It is not on a map; true places never are.
A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
Lao Tzu


We must have been mad to embark upon two early mornings with an extremely late night in between, but Clare and I still managed a sort of grimace for the camera... ~l~ The views on our travels kept us awake ~s~

So many different events happened on these two daytrips, from being proposed to repeatedly in Turkey and meeting some Canadians who, oddly, we kept bumping into even days after we'd returned to Rhodes... to almost capsizing on the way back from Symi due to unusually rough tides, and jumping from the boat into shark infested water at a swimstop in the beautiful Tsambika Bay.

-= Turkey =-

Clare and I had originally planned to to go Turkey, but we took the repeated earthquakes there as a hint and decided to settle on a day trip there instead... Oy vay, this was taken on the hottest day of the century in Turkey, the 13th of July 2000. It was a pretty place, and I loved meeting all the people Clare had told me so much about before... ~s~

We'd had to leave Rhodes horribly early that morning to reach Turkey on time while Gemma and Kelly stayed curled in bed...but the next day they got a taste of early morning air when they too got up, with us, at another disgustingly early hour to catch a boat to Symi, a tiny but beautifully picturesque island four miles off the coast of Turkey...

-= Symi =-


Although we damn near risked life and limb getting to this place (we weren't altogether sure the boat was supposed to tilt vertically everytime it hit a wave) it was worth it just for the cute are-they-or-are-they-not made out of cardboard houses.... :) Another trademark of the area was cats...these two were sunbathing and reminded Gem of her lil cat back home...


Despite being such a small island, the area was very built up...stairs led to stairs which led to stairs and so on...so we took the opportunity when we saw it and grabbed a breather for a few moments ~s~


Religion seemed to feature very strongly here; we visited churches in Rhodes and they're nothing like the ones from England...
murals cover the walls and jewels and gold decorate the areas of worship; they're truly masterpieces.


We came across this church as we wandered off the beaten trail, and this monastery we visited on the other side of the island. I'm not in the slightest bit religious but looking around this place really took my breath away; set in a courtyard we had the opportunity to walk around the areas of worship and walk up here, to the tower, where we saw breathtaking views of the surrounding ocean.

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