Vacation in Greece, part 2: Rhodes

Dinner overlooking the ocean

Carter trying to get some sleep on the ferry: kneeling on
the floor with his face in the chair!

We left Naxos in the mid-afternoon on an overnight ferry that was scheduled to arrived in the port of Rhodes at 4:50 in the morning. Guest author Haley says: "Haley says it was awesome because she got seven straight hours of electronics!" Despite Haley's feelings about it, this was not great planning on my part. When I was planning this trip I had a lot of trouble getting specific information about transportation in Greece. While thousands and thousands of people ride the ferries every day and many of them have posted reviews in various places, it still was hard to find information about specific routes. The majority of the reviews I read seemed to recommend BlueStar, plus another huge factor in my choice was that BlueStar's website has an interface in English and they allow you to pre-book. So that is who I booked for both our ferry rides.

Sunset from the back of the ferry

In retrospect I definitely should have looked for a different ferry to Rhodes. Arriving at 4:50 in the morning was terrible. Of course we were exhausted from trying to sleep in "Airseats"; they are what they sound like: airplane seats on a boat. But also it turns out (more poor planning on my part) that our hotel was 57 km away from the port. A two hour bus ride with many stops was available, but the buses didn't start running for another hour and a half. Our only choices were to camp out at the port and then try to figure out the bus system, or take a long and expensive taxi ride to Kiotari. I didn't feel that it was safe to hang around the port with the kids, and I wasn't confident in our ability to even find the bus stop, let alone navigate our route to Kiotari with our two big suitcases, so I reluctantly got into one of the cabs that met our ship's arrival. After handing over a ridiculous amount of money to the cab driver, we stepped into our hotel - the Mitsis Rodos Village - around 6 a.m.

A little background about my vacation choice. When we decided to move to Berlin, we had planned to spend every summer in the U.S. We had an amazing trip last summer visiting family and friends, but we were already realizing how quickly our time here would pass. With plans to move back home in the summer of 2017, we decided to maximize our time in Europe by foregoing a trip home this summer and instead traveling within Europe. But rather than tour, tour, tour, I had a grand idea of just planting ourselves in some beautiful spot and spending the summer there. Just reading, relaxing, eating local food, drinking, going for walks, living the life. I even thought we could bring Diablo. Greece seemed a natural choice, since it is lovely and beachy and I have always wanted to visit. After researching things, though, and working on the planning, reality set in. First of all, this was my dream for a vacation, not Dan's, and of course he does get a say in this. Since we weren't going to Montana this summer, he wanted to go hiking in Austria. Summer vacation in Berlin is only about 6 weeks long and we need a little time to get ready to go and a little time to prepare for school after our return, so we're really only talking about a month or so of actual travel time. Split that between two vacations and you have even less time, because you need a little changeover time in between. So that left us with a week of wind-down at the end of the school year, 2 weeks in Greece, one week in between, 10 days in Austria, and another week in Berlin before school starts up again. And besides that, I couldn't get beloved Diablo to the Greek islands without flying him, and I wasn't going to subject him to that at his age.

Now what to do with our two weeks in Greece? Dan could only stay for one, and he wanted an active vacation, not a lazy one. Athens was an obvious choice since we hadn't ever been to Greece, and we wanted to balance it out with an island where we could be active. I talked in my last blog about why I chose Naxos, and what a great choice it was! So there's just one week left. It seemed a little pointless to choose a villa or studio on the beach at this point. That was something I would have done if we were staying several weeks, cooking our own meals, doing our own thing. For just one week we could afford to choose something where I didn't have to cook, clean and do dishes. The kids have never been to an all-inclusive resort, and Dan and I have fond memories of some trips to Club Med in our younger days, where the staff works hard to entertain you with sports and games and there is always something to do. And the kids are always claiming that they aren't given enough input in our vacation planning. So I decided to give them a gift: one week of vacation at a resort. No touring, no agenda, just whatever they want to eat and do, all day long. There are many resorts like this on some of the larger Greek islands; I chose this one in Rhodes without putting a huge amount of thought into it, just finding decent reviews on Booking.com, a reasonable price, and a place we could ferry to from Naxos and fly out of so we didn't have to retrace our steps all the way back to Athens and then to Berlin.

