The Island's capital is Rhodes and probably half of the population on the island live in the city. The Medieval Old Town of Rhodes is now a World Heritage Site and around 6,000 people still live and work in the same buildings in which the Knights of St. John once lived six centuries ago. Lots of us tourists do meander around the Old Town so it does get busy but it is very interesting to see the old buildings and workshops as you wander the really narrow cobbled streets.
The Island of Rhodes has a coastline of around 220 kilometres and the interior is quite mountainous, covered with pine forests and some cypress and is very sparsley inhabited - the highest mountain on Rhodes is Mount Attavyros which rises to 3990 feet. The island almost totally makes it's living from tourism and is one of the Mediterranean's most popular holiday destinations. This means that both the coasts running south out from the city are pretty well covered with ugly hotels and similar buildings - some of the beaches are not too bad but the whole top coastline gets so packed with tourists that it's not very "Greek Island" and our sort of thing.
The area for beaches that we enjoyed the most are found around Reni Bay which is just north of
Lindos - there were some really lovely sandy bays in this part of Rhodes
although the beach at Lindos itself gets quite packed. Whilst on holiday on
Rhodes we
actually stayed at Gennadi - this is quite a small town but there are plenty of
tavernas - however the beaches here are really stoney and not too attractive so
we usually ended up heading north to the Lindos area when we wanted some
sunbathing and swimming.
To find a nice and more Greek part of Rhodes you have to be much further south -
here you can go off exploring the deserted hills and stoney beaches and bays and
probably spot lots of snakes in the process - we particularly enjoyed the area
way down at the bottom Southern tip of the island.
The photos above show the outside walls which completely enclose Rhodes Old Town.
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