I thought for this weeks PhotoFriday theme, simply being “Inside” wasn’t quite enough. It had to show being inside which also implies that there’s an outside visible. So, here I was in Ireland, sat inside the car, waiting for the rain to subside. I thought that that made this a decent entry.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Glowing.” I’m entry number 184.
“Sharp Focus” is a surprisingly hard theme to find a good image to represent. A picture that was just sharp wouldn’t look much different from most other pictures. So, ironically, to show something in sharp focus you really need some contrast, namely some background blur. This picture, you can possibly guess, was taken last year at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Apparently I’m “famous” for not taking pictures of people, which should have made this weeks PhotoFriday challenge especially tricky for me. However, in practice I decided on this image pretty quickly. It was taken in Lindos.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Sundown.” I’m number 160.
The east coast of Rhodes has all the big name destinations, Faliraki and Lindos, but I figured that the west coast was worth a visit too.
The first thing that I passed (other than the airport which I wouldn’t be going to for another few days) was Pataloudes, better known as the Valley of the Butterflies. However, despite the name there were no butterflies.
There are two reasons for the lack of butterflies. The first is the time of year. The bugs are attracted to the damp, shaded part of the island during the main heat of the summer. The weather was decent in April but hardly what you’d describe as “the main heat.”
Before I left for Rhodes, I’d read that the island has a pretty good public transport system and was very tempted to try to complete the week using only buses and coaches. The bus from the airport convinced me that just getting as far as Lindos (nearly 50km from Rhodes Town), much less seeing anything when I got there, could well take a considerable chunk of a day. It also looked as though there might be some other interesting things to see on the way — something that would be tricky to do on a bus — and so I decided to hire a car.
This weeks PhotoFriday challenge is “Manufactured.” These bottles, found in a shop in Lisbon, were certainly manufactured.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Primary Colour.” I’m entry number 176.
I was determined to make at least one boat trip to another island and there were no shortage of options from Rhodes Town. There were some other famous locations within range, Kos and even some Turkish resorts, but in the end I decided on Symi. It’s a much smaller island, known for its attractive harbour, and I thought it would be a good contrast to what I’d already seen in Rhodes.
Can anyone explain the significance of this? I was in Rhodes Old Town and stumbled across this scene. Why would you put a plant on a door like that?
Travelling out of season has its pros and cons. On this plus side it’s cheaper and not as hot. I’m not sure I would have liked Rhodes when it was in the high thirties. Twenty something in early April suits me just fine. There are also fewer tourists which is mostly nice, but does mean — and this is the major disadvantage — that not everything is open. So to head off the same kind of problem I experienced in Porto, where I arrived only to find that the hotel was closed, I decided to stay in the biggest town on the island. Even in hindsight I think that this was the right move.