And so, that is how we happened to arrive at the Mitsis Rodos Village Resort in the early hours of the morning. I knew check-in time wasn't until the afternoon but was hoping that maybe we could get in early. I checked in with the night shift at the front desk, who talked to me like I was crazy for arriving at this hour and expecting to check in. I later discovered why; the 2:00 check-in time apparently is just an approximation, when often rooms aren't available until much later in the day, if at all. The man at the desk did say something funny to me - he asked where I was from and I gave him my standard answer: "I'm from the United States but I live in Germany." "The United States!!!" he exclaimed. "I knew I recognized that lovely accent!!" He went on to gush about my accent and my home country and told me that we are only the third family this summer to hail from the U.S. He told us to go take a nap on the couches in the enormous lobby and check back in a few hours.

I awoke around 8:00 to the noise of the cleaning staff moving the furniture around in the lobby, so I went back to the front desk to check in with the morning reception staff. They told me to check back later, so we went to breakfast in the enormous dining hall. It was huge with the sound of hundreds of people clanging dishes. Then back to the front desk. This time the response was different: we have a room ready for you at our sister hotel just two minutes away. Wait, what? That's okay, I told them, I will wait for our room here. With a large lovely smile the woman told me that there was no room here for us, but we could spend the night at their sister hotel and then move back here the next day. How can that be? I have had this reservation for months! Not pleased. They offered me a late checkout and a safe in our room, not apologizing or acknowledging the inconvenience of having to unpack and pack again and wait for checkin again. I told the lady I didn't need either of those things, but if they wanted to give us something meaningful then they could give us free internet during our stay. After checking with her supervisor, she agreed.

Crowded pool at the sister hotel

I will spare you the details of the next 24 hours but they weren't fun. The sister hotel refused to honor our internet deal. The room they had ready for us reeked of smoke and the air conditioner didn't work, so I requested a different one. We waited several hours, at least getting to swim in their pool (not to sit in one of the sun loungers by the pool, though; those were all reserved with towels by 10 a.m.) before they told me another room was ready. But after trekking across the resort to the new room, we discovered that the previous guests hadn't vacated. We waited again in the sweltering lobby before we got to try yet a third room, which finally was acceptable. The dining room was overcrowded and noisy. The pool may as well have been a smoking lounge; there were so many people smoking that you literally could not find a patch of fresh air. I was seriously thinking of just requesting to be let out of our reservation and flying home.

Looking out over the resort

People lined up waiting for a seat at dinner

Crowded bustling dining room 

Goofing after dinner

The next day we killed time until our 12:00 checkout time, which was when we had been told to return to our actual hotel. I don't know why I expected that our room would be ready at the time we had been told to return. It wasn't. We had lunch and then sat around until about 3:30 when Hallelujah, about 34 hours after our arrival, we were led to our room. And finally our stay began to improve. They had upgraded us to a newly renovated room with a small grassy yard and a lovely shade tree in the center. We could see the ocean from our yard. For some reason it took until almost 9:00 that night to get our internet password to us, but eventually we got connected to the world of internet so I could write and the kids could play games, which was important to the "relaxation" component of this vacation. And this hotel was SO much nicer than the other one. Way less crowded, less smoky, nicer room, more pools, prettier landscape, so much better.

Our lovely room for the last week

There is ALWAYS luggage standing in the lobby while
bored hot people wait for their rooms like we did

Love our back porch and our shady yard 

We have had a relaxing week here, so relaxing that it would bore my readers to give you the day by day account. We have participated in some of the activities provided by the club, but have also spent quite a bit of time in our room reading or gaming or writing. It's hot here, hotter than Naxos, and it takes a lot of effort to get in swimsuits and cover ourselves with sunscreen to leave our air-conditioned room!

The kids with Big Tee, the teenager club guy

One reason for choosing this resort was its Kids Club. They have organized activities for kids 4-12 for about 4 hours a day. Unfortunately, the Kids Club is only as fun as the kids who are attending it at any particular time, and they really aren't staffed to do much age differentiation. We have found, at least for this week, that the club is popular with parents of 4 and 5 year-olds, which isn't very good company for Carter and Haley. Haley tried it twice before refusing to go back again, having had to spend several hours inside doing arts and crafts with much younger kids, and I didn't make Carter do it at all. Fortunately we discovered that the "teenager club" accepts kids Carter's age, and they had a much more interesting-sounding schedule: beach soccer, darts, archery, water polo. But it was hit or miss as to whether it was actually fun or not. Carter did enjoy getting some energy out playing some of the team sports, but all the individual ones were pretty lame. For both archery and darts the kids basically waited in a long line for their turn, in which they each got to shoot three arrows/throw three darts, and that was it. After Haley refused to go to Kids Club she even tried out the teenager club a few times. I'm glad she was able to escape the little kids, but this couldn't have been much fun for the actual teenagers. They really need more staff if they want this program to actually be fun for kids of different ages.

