October 8: Island Driving Tour
We started the morning with coffee and yogurt on the patio while I did a last load of laundry. You have to plan these things—clothes do dry quickly in Rhodes, but you still need to budget several hours, and those hours really ought to be under sunlight.
Neither of us really wanted to visit tourist attractions or explore the old town, so we decided to do a driving tour of the island. We headed through the suburbs to the east coast road and aimed south toward Lindos. This is tourism central, and the traffic was irritating until we’d passed Lindos.
But then the road was wide open! South Rhodes is largely undeveloped. There are a few beach establishments and some holiday homes, but generally there’s nothing—no tavernas, no stores.
Chris had been intrigued by the tavernas in Monolithos when we passed through there on our way from Akramitis to Lindos, so we headed there for lunch.
Then it was back north, driving back through the roads we’d traveled in our first days in Rhodes. We were back in Kritika by 2:30.
That evening, we drove back to town to return our rental. We checked out the Old Town, which turned out to be underwhelming. It’s basically Old-Town-Disneyworld, all shops and restaurants set up to cater to huge crowds of tourists. Many of these tourists arrive on cruise ships and spend the day in Rhodes but eat and sleep on board; it makes for dense daytime populations.
