Rhodes, GREECE!!! Part 1

Tom’s godparents picked us up from the airport and brought us to the apartment we were staying in. We took a long nap and then were driven to his Godparents’ house for a home cooked Greek meal. It was amazing. I felt so immersed into the Greek culture it was unreal. One of their sons, who is about 12, played us songs on the traditional Greek instrument that looked like a cross between a guitar and a violin. After the meal they did not have enough dessert for all of us so we all walked to their parents house where we ate the most delicious and unusual apple pie.

You can immediately sense a great family foundation and huge culture shock in Rhodes. Everyone we met was overly kind and funny. Nothing was rushed; it is a very relaxing place. We often asked aloud to each other, “Is this real? Is this actually happening right now?” We made our best attempt to get the most out of every minute.


Fun fact about Rhodes is that they receive 325 days of sun a year. Every day there were bright blue skies with no clouds in sight and a nice breeze. Rhodes is a big tourist area in the summer but since we went there off-season, we were the only tourists there. This meant that all those beautiful beaches you see when you do a google image search for Rhodes were empty. Every beach we went to we had all to ourselves.


The town we stayed in was called Trianta. It was a very small, adorable town full of locals. None of us knew any Greek except for Tom who was our savior for the entire trip. There were only about two bars that were open this time of year and only a few restaurants. We walked to the beach on the second day there and saw the bright blue clear water. I had never seen anything like it. I’ve been to the Caribbean and seen beautiful beaches before in St. Thomas and St. Martin, but they don’t even compare to the water in Greece. When we looked out into the ocean we could see Turkey, clear as day. It looked like you could almost swim to it.


At night we would hang out at one of the only bars that was open this time of year called “Debbie’s”. We met Debbie and her daughter, Maria, who was the bartender. It was a sports bar, which meant it was mainly occupied by old men. We could tell that Maria was thrilled to have all eight of us young girls talking to her. She found us all hilarious and entertaining.