Haley with Hayley from Kids Club

We have eaten a ton of food, an embarassing amount of food. I have discovered that I am not a fan of the all-inclusive motif; while the food is quite tasty, surprisingly good for feeding so many people at once, this genre of hotel encourages gluttony. There are food and drinks available all day long and there is the temptation to consume as much as possible in order to get your money's worth. We often eat just two meals a day when we are on vacation, but here we are incentivized to eat much more than that. I prefer the financial and waistline rewards of eating sparingly to the feeling of constantly being stuffed when food is everpresent. I found myself on a constant quest to burn as many calories as I ate! I failed, but I did do quite a bit of swimming for exercise and twice I ran a few miles ending with a refreshing dive into the ocean.

Feeling good after a run and a dip in the water a couple of
miles down the beach

I have been learning about myself on this vacation. While a week of relaxing on a Greek island at an all-inclusive resort sounded like a great idea to me when I planned it, I have discovered that it really isn't my personality. Don't get me wrong, it has been a really nice week with many positives. It's just that given scarce resources of both finances and time, I wouldn't choose this type of vacation again; I would choose something where I can explore and learn and not simply relax. Sitting by the pool drinking beach drinks for a couple of days is fine, but then I'm ready for more activity.

I had thought that while the kids swam in the pool and relaxed with their books and games I would catch up on blogging the last couple of months of activities. I imagined myself sitting by the pool with my computer, blogging away with a fruity drink in hand while the kids swam and played to their hearts' content. But our vacation is nearly over and I haven't really written very much. Why not? Because it is oppressively hot outside if you aren't in the water. Because the kids quickly tired of the pool without friends to play with. Because this hotel has literally no electrical outlets by the pools or in the outdoor cafe spaces or even on our back porch, and my computer has only about an hour and a half of battery life before it goes dead if it isn't plugged in. I finally realized that if I didn't just forget about the ocean and the pool and sit in the room and write then it would never happen. So I gave myself permission to have this be my vacation: to simply spend time writing instead of doing chores and cooking and planning school events and managing properties and finances and schedules and chairing committees; a general reprieve from all that I am normally responsible for, and permission to do something that I enjoy.

And it has been a very welcome time of decompression. Aside from the kids arguing seemingly incessantly (including as I try to write this) over who gets which electronic device, the week has been blissfully free of stress. It is an amazing gift to have so many days in a row without having to worry about meal preparation. I have also had a surprising amount of time to myself. It turns out that the kids are just old enough to do many things on their own, and my schedule doesn't have to be tied to theirs, especially at a self-contained resort like this. If they are hungry, they can go to the creperie or get ice cream by the pool. If they are thirsty they can go to one of several bars for a coke or juice. If I want to go to the beach and they don't, I just leave them in the room. If they don't feel like getting up for breakfast, I go by myself. This, plus the existence of the kids/teenager club, put an unexpected twist on our vacation. On the one hand it is fabulous to be able to choose what I want to do; it has been about 11 years since I last had that freedom on a vacation! On the other hand it has been a bit boring/lonely. I am pretty good at hanging out by myself, but not necessarily at a resort where the choices of activities are limited. There's only so much lounging by the beach and reading that I want to do alone. It would have been wonderful if Dan or a friend had been here with me!

The adult activities for the most part haven't interested me, although I tried out the organized beach volleyball a couple of days ago and was pleasantly surprised at the level of play. I played volleyball for many years in both Atlanta and Missoula so I'm pretty decent, not fantastic, but solidly decent. So it's fun to play with others of about the same level, but usually it's hard to field 12 decent players in an open pickup game. So it was really fun to play with this group, and I got to practice my French too (so many French people here)! I felt a bit shy joining without knowing anyone, but I'm a big girl so I managed. I played again yesterday and it was even better, although this morning's game was not so great. It made me realize how much I miss playing volleyball!

Rocks, rocks, rocks

While the beach here is lovely to look at and great for swimming - perfect temperature, no waves, lots of fish to watch underwater - it's not so great as beaches go. The shore is mostly rocks and even the "sand" is full of rocks. This made it painful to play volleyball on and terrible for beach walking, which is normally one of my favorite beach activities. I have been to a lot of beaches and I feel pretty sure that the Gulf Coast of Florida/Alabama where I grew up has some of the best beaches in the world. I think Rhodes does have some better beaches, but Kiotari is not so great.

