Day 8: Lindos to home

After I finished the blog yesterday afternoon, we decided to head out to explore one of the local beaches in Lindos. We'd read about a place called St Paul's Bay, which sounded like it was really beautiful. It was only a relatively short walk away from where we were staying and by about 5pm we thought the day should be starting to cool down a bit.

When we got to the bay, it was indeed really beautiful.

However, unfortunately the actual beach there is quite small and seems to be owned/managed by a beach bar, which has almost completely covered it in expensive paid loungers. It was definitely a lot more commercialised than the beach where we'd been swimming in Symi! But as we climbed down towards the sand, we did at least have a great view up towards the acropolis of Lindos where we'd been earlier in the day.

The bay is called after St Paul because he apparently washed ashore here during a storm.

There's a little chapel dedicated to him at the end of the bay, although it was locked up so we weren't able to get any closer than this.

There was barely any spare sand on which to put a towel and there were excursion boats coming in and out of the harbour too, so it didn't feel like a great place for a swim.

We did, however, decide to have a paddle. And a very scenic paddle it was too!

Later in the evening we went out for food and ended up in an Italian restaurant close to where we were staying. The pizza was good and we were sitting in a garden, which felt slightly cooler than some of the roof terraces we've been on.

We didn't have to check out of the apartment until 11am on Saturday morning, so we just had time to pop out for an additional excursion to Lindos church after breakfast.

It wasn't permitted to take photos inside, but we paid EUR 5 each to enter the church and look around a little museum inside. The interior of the church was absolutely beautiful, the walls covered with paintings of different scenes from the Bible.

Then it was time to check out of the apartment.

The narrow streets of Lindos aren't the easiest to walk around with suitcases, so we decided to sit in a nearby bar and get a coffee.

While looking at their brunch menu we got tempted by the idea of a pancake and decided to share these, which were covered in a combination of peanut butter, honey and nuts. It sounds unusual but it actually worked!

The view from where we were sitting wasn't bad and we were able to watching people coming and going down the nearby streets.

After the pancake we progressed to lunch in a restaurant with a beautiful garden.

There was a fantastic view back up towards the acropolis.

I'd enjoyed the giouvetsi I'd had the other day so much that I decided to order it again.

Helen decided to have halloumi with caramelised onion and grilled peach. It was technically a starter, but when it came it was a lot of halloumi!

We rounded off the meal with a coffee.

Then it was time to get the shuttle bus up the hill to the main bus stop and catch our bus back to Rhodes. Everything worked pretty smoothly, with the journey back to the main bus station in Rhodes Town taking around 90 minutes. We had time for another coffee in a bakery before we had to get the bus to the airport, although that ended up being a slightly unpleasant experience as it was very, very full! But we made it, with plenty of time to check in for our flight and get through security without any problems.

The airport bus might not have been the best, but overall it has been a really fun holiday, where we've seen some beautiful places and had some absolutely amazing Greek food