[ Sept.2019 ] Every morning during our stay in Rhodes Town in Greece, we had our breakfast at a cafe in the old town.
We went to the same one where there was a red parrot twice, as the man there was very friendly, but on the last day, we walked a little further and found a bakery with the local customers.
We bought two big bread and two cups of cappuccino and it cost €10, which was a half price of the cafe I mentioned.
That is the difference between the tourist price and the local price.
On this last day, we headed for the city wall we had not visited yet.
On the way, close to the Ibrahim Mosque where we had visited the day before, a barber shop was open.
So my husband had his hair cut as usual.
It was very cheap, the haircut was €6 and the shaving was €2.
I suppose this was the real local price.
My husband apparently tried to have some conversations with the barber.
He told my husband “There were more tourists last year. This year, it seems not stable. But it does not matter for my business”.
Also, he said that during the winter, most of the things in the old town were closed and it was very quiet here.
After my husband became neat and tidy, we went and walked on the wall.
The entrance fee for the wall was €2 per person.
The wall was very wide and looked very strong.
Some places were doubled.
It was very different from the wall in Lincoln in England where we visited last year.
According to our guidebook, the circumference is 4 km and during the time of the Knights of St John, each of the 7 ‘Tongues’ was assigned a specific section of the wall to defend in the event of an enemy attack.
There used to be 7 gates on the wall and they strengthened the wall by building towers.
The height of the wall is about 10 metres, so walking on it, we could see the old town from the different point of view.
The outstanding things were the round domes.
The dome of Greek Orthodox churches and the one of mosques were very similar.
That could be the part of the reason why they could convert one from the other easily.
The ordinary residential houses were various, so the look of the town was rather chaotic.
And beyond that, we could see the blue sea.
It was quite hot on the day and we walked on and on under the scorching sun.
And just about the time when we started worrying “do we have to go all the way back to get out?”, we found the staircase to go down and relieved.
According to our map, we walked on the sections of Tongue of Germany, Tongue of Auverne, Tongue of Spain, Tongue of England and Tongue of Provence in this order and climbed down before the section of Tongue of Italy.
After coming down we walked a bit and came out to the Mini Mart we were familiar with, as it seemed that by now we had got some sense of directions even in this labyrinth of the old town.
