The Great Rhodes Roadie

Hello friends, Milly here.

I’m currently sitting in the sun of our hostel courtyard in Rhodes city, hanging out until we leave on a ferry to Athens. As I think back about our time on the island, I thought I ought to tell you the story of yesterday’s Rhodes trip.

We had spent two nights in Rhodes already, and the consensus was pretty good. The town centre has a distinct medieval flavour, with the cobbled alleys, empty moats and fortified walls hailing to the Knights of St. John, who transformed this city into a stronghold during the Crusades. The later Ottomon presence also left visible traces throughout the city, in the form of 19th century mosques and baths. And if you look really hard, you might get a hint of Italian influence, from their occupation after 1912.

Rhodes old town

Rhodes also famously commands the port at which the gigantic statue, the Colossus of Rhodes, once stood proud. Despite the Colossus being known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, I felt devastated when it occurred to me that it no longer exists.

We were staying at Stay Hostel for three nights total, which was super social and had great facilities. We spent the first day getting our bearings, eating gyros and swimming, and the second day walking further, eating gyros and swimming. So by the third day, we thought we’d better change it up a bit.

We decided to rent a car for the day and dive around the island. We stopped by at least four or five different agencies to get the best price, the cheapest we found was €30 per day. Great, we thought, between four of us this is actually affordable! We had been lowkey tempted by other places here and in Türkiye that rented out scooters, quad bikes, twizy smart cars and three wheeled motorbikes. But despite this temptation, we decided that we had better be practical and get a car instead.

So we pull up to the salesman and start the process. He was glad to hear that Finn is 23, because here (and in most of Europe apparently) that’s the ‘adult’ age for car rentals. If we were all still 22 it would have instantly added €1000 to our excess. The salesman offered us a very sensible, spacious Kia Picanto for €30.

We spent €50 and drove away in a tiny convertible Fiat 500.

We were roaring with laughter as we all squished into this little two-door go kart. We didn’t have much elbow room but the entire sky stretched above us. Pitbull was playing. In that moment, everything was perfect. We headed counter clockwise, first taking on the windy west coast.

We stopped briefly at Butterfly Valley, a gorgeous looking walk where you can see literally millions of butterflies. Well, most of them are actually Jersey Tiger moths rather than butterflies. They rely on the ecosystem of the valley as their breeding ground and in breeding season millions of them can be seen flitting around this bush laden valley. Unfortunately for us, it was not breeding season. So rather than paying to not see anything, we chose to carry on. In a similar vein, we tried to stop at the archaeological site of Kamiros, but decided against paying the €10 entrance fee. So overall, not off to a great start. But we didn’t care. We had the top down, music pumping, and a warm wind blowing on our faces.

Turns out the third time was the charm. We found a sign to some random ruins and followed an excruciatingly slow VW convertible full of oldies up the hill. We parked up next to them and got chatting with the driver, a true Brexit geezer. He went on and on and on about the good old days on Rhodes. But among all that, we did get a bit of good advice, including to look for these clear bottles of something called ‘Souma’ on the side of the road. We thanked him and explored the ruins with only a handful of other visitors. Though it was a smaller site with no information to speak of, the place was filled with long grass, poppies, and beautiful blue flowers. We even spotted a lizard basking in the sun! The ruins opened up onto sprawling views of the coastline, which was completely untouched and rugged. I stood at the precipice of the castle wall and let the wind whip my hair as I tried to take in the vastness of it.

By this point, we were getting hungry. But on the way to the next town, we laid eyes on the roadside shacks the old geezer told us about. We screeched to a stop and turned in. Turns out, “Souma” is a traditional, unproofed spirit, associated with Rhodes, made from the fermented byproducts of grapes after winemaking. Essentially, it was moonshine in a plastic olive oil bottle. It looked incredibly dodgy, so I f course, Ben had to buy some. I bought a small bottle of Masticha, a sweet aromatic liqueur made from resin of the Mastic tree. I had tried it before when the hostel was doing Masticha spritz night and found it to be super delicious. So much that I asked the bartender to try some on its own, and then make a kind of Masticha mojito. Also delicious.

We finally stopped for lunch when we were two thirds of the way down the west side, in a village that was so small it doesn’t have a name on Google Maps. We were just driving through the village when this iconic lady waved us down, literally. Her job was to wave and smiling at every single car that went past— and wow, she was an expert in her craft. She would stand in front of the restaurant, menu in one hand and her signature wave in the other, her hand opening and closing like a blinking light hypnotically drawing us in.

And at the same time, she hits you with the knowing smile, and maybe a nod, like she understands you, she knows that deep in your soul you crave gyros. And we absolutely did. It was awkwardly long distance, actually, walking from the car to the restaurant siren’s waving embrace. But we were so securely entranced that we walked straight past the other restaurant without even noticing the competing greeter shouting out to us.

The icon herself

Anyway the food was good, though I was surprised to find a confederate flag on the international bunting that lined the store. Check out Finn’s Gyros review for more details.

We made a quick pit stop at the southernmost peninsula, which was hella windy but had lots of windsurfers. Then it was my turn in the front seat, yippee! We drove through the mountains and then through this awfully barren stretch of road which had very to-the-point signs saying “caution: death” which dotted the road shoulder. There were a few strange-looking buildings, and some straggly shrubs, but overall it was suspiciously, limnally, empty. It felt to me like somewhere between Area 51 and the Desert Road. Even though I needed to use the loo, we heeded the caution and pressed on.

The boys then insisted we stop at Fokia Beach, aka Fuck Ya Beach. It turned out to be the best snorkelling we had found in Greece and Türkiye to date. We swam with entire schools of fish, dived down caverns and watched rainbow fish pick at microorganisms on the coral. The water was a stunning teal, the beauty only slightly hindered by the other lady at the beach wandering around naked.

Our final stop on the Rhodes roadie was the town of Lindos. Lindos feels like a postcard someone forgot to send. It’s full of sun-beached alleyways, crumbling stone doorways and cats napping under the shade of grape vines. It’s touristy, sure, but somehow still charming— a juxtaposition of ruins and rooftop bars, donkeys and designer sandals— baked together by the Greek sun. The whole town is set on this hill, tumbling down into a curved turquoise bay. Crowning the town is an ancient acropolis, built by the Greeks, then occupied by the Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders and Ottomans, respectively. We clambered all the way to the top to explore this historical stronghold, but devastatingly couldn’t make it in due to the steep entry prices. Nor could we afford to have dinner here, so we toddled home to our trusty Greek restaurant for yet another gyros.

So that was our little exploration of Rhodes island in our tiny convertible, Sabrina Carpenter. While we could have certainly done the same trip with a slightly cheaper, more practical car, I can confidently say that the amount of joy we got from Sabrina was well worth the extra penny. There’s a fine balance between keeping strictly to budget and having a holiday when traveling— and that’s a line Finn and I are still figuring out.

That’s all from me today.

Singing off,
Milly xx