Rhodes, 2021 - Lindos Revisited

Some twenty-five minutes after waving goodbye to George in Stegna, we caught sight of the dazzling white columns of the acropolis silhouetted against the azure skies and, moments later, behind the cypress trees, the whitewashed, sugar-cube houses clinging to the hillside below, came into view. We'd reached our next destination, Lindos, which has enjoyed the most beautiful setting on Rhodes since the Dorians founded the village 4,000 years ago.

I'd visited on a day trip when I stayed in Faliraki thirty years ago and, ten years later, returned with Jon for a blissful week spent exploring the magical tangle of hidden cobbled alleyways and chilling out in the grand houses of 15th-century sea captains, converted into bars and restaurants. 

Cars are banned from Lindos so we alighted from our taxi on the outskirts of the village. We'd booked our accommodation - a traditional Lindian house, converted into apartments & set within a walled courtyard lined with potted cacti - via Booking.com and, as instructed, phoned Mary, the owner's daughter, who sent someone to guide us there. 

Lindos's alleyways are positively labyrinthine and our lack of direction is legendary! As it was approaching the end of the tourist season, only two of the six rooms in the two-storey building were occupied, our neighbours being an extremely glamorous Swiss-French couple in their late 60s, Ursula and Patrice, and despite a bit of a language barrier, were brilliant company. The first time Patrice set eyes on me he dropped his glasses, exclaimed Oh la la! Vous êtes Joan Baez! They introduced us to Rhodian orange wine and we got them into rum & cola. Santé!

Et merci beaucoup, Patrice! J'adore Joan Baez!

Lindos is the most popular destination on Rhodes and gets absolutely rammed with tourists but, if you're early risers like us, you can have the village more or less to yourselves if you do all your exploring by 10am before the legions of day-trippers and cruise-ship coach parties start arriving and the shops open. Then you can retreat to a cafe for an ice-cold frappe before escaping to the beach.

I do love a doorway!

Just behind our rooms stood the Ancient Theatre of Lindos. Dating to around 400BC, it was used as a venue for major festivals including the worship of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine and ivy, one of our favourite deities) and accommodated an audience of up to two thousand.

Talking of beaches, back in 2001, we avoided the town's tourist-packed Main Beach and chose to spend our days basking on the pebbles of St Paul's Bay, alongside the locals. There was a little jetty where the fishermen would bring in their catch under the watchful eye of the village's cats and a tumbledown shack serving ice-cold beer. How times have changed. In the twenty years since we'd last visited, the beach had been colonised by a posh restaurant who'd added terracing & imported sand and covered every inch of space with sunbeds (costing between £30 and £60 for two, depending on their proximity to the sea). 

Gone were the fisherman and the locals, these days St Paul's Bay is cram-packed with what we call "Instagram Types", cocktail-quaffing, selfie-taking wannabes living out some pop music video fantasy. What with the amplified Europop and production line of brides and grooms filing into the church on the cliffs, we could get away fast enough.

Main Beach was a far better option and a ten-minute stroll downhill from our room (although it felt a lot further on the way back). 

Jon found the captain's hat in one of Lindos's many tourist shops. I'm still amazed that I managed to find the shop selling embroidered blouses that I'd spotted twenty years previously. 

Lunch was served in a beachfront taverna set on the terrace of an elegant 1920s villa with whitewashed walls and wooden shutters. Their modern-day take on a Greek salad was superb, with Feta mousse, capers and tapenade and served with homemade pitta bread seasoned with rosemary and sea salt and we ordered it (and chilled bottles of Fix beer) every day.

When we'd stayed in Lindos before it had been mid-August and the temperature was around 40°C so we'd never had the energy to climb to the Acropolis. This time we were determined to get there and beat the hundreds of tourists so set off early and arrived just as it opened at 8am (and already 32°C), following the cobbled donkey track up to the 116m-high rock.

First walled in the 6th century BC, the clifftop is now enclosed by battlements constructed by the Knights of St John. Once within there's the Temple of Athena Lindia and a 20-columned Hellenistic stoa. 

The views are breathtaking and sharing them with just two other couples made it even better.

Lindos by night is pretty special. After sunset, the day-trippers have departed and the cobbled streets are a lot less frantic. There are several jam-packed Brits abroad bars in the centre of the village but these are easily avoided.

Our favourite hangout (now and 20 years ago) was Socrates Bar, established by the bar manager's grandad in 1975 and frequented by many rock stars, including Pink Floyd, who owned a house in Lindos back in the Seventies.

Occupying a gorgeous 15th-century former sea captain's house, the soundtrack is exclusively rock, the bar staff friendly &  the drinks reasonably priced (Lindos can be very expensive!)

Most restaurants were of the rooftop variety, with spectacular views of the illuminated Acropolis. Dionysos was our favourite place - and, so it seemed, the rest of Lindos, too - both times we ate there we had to book in advance.

Before you ask, there were loads of cats in Lindos, pretty much all of the extremely well-fed variety. There were donkeys, too - employed to carry tourists up to the Acropolis. They appeared to be loved and well cared for but most of the guidebooks don't recommend you avail of their services.

After six nights it was time to pack up our belongings and move on. Poor Lord Jon nearly collapsed dragging our bag up to the cliff face to the bus station on the outskirts of Lindos but had to admit that the views were gorgeous once we got there.

We had one more day (and night) left on Rhodes before we flew back to Birmingham but where would we spend it?

Stay tuned for the final instalment.