11pm. I was seriously getting comfortable with the idea of spending the night there.

We got to the airport 45 minutes before takeoff, but boarding didn’t start until 11, and because of lots of traffic, we didn’t takeoff until midnight. We landed in Gothenburg at 2:30 am and got home about an hour later and went to bed at 4. I am so tired right now.

It was nice to have one extra day in Greece, but it could have been better if we would have skipped the whole checking in and waiting at the airport when the personnel knew at 8am that this would happen. I will contact my home insurance and hope that I will get something for this. We didn’t have to pay anything extra in Greece, but we did have to pay for taxi since we didn’t get a ride from Jesper’s mom as was planned since she was on a plane to Portugal when we landed.

It was a great trip, still the best I have ever done, even if yesterday was sucky.

Tsambika

Posted on Sunday, July 10th 2016, 1:07 by Alexandra

I had written so much text, and then my computer crashes and this one time, Word doesn’t give me the option to open an unsaved document. Stupid computer!!

I won’t write all that again, but will do a short summary since it is really late and I am tired and have to get up super early tomorrow.

I am bad at doing relaxing vacations, I am tired, so today we spent the whole day at Tsambika where we lay on the beach, reading all day. It was warm, so we spent a lot of time in the water. We snorkeled only once since the water was rougher today than it has been. We found a cave, but didn’t go in because we didn’t want to rip us up when the waves would have pushed us against the sharp rocks.

I finished the last book in I am Number Four Series “United as One” and I feel sad. 7 books and 15 companion books are over. Because of this I decided today to expand my blog and make a travel/book review blog.

We had dinner at a restaurant here at the hotel. Fancy pancy Asian food which was delicious.

Now it is late, so no pictures from yesterday will be posted today, but will be uploaded tomorrow (it takes time to go through lots of photos, especially from a dive).

Goodnight for the last time from Rhodes.

Scuba Diving

Posted on Saturday, July 9th 2016, 0:15 by Alexandra

My 8^th dive ever was in Anthony Quinn Bay here on Rhodes. 50 Euro for everything, all gear rented and a boat dive. Crazy cheap! It was also so warm in the water that a shortie 2.5mm wetsuit was needed. Crazy! Jesper doesn’t have a certification yet so he had to wait at the beach. That was too bad. Until next trip he definitely has to have gotten it. There was not super much to see like it was in San Diego, but it was nice to do it again since it was almost a year ago I did it last time. Good to maintain the skill. We found lots of snorkeling masks, a sunbed table and a sunken boat along ancient Greek vases and stuff and fish. When we took our safety stop, we fed fishes, there were tons of them just centimeters from our faces.

After the dive we drove to Tsambika where we spent a few hours on the right side of the beach. We had sunbeds there and included in the price were two slushees. That was so needed in the heat. The snorkeling was not as good on the right side as on the left, so we will probably spend all of tomorrow (our last day!!) at the left side tomorrow.

We left at 6pm to go to Lindos so we would have time to get to the Akropolis. We followed the trail of donkeys which you could pay to ride one up. We walked, it wasn’t too bad. The acropolis was really cool. Much was restorated, and I hope they will restore more, I am sure it would look incredible. We walked down to the village, which is the cutest village ever. We found the best restaurant and had a really really good dinner there. It was called Stefany’s and was a family-owned restaurant with tables on 3 different roof levels. I loved that restaurant!

The handmade jewelry in Lindos was so cute!

We walked through the village and then drove back to Tsambika where we went for a late night swim. It was 10:30pm, very dark, and star-clear sky. There was a party going on at one side of the beach, but we were at the other side and enjoyed the warm evening under the stars. It was nice!

Now it is super late because of all our shenanigans today, so I will post pictures tomorrow. Here is one from on top of the akropolis though: Lindos Akropolis on Google Maps

Lindos

Posted on Thursday, July 7th 2016, 23:28 by Alexandra

Today was spent in beautiful Lindos on the middle of the island. I have been to St. Pauls Bay before and honestly remember the snorkeling to be better. Maybe it has been exploited since I was there last time, 13 years ago. It is still an incredibly beautiful bay with the akropolis right above it. The nature here on Rhodes are truly amazing! The beach in that bay is the smallest ever, so we just went for a swim and then drove to the big beach on the other side of the acropolis, the main beach of Lindos. I have never been there before, and sure, it was a nice beach with fine sand, and the water was calm, warm and clear, but it was kinda boring, nothing really to do than cool off in the water every now and then and read on land. I guess it was nice with that for half a day. St. Pauls Bay.

