Rhodes, Ephesus and Patmos

  Rhodes, Greece
Sunday, October 7, 2007

Old Town Rhodes has a medieval feel about it that makes it look much different than the other islands we visited. The Knights of St. John built the walled fortress in 1309 AD and its cobbled streets wander about, being full-fledged bazaars now, narrow alleys a little further on. The dominant feature, other than the actual walls, is the

Palace of the Grand Masters

Palace of the Grand Masters that was the hub of the fortress. The Palace is really quite marvelous with much use of marble in floors, stairs and columns, and wonderful mosaic floor work, most of it stolen from the island of Kos, we are told. The Order of St. John was made up of knights from seven European nationalities and each apparently had its own council chamber in the Palace. It is easy to imagine that they tried to outdo one another in the grandeur of these chambers because each is unique and most are spectacular.

A Chamber, Palace of the Grand Masters

 
We spent much of the day wandering about, stopping to dicker from time to time for things we never bought, eventually reporting back to the ship in time for sailing. That evening was Greek Night in the entertainment lounge and we did our best to get into the spirit of the event, with some success depending on whom you talked to.
 
Somewhere along the line we had signed up for a tour of Ephesus, which was to occur the next afternoon. A bulletin in our cabin, however, advised that the ship would stop in Kusadasi - our departure point for the tour - in the morning rather than afternoon as originally scheduled. This meant arising by 5:45am in order to catch the tour bus at 7:00am, a scheme that was not popular with your correspondent and I lobbied for abandoning the project. I was soundly out-voted, however, and so 7:00am found us, with shouts of "Opah" still ringing in our ears, mounting the bus bound for Ephesus.
 
The bus ride took us through unremarkable countryside and eventually deposited us at the main gate of the Ephesus archeological site. We needn't have rushed to get there, as it turned out, because the Turkish staff personning the gate had not showed up for work just yet so we milled around for half an hour or so waiting for the epiphany to occur.
 
The tour was quite interesting and the ruins are indeed worth seeing but there was a strange lack of coherence to it all. For me, a perfunctory sense pervaded the whole thing. I was in a minority position here again because over half the passengers on the Orient Queen were southern Baptist Americans who had kept to themselves and who wore gaily coloured tee shirts quoting various profundities from the Epistle to the Ephesians.

The Library, Ephesus

These folks were in their glory and Rev. Bob or Rev. Mike or whoever could be seen at every turn leading an assembly in readings as only a southern Baptist can... "and the lord SPAKE unto..."
 
My suspicion was that our tour was being given short shrift because the tour operator had bigger things in store for us and did not want to waste time with antiquities. If you guessed it was SHOPPING you guessed correctly. On the way back to Kusadasi our guide gave us a big song and dance about the importance of rug weaving in Turkish culture and how the Government was trying to preserve this art and boy did they have a deal for us!
 
We exited the bus in front of a large rug emporium and were told to take all our possessions with us because, as the guide put it, "We are no longer bus". Inside, we were ushered to a large room and greeted by our host, who was dressed to the nines in a pinstriped suit, with hair slicked back and looked like the Gordon Gekko character in "Wall Street". He conducted an amusing charade in which he would pretend to spontaneously think up a type and size of rug to show us and one of his minions would scurry off and magically produce the exact item. Included was an interesting demonstration of the signature Turkish "double knot" weaving technique in silk on silk.
 
Then began a flashing of merchandise reminiscent of con artistry at the county fair with rugs being flung in cascades before us. As the grand finale, a 12'x16' masterpiece, silk on silk, was presented. It was truly marvelous and would change its colour as it was rotated to catch the light from different angles. At $47,000 USD we were assured it was a bargain and besides they would pay all shipping, handling and taxes to have it delivered to our home. Unfortunately, I was still trying to fish out my wallet so I could buy some real estate from Niki, so I had to pass; a shame because the loonie was trading at par that day.
 
Our final port of call was the island of Patmos, a short run of 50 miles or so south west of Kusadasi. The main attraction in Patmos is the Monastery of St. John that was founded in 1088 in honour of John the Theologian, author of the "Book of Revelation" and who, it is believed, had his vision of the Apocalypse in a cave up in them thar hills. Fearing that someone would try to sell us another icon we decided not to take the tour of the monastery, electing instead to kick around the port town of Skala. It was Sunday so most of the shops were closed, which was a different kind of revelation.