One benefit of the all-inclusive is the free beach chairs and umbrellas. With my fair complexion I can't stay out in the sun too long, but we never seem to pay to rent beach chairs because we typically don't stay on the beach for enough time to feel like it is worth spending the money. So the free chairs and umbrellas made my cheap self happy, because I could come and go from the beach whenever I wanted and I could always have shade. Evening at the beach, from about 5:00-8:00 is beautiful and I always tried to go down for at least some of that time. It cools down remarkably after about 5:00 and the crowds start to diminish.

Close-up of the volleyball "sand"/gravel!

Scratches and scrapes from volleyball

The crowds...another reason why this isn't my ideal vacation. Call me antisocial but typically if there are a lot of people doing one thing, I will do something else even if it appeals to me less. In Montana we learned to choose a different hiking trail if there was already another car in the parking lot! So I was pretty turned off by so many people in the same place here. The dining room was incredibly noisy with the constant hum of voices and clang of dishes. The pools had all chairs "reserved" with towels or beach bags by about 9 a.m. (That practice drives me crazy. It's one thing if you really plan to spend the day by the pool and you just want to get up from your spot to get some lunch or something. But so many people set their towels out and reserve the chairs for the entire day when they really only want to spend a couple of hours by the pool. If everyone would just take their stuff with them and make the chairs available when they go, there would probably be enough chairs for everyone. As it is, we never once got a pool chair until evening because I refused to cave in to the reservation practice.)

One day in the middle of our stay I really was feeling oppressed by the crowds. I put on shoes and struck out down the beach, trudging through the rocks and sinking sand. I found a spot about 3 resorts down, around a couple of curves in the land, that was beautiful. Some large rocks stuck out into the ocean and some of them created a sort of natural barrier that formed a shallow pool. I sat down in the pool and faced out into the sea and felt so wonderfully alone and peaceful. I prayed there for a long time and it refreshed me.

This man is carrying a table in his mouth.
Apparently this is a talent they display in
Greece, as this was part of the "Greek night"
performance.

There is a show every night here at the resort. Carter has generally preferred to stay in the room and read or play games, but Haley and I have gone to the shows each night. For the most part they have been quite entertaining! It has been a fun mother/daughter bonding thing for us. We have also played together in the yard. Hedi gave me a yellow sparkly beach cover-up that Haley has commandeered for use as a scarf/rhythmic gymnastics ribbon. She and I had fun choreographing a scarf dance together.

Haley executes a complicated scarf throw maneuver

Nikoleta and her wonderful smile

One way I have tried to make this not so much a vacation-in-a-box is by engaging the staff if they seem open to it. The bartenders, waiters/waitresses, hostesses, entertainers, etc. work very very hard here and there is little time for chatting. But during quieter times I got to know a little bit about my favorite staffperson, Nikoleta. Nikoleta is one of the smiliest people I have met. She works 9 or 10 hours days with no break and no days off and a constant stream of customers at the poolside bar, yet she has a smile and a greeting for everyone in the line. Just the second time I ordered a drink from her she recognized me and remembered what I had ordered the first time the day before and asked if I wanted it again. During a lull in customers I learned that Nikoleta has always lived in Greece, but in many different parts of Greece. She has 3 sisters, one of whom also works at this resort. She told me she is a teacher for 6-12 year old kids - which explains her abundant patience with her customers - but that with Greece's economic problems teaching jobs have disappeared. She told me that she is on a waiting list for a teaching job, with 2000 people ahead of her. So until a spot opens up, she will serve at the resort. It was really sobering to hear a personal story of Greece's economic troubles.

Tomorrow we head for home. I have found that two weeks away from home is plenty and I am ready. Everything we brought with us is sweaty and dirty and salty and beachy, despite several washes in the sink with Woolite. My skin is several shades darker and amazingly not sunburned, a testament to the miracle of modern sunscreen. Although I'm sure I wouldn't have complained if I had gotten my way and we had spent a leisurely month in a rented home somewhere in Greece, I really feel like I have gotten the experience I wanted with the two weeks we have had. I will miss Greece: the friendly people, the food, the feeling of island living that seems palpable, the vistas of endless sea dotted with island after island. I hope to return!