We had dinner at a restaurant right next to the beach. We were disappointed, the food was dry and not very good, there were wasps disturbing us through the whole meal and the food took forever. We were planning to go up to the Akropolis after dinner, but apparently it closed at 7pm, and we weren’t done with dinner until after 8. We will come back tomorrow afternoon and also to look around in the city.

Goats crossing the road.

~~The Wifi sucks today for some reason, so the pictures take forever to upload. They will be uploaded in this post as soon as they are all done (tomorrow I am guessing)~~. Here is one 360 picture over St. Pauls Bay for now: St Pauls Bay on Google Maps

Tassos Beach

Posted on Wednesday, July 6th 2016, 22:14 by Alexandra

Today wasn’t as warm as yesterday, but it was very very windy, even on the east coast. Sometimes it was hard to hold the eReader on the “beach”. We spent the whole day at Tassos Beach on the northern part of Kalithea. It was not exactly a beach, but rock plateaus. It was a cool place, the snorkeling wasn’t as good as Anthony Quinn Bay, and the water was a little bit colder because of the wind. It was not cold on land, it was very warm, the wind was warm, but helped a little bit. We still had to cool off in the water now and then though.

There is not much else to write, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Here is a link to a 360 picture I took on the beach: Tassos Beach on Google Maps

In the evening we drove to Old Town again, we had dinner at a very cute little restaurant on a small square. We then walked around for a little bit, but my stomach is hurting a lot tonight so we left pretty early. I took some medicine recently and am hoping that spending some time in the Jacuzzi tub will help.

Typical example of when panorama is not working properly. These two Swedish girls were running around the restaurant after the cats and eventually sat down next to our table to watch one of the cats which we named Simba (she looked like a Lion, and names shouldn’t matter depending on gender – just take our male Cleo(patra) for example). This view greeted us when we came back to the hotel. Turkey in the background.

Butterflies, Epta Piges, snorkeling, and Old Town

Posted on Wednesday, July 6th 2016, 0:31 by Alexandra

Wow, what a day! 17,000 steps AND two snorkeling dives on top of that. I am so exhausted and probably am suffering from some minor sunstroke. We weren’t out in the sun that much today, but still Jesper got more red on his shoulders. It’s unbelievable how strong the sun is here. We didn’t leave the hotel until after 11:30 am after enjoying the delicious breakfast. Our first stop of the day was The Valley of Butterflies. We decided to take Prasonisi another day. It was nice to be under the trees, but it was still very hot and humid, every body part was sweaty. It was not as many butterflies as I expected, but some tree trunks and stones were well-covered in them. There were also crabs running around in the water. At the top of the valley was a monastery and we quickly looked at it and went back down and drove on to the next stop of the day, Epta Piges = Seven Springs. On our way there we drove through a super cute village, Psinthos. I didn’t have time to take pictures, so you should google it if you want to know what it looked like.

Here is also a link to the 360 picture I took at Epta Piges: Epta Piges on Google Maps

Epta Piges is a really cool place in the forest where water runs out of the mountain. There is a very long and small tunnel which we walked through. So as of today, both of us are 7 years younger because when you walk through it that happens. So yeah, I am 18 again, just so you know. We hung out for a bit, had lunch at the nice restaurant there and then drove to the beach. We were so eager to get there! It was extremely hot today!!

We drove on to Anthony Quinn Bay which was the cutest little bay. There was pretty much no room for us on the beach since it was so small and full of sunbeds. So we just left our stuff on a rock and went straight into the water to snorkel around for a bit. I don’t know how long we were in, but we saw some pretty cool stuff. One of the first things we saw was a moray. It was tiny, but was flashing his teeth when I came close. That was really really cool! We saw lots of fish too and some sea cucumbers. It was a nice snorkeling time. Right after we were done, we walked up and over the small ridge to the bay on the other side, Ladiko Bay. We snorkeled there for a bit too, didn’t see too many things there, but there were many bearded fire worms a white tufted worm. We also saw some long and brown sausages, but I have no idea what that was.

I have no idea what this is.

The white tufted worm.

Our last stop was Old Town in Rhodes city. We walked around for a little bit and then we had dinner and walked around some more. It was so hot that we barely could eat. Even if we both were starving. We will probably go back to Old Town tomorrow again, it is big and we didn’t see it all today.

Tsambika

Posted on Tuesday, July 5th 2016, 0:58 by Alexandra

Today was as good as yesterday, and even more. We woke up in the same executive suite, so that was not a dream, good! We then realized that the breakfast buffet was the best ever. We had some troubles getting out of bed this morning so we didn’t pick up the car until 11am when we had reserved it from 10am. But not sleeping more than 2 hours for 35 hours had its toll on us.

