October 5: Lindos
Today’s walk was meant to start in the neighboring town of Vlicha, go up and around the back of the hills above Lindos, and then complete a loop by walking from Lindos back to Vlicha on the seaside path. I suppose the idea is to give the tourists another full day’s hike, but who wants to arrive home after a long and dusty hike and then keep going to another town, requiring a taxi ride back to the starting point?
Also, at this point, we pretty much had the idea about Rhodian hill paths—and the ones on the east side are so very black and dusty—so we decided just to walk from Vlicha straight to Lindos on the coastal path.
We started by inconveniencing two taxi drivers.
Breakfast at Esel Suites is served to the handful of guests in the tiny courtyard at 9:00. Time not negotiable.
But Trekking Hellas had arranged for a driver to pick us up at 8:00 to transport us to the day’s trailhead. The night before, Chris had called the taxi service and asked to move our pickup to 10:00. The telophone conversation was not promising, and predictably had no effect, because that morning at 8:30 we got a message from Trekking Hellas asking why we hadn’t met our driver. Sigh.
The driver who did collect us in the upper parking lot at 10:00 thought we wanted to go to the airport in Heraklion, a solid hour away. (“Where are your suitcases???”) He was dismayed to discover that he’d canceled another fare for what turned out to be a five-minute transfer down the beach. We hooked him up with a nice gratuity to offset the opportunity cost.
In any case, we finally found ourselves on the beach in Vlicha, with only a short hike up and over a hill to bring us back to Lindos.
Was it easy? Ha! Of course not!
Remember, everywhere in Rhodes is hilly and rocky. And dry, dusty, and hot. We had to climb up and we had to climb back down, negotiating rocks and spiky plants as always.
But we could take out time and fly the drone, and though I didn’t love the touristic ambiance of Lindos, I had to admit it was breathtakingly beautiful. I took more photos here than anywhere else in Rhodes.
We got back to the beach on the north side of Lindos around 1:00.
Chris sat at a taverna while I went swimming. The Lindos beach is a lovely, soft sand much more to my taste than the pebbles that are prevalent in most areas. The water gets deeper very gradually and there were no waves whatsoever. This would be a great beach for little kids.
Greek beaches tend to be “full service”, covered with umbrellas and chaises longues, with waiters who deliver food and drink from the beachfront tavernas.
We grabbed another gelato at Gelo Blu. I highly recommend the combo of strachiatella, pistachio, and fior di latte. Fior di latte is apparently the test of a gelateria’s quality. Made of just cream and sugar, it showcases the purity of the simplest of ingredients and the care taken in freezing the concoction.
We returned to the beach that evening to dine at a seafood taverna, which was much more in the style that we’d come to favor.
