Patmos coming up

A long one again this time, hope you have some spare time for it!

I have a few hours to kill before getting on the boat to Patmos tonight, and discovered a nice price Internet café. Here’s a proper update on this Greece odyssey so far. I landed on Rhodes on Sunday a week ago, after having been soaked in the Amsterdam rain for nearly a week. The Landjuweel festival and fantastic friends there, made up for all of it though. But weather wise; enough was definitely enough – so I ventured out to Schiphol with my good friend Alex (who was headed back home to Barcelona, after we had been traveling together the last two weeks) to see if they had a cheap ticket to someplace warm that same day. And they did! There was a DutchBird flight about an hour later, for the very reasonable rate of 99 Euro + tax (which was another 11 Euro). So, Alex and I parted somewhere on the way to our respectable gates, and about five hours later, including various airport timewasters – I stepped off the plane in a warm Greek night.

Went off with one of the hawkers that always show up on the airports, because sometimes you end up someplace really good. And I ended up with a nice room for 25 Euro a night including basic breakfast. Happy with that, but thing was though, that this was in Paradisi – a village right next to the airport, so the noise level was well up there on the sad scale. But I was quite tired after having camped out in the Dutch rain the last couple of days during the festival, so sleeping turned out to be no problem at all. The next again day I went into Rhodes Town, to have a look around.

Fell in love with the Old Town right away, and ended up spending most of the day walking around there. They claimed that this was one of the best-preserved medieval fortified towns in the world. Really beautiful it was in any case. After two nights in Paradisi I got on the bus back to Town, and was planning to move to the Youth Hostel in the Old Town. Because that would be only 7 Euro a night, but on the bus I talked to a German woman who sat on the seat next to me, she recommended going up to Samos. I’ve now seen pictures of the beaches up there, and wow – they seem right!

So then I went to the peer to get a ticket to Samos, got it and was told the boat would be about three hours late. So I left my bag there and went back to kill a few hours in the Old Town again. This is a nice place! Went back to the peer well in time for the scheduled time of departure, but off course the boat was yet another two hours late, so I got talking to another Alecz, this time a nice English girl. She was headed to Kos, and we got on really well, so I ended up jumping ship in Kos rather than going to Samos. We found a nice hotel in Kos Town, and got right on emptying 70 Cent Retsina bottles from our friendly neighborhood liquor store. Loads of fun!

The next days we did touristy stuff like going to temples and historic leftovers. Interesting enough though, but I wish I’d known more Greek history before going to those places. Well, maybe next time. After three nights on Kos we went by catamaran to Kalimnos to a beautiful valley called Vathi (which I suspect is just the Greek word for valley). Very Rivendale-like, for people who know what I mean by that. We stayed on with the family who ran a really nice restaurant there, place called Popy’s. Got fresh seafood and relaxed atmosphere. Going to Kos sometime? Make your way to Vathi on Kalimnos. Recommended!

Alecz actually ended up working at this restaurant, so now I’m back on my own again. Going to Patmos tonight at 9:30, then further on to Samos (I guess) in a few days. Then the plan is Naxos and Santorini before heading north again.

Tommy Hermansen