Erin og Marits Ville Greske Eventyr

(Erin and Marit's wild Greek adventure)

I was able to combine work and vacation for a trip to Rhodes, Greece! The first week was spent near Rhodes City (the farthest north point of the island) for the ISOPE conference (blue marker on the map) as a well as an extra meeting with others who work on numerical simulation of offshore wind turbines. I had a presentation and was also present to answer aerodynamics questions for work done in collaboration with Marintek. The presentation went well, and there were many interesting presentations in the renewable energy sessions. 

I was traveling together with my colleague and friend, Marit, who also had a presentation at the conference. We rented bikes one afternoon when there weren't any presentations in our specific field and cycled along the coast and then around the old city.

Marit riding by the ancient windmills!

  

The walls of the ancient city.

After the conference, we spent a few days at a very nice family-run apartment-style hotel in Afantou (green marker). On our first day of vacation, we hiked up to Tsambika monastery. In order to get to the "starting point" of our hike, we had to walk a bit from the bus stop, but we were very entertained along the way by the chickens and roosters hopping up to get a bite to eat off of the trees. (Try to spot the hopping one on the left).

A break in the shade partway up, looking toward Kolymbia. 

Hiking in my stylish (and increasingly floppy) hat.

The beautiful view from the top, now looking toward Tsambika and Archangelos.

 

We hiked down the other side and enjoyed a beautiful protected beach. 

The next day, we joined two other wind researchers from the University of Stavanger for a boat trip from Rhodes City - Lindos (yellow marker) and back. This is part of the old city as we headed out...

And looking down at the beach at Lindos. We went up to the Acropolis there while the boat was stopped. It was extremely hot there - one of the hottest places on the island. 

Pretty cool to see such old constructions!

Marit and I at the Lindos Acropolis. We were at the top right around noon, so I had to have lots of sun protection, and needed to be well-covered despite the heat. It seemed quite unfair that the Norwegians had less sensitive skin than mine!

On the day after the boat tour, we did a very non-Greek thing: we climbed the highest peak (Mt. Ataviros). When we asked about walking there, everyone first responded - "you know, there's a road, you can drive up." Nevertheless, we rented a car and drove to Embonas early in the morning, and then walked up. We did not encounter anyone else there! There were some wind turbines on the neighboring hill, so we felt that we were having a working vacation in a very indirect way. 

Hiding behind the cairn with wind turbines in the background. 

Our plan for the next day was to walk to the Seven Springs from Archangelos. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn quite early on the trip, so we walked for two hours through olive trees without ever reaching our goal... but we had a nice walk! We also traveled back to the other side of the island in order to have easier access to our last destination - the valley of the butterflies - and be close to the airport for an early flight a day later.

The valley of the butterflies was surprisingly green and really cool, although touristy. It was too difficult to get any photos of the moths flying (showing their red inner wings) but you can see the black and yellow folded wings all over the trees. 

Since we were back on the west side of the island, we got to see the sunset over the water on our last night in Rhodes. We both enjoyed the trip and loved the people we met - even if we could have been quite happy with slightly lower temperatures!