I drove us down to Tsambika in our small, red Toyota Aygo. I hate driving it so Jesper will probably drive for the rest of the week. Stupid car. The beach did not look like it did 13 years ago. Now it was full of sunbeds and so many watersports thingies (more than last time) and cafés. We walked to the most right of the beach where no people were. It was also close to the wall so we could see something when we snorkeled. The sand was hot, it was so so so hot! It didn’t just burn, it burned like hell! So we put our towels as close as we could to the water and since it was also very warm in the air, maybe 32 Celsius, so we were probably more in the water than on land. It was impossible to stay on land for a longer time. I am not sure that I will finish the book I am currently reading, we are not really lying down that much, haha!

We did use lots and lots of sunscreen, we put on 50+ at least every other hours, but we still managed to get burned non our backs. It might be because we went snorkeling for 1.5h straight. With aloe vera it should be fine soon.

Here is a link to the 360 picture I took at the monastery over the beach: Tsambika Monastery on Google Maps

Sea cucumbers.

Around 6pm we left the beach and drove up to the monastery above the beach. Of course, the road doesn’t go all the way up, there are 300 stairsteps to the top. It was tough, but the view was worth it!

Here is a 360 degree picture from the top. The monastery at the top.

Then we drove to Kolympia where we had dinner at a very nice fish restaurant right next to the water. We did some shopping in that city as well and then drove back to our fancy hotel suite where the Jacuzzi tub was waiting for us. It was really nice to sit there and relax a bit.

It was such a romatic restaurant. A little too bad we didn’t stay longer because the lanterns weren’t visible when it was still light out.

It is really late now and we have an adventurous day ahead of us tomorrow. The hottest day this week is going to be tomorrow, so we were thinking that it would be best to drive down to Prassonissi where it is really windy, and then spend the afternoon at the Butterfly forest and the Seven Springs and later in the evening, the Old City in Rhodes city. I am thinking that since both the Butterfly forest and Seven Springs is in shadows, it seems like a good idea on the hottest day. The Seven Springs also has ice cold water.

Goodnight!

Atrium Platinum Luxury Resort Hotel and Spa

Posted on Sunday, July 3rd 2016, 20:40 by Alexandra

Our first day on Rhodes is over and even though we didn’t do anything special, it was a really good day. It has been long and we have only slept for about 2 hours since we woke up yesterday, and that was on the plane, so it doesn’t really count. We landed around 10am and everything went so smooth at the airport and with the transfer that we were at our hotel just an hour later. We are staying at Atrium Platinum, and it was the second hotel to be dropped off from the shuttle bus and I think a majority of the people on the bus were jealous when Jesper and I were the only ones who got off. It is a 5 star hotel just south of Rhodes city in Ixia. It is very windy here on the west coast, and that’s why we decided to rent a car for 6 days so we can drive to the east coast. Today we spent the whole day at the pool, which is pretty glamorous so it was a pretty okay day. Since we arrived so early, our room wasn’t ready. We had booked a Junior Suite with ocean view since that was the only room available. But when we went to the reception at 2pm they said we had been upgraded to the Executive Suite. It is the best room on this floor and is so incredible both Jesper and I had a hard time understanding how this was even possible. It is 80 square meters, it has a curved wall in the living room with windows from floor to ceiling outlooking the ocean. The bathroom is incredible with a big shower and a jacuzzi tub. We were too tired to try the jazuzzi tub today, but tomorrow we will try it.

We went down to the pool again and got the best seats because people were leaving just when we arrived. It has been so warm, but with wind, it’s been awesome! I didn’t burn, Jesper got a little. Tomorrow at 10am we will pick up the car and drive down to Tsambika for some relaxing on a sand beach. Jesper is really excited to go snorkeling for the first time in his life.

We had dinner at the first best restaurant here in Ixia tonight, were both super tired, felt the ocean a little bit, and now we are sitting on the balcony and watching the sunset. It is incredible!

We filled up the box with food yesterday, Ramses thought he was in heaven! Ramses was curious about Jesper’s new outfit he tried on yesterday before we left. I think both of them wanted to come with us. It kinda felt like they knew that we were leaving. Cleo washing Ramses. Sure they figt a lot, but they also do this every now and then. This was the view we first encountered when we walked through the door. That whole wall is a big window and the ocean is right there. Amazing! There is a cow out there too, he makes sounds every now and then. The bathroom taken with panorama so it lookes a bit crooked. So pretty! And this is the bedroom. It is ridiculous! The view from the balcony over both the pool area but also the ocean. The center of Ixia/Ialyssos. Not much. Pebblestone/sand beach right beneath the hotel. Not worth it.Pictures aren’t really fair, it was all pink in reality.