Still shopping
Continuing our shopping expedition on Rhodes last Friday… After the surreal experience of Jumbo, we had another fairly odd one on the way back to town as our driver rattled off his list of things he didn’t like about the people who ripped him off one lunchtime. We booked him to collect us later and dropped off our shopping at the Plaza Hotel where we stopped for a drink while we planned the next shopping assault. The list, written on two Post It notes, wasn’t too complicated, a visit to Zara, try and find a cable to link the DVD machine to the Smart TV (still not organised that, but I am sure I have such a lead in the house somewhere), look for inspiration, and buy a Christmas gift for Godson #2 which involved a visit to the basement of the Hondas Centre.
That done and a new coat bought for Neil, we had lunch at a café/bar in Mandraki called Jaspers. It was still warm enough to eat outside as long as jackets were zipped up, and we decided on a simple chicken dish. Well, fairly simple: massive chicken breast halved and filled with a mayonnaise and asparagus spears, dripping in BBQ sauce and coming with a bowl of fries (€12.50 each – not the fries, the whole dish). That was more than enough to refuel us before heading back to the Plaza to settle in and wait for the boat.
As an aside, you may be interested to know that the indoor smoking ban has returned to Greece, and this time it looks like it’s here to stay. Special officers have been sent to islands to train the police (on how to identify people with a lit cigarette in their hands, I guess), inspections are being made, and fines are being handed out to both proprietors and smokers who disobey. I was reminded of the time the husband was in hospital, and I was sitting out in the ward waiting room with a local lady who was smoking beneath the ‘No Smoking’ sign. “We Greeks don’t like being told what to do,” she explained, puffing away. Not quite as unsettling as seeing the orthopaedic surgeon coming from ‘backstage’ in his bloodied greens with a fag hanging out of his mouth, but that was several years ago now. Even locally, there’s no smoking in the bars which isn’t so much of an issue in the summer, but the sight of local friends hanging out of the Rainbow doorway while there’s an AEK match on the TV inside will take some getting used to.
