Ode to Greece and the Dodecanese

A daytripper from Rhodes soaks up the south Aegean sun and complements a typical stone mosaic floor in one of the courtyards of the rambling Panormitis Monastery.

The Rhodes coastline is pretty much this beautiful everywhere, all the time.

(Tsambika Monastery. Click on photos for slideshow.)

The ruins of Our Lady of the City in Rhodes Old Town.

Earlier this year, I finally made it to a country where no self-respecting travel blog covering the Mediterranean should be a stranger (besides Italy). Give you a guess?

I never actually thought my first Grecian vacation would be on the island of Rhodes, nor did I think it would take place in the month of April. The win here lies in the fact that low expectations often beget high returns.

Needless to say, an eight-day stay in a sun-bleached house facing onto a blue velvet Aegean, zero crowds and plenty of lovely natives (including goats!) has me scheming to get back to Greece as soon - and as frequently - as possible.

A house pet on the island of Symi. (Look closely.)

I expect that you, like me, have noticed that encounters with locals while traveling can make or break your experience in their native land - indeed, unique human encounters are a top motivator for travel in the first place. For this blogger, the people factor in Greece is on par with those of Tunisia and Morocco: my favorite Mediterranean populations so far. Their warmth and hospitality lift one's spirits as much, if not more than, the beauty of their respective countries.

Light a candle on Easter Sunday. The Panormitis Monastery inhabits its very own island and is dedicated to the Archangel. Its Orthodox architecture and decor stand in beautiful contrast to the Roman Catholic environs this blogger is used to photographing.

From Maria of Maria's Taberna (near Anthony Quinn's Bay) to an elderly couple of spirited mom-and-pop shop owners in the Rhodes Old Town, to the five Syrian refugees who had been just seconds from death and happened to walk off an Hellenic Coast Guard boat and into my pathway in Symi, it all comes back down to people.

Art, architecture, nature, music and food are the traveler's means to exploring life. 

Yet ultimately, it is the human connection around those things that move us to love life.

Last night, last drink in Rhodes Port. The isle continues to beckon with its cozy atmosphere, warm people, millennial history and impossibly beautiful landscapes.

...My recs: While I would recommend giving yourself at least four days on this beautiful island, you can drive the entirety of Rhodes in about a day; plan on renting a house somewhere between Rhodes Old Town and the halfway point on the length of the isle. This permits you to see everything from Lindos to the Butterfly Forest and still be back home in time for dinner. Take a day to enjoy the Old Town together with Anthony Quinn's Bay, and another to depart Rhodes Port on a ferry to Panormitis and Symi.

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In Waterworld: A Biennale, a Cannarino, a Few Film References and a Little Bit of Mystery

Can you Imagine this as your main means of transport? (I've been doing it since I was a child.)

This house gets a point for the boat and a point for having its very own bridge.

"So when I was nine, I dreamed up a terribly engaging game for me and my little cousin: it was a time when my parents had put down a beautiful blue carpet in our sunken-in living room (which, as soon as it was installed, had me pretending to be a little mermaid - I would roll around on that carpet as if I were a mermaid doing somersaults in the deep blue sea). It wasn't until one Saturday when Darian came over that I was able to put my master plan in action. Now, she and I lived in a city of canals, rightly known as 'Waterworld.'

The couches became our canal banks, while their cushions were plonked down to make a bridge over water between the foyer and the kitchen (both on higher ground, thus naturally the terra firma in this gracious little city resembling the Venice of my mind's eye). We were two lucky sisters whose parents owned and operated the "Plaza Hotel;" the world was our oyster, and our favorite pastime was solving "mysteries" - two little private-eyes always getting into mischief in a magical land where only boats or walking could get you from point A to point B."

I must say the canals are not as blue as my parents' living room carpet was in the '90s.

Funnily enough, it was not until my eighth trip to Venice that I even connected our childhood revelry to the city itself. I found myself spontaneously detailing this funny little anecