Work and fun in Rhodes, Greece

I recently went on duty travel to Rhodes, Greece to attend the 12th International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology. (I know, poor me.) This conference was held in a resort/conference centre, a strange combination. It meant us geeks were walking around with bags and notes while most others were in beachwear and flip flops. It was a strange conference for another reason: the high number of no-shows. Not only were many posters missing, a number of presenters were too, even a session chair once! I get that this is a vacation site, and it is tempting to ditch everything and go to the beach, but at least show up for the few hours you need to present something! Do like the rest of us: go to the beach during lunch break. :-)

Funny, the first person I met and talked to (and vice versa) at the conference was a Canadian from the Saskatoon, working at the CLS and U of S! On the last evening of the conference, we had a “gala dinner”. It was really nice: we were set up on fancy tables around one of the pools, there was a really good buffet and we even had a DJ. The slightly strange thing is that the evening turned into a dance club scene (never saw that at a conference before). It was loud enough and had good enough music that other resort guests (the all-inclusive ones) kept coming to the edges of our party to look; they wanted to join us but didn’t quite dare.

The resort itself was...ok. My concept of resorts is based on those in Dominican Republic, etc., which cater to the demanding North Americans. This place was all right, clean and not too run down, but not state of the art either. There was no wifi in rooms, only cable internet (for a price, and not in all rooms, through thankfully I did have it). The room style was a combination 1970s and your cheap spare bedroom. And the food! I was hoping to indulge in delicious Greek food for days, but was faced instead with an insipid and very limited buffet. The only other option in the resort was a pool-side restaurant, and that wasn't open in the evening.

But the pools were nice, and the beach was right there. It was perfect beach weather too, hot and sunny but with a nice strong wind to keep things tolerable. I tried to go for a bit every day. The only downside was that while the beach itself was nice sand, the edge of the water and quite a bit into the water was lined with big rounded stones. This made it quite difficult and ungainly to get in and out of the sea. Unfortunately, it was also really hard on my poor healing toe.

I spent an afternoon exploring the medieval city of Rhodes. It’s quite charming, and is of course full of stores and restaurants. Finally, good Greek food! Two highlights were the Palace of the grand master, and the harbour. Unfortunately, some of the streets were made of a kind of cobblestone, except it was rounded beach stones that were used. Again, my toe objected strongly. But I had to get back to the conference, so I didn’t feel bad cutting the visit short.

Sunday was my play day. While walking along the harbour a few days before, I had noticed a few signs advertising beach tours and tours to Lindos, a cute village, with its claim to fame being an acropolis on a hill. So I got to the harbour around 08:30 to decide which tour to do. I found the perfect one: a smaller and better quality boat than the others. It is usually booked solid days in advance, but there had been a taxi strike on Saturday, and many people didn’t know it was over so there were many no-shows. Good news: there was place for me. Bad news: there ended up being so many no-shows that they cancelled the trip. Poo. So I took a spot on one of the more generic boats instead.

I opted for the Lindos tour, which turned out to be a good thing: the beaches were OK, but nothing to write home about. A nice 2.5 hour cruise along the shore, and we arrived in Lindos. I walked up to the village, wandered around for a while and had a rooftop lunch.

Then I started back down to meet the boat. Problem: my toe objected to so much downhill. Solution: Lindos taxis, i.e. donkeys!! I did the touristy thing and had a donkey ride down to the beach-harbour. Kind of fun, actually.

Overall, Lindos was lovely, but HOT! I noticed a huge difference between the west and east coasts of the island. The west coast, where my hotel was, had strong winds, making the water quite wavy at the beach but also keeping things relatively cool (as in, you could actually stand to lie in the sun in this Grecian heat wave). The east coast, however, had no wind whatsoever. Perfect weather to bake humans in! Even walking in the shade in Lindos, I kept going into stores just to get a bit of air conditioning and not overheat.

On the way back to Rhodes, I napped for a while, and then we all enjoyed the antics of a 14-month old boy wanting to touch EVERYTHING. We also stopped mid-way for a deep-water swim. When I got back in town, I took a cab back to the hotel, packed my bags and fell into bed by 9 PM. Not exactly party girl, but you know that’s not my style (plus I was exhausted from the heat).

Monday morning, I was to go to the airport early, which was a good thing because once again, taxi strike. Thankfully, the buses were running but were clogged with people heading to the airport.

Comic relief:

A dress made out of cut up and woven pop cans!

Who buys this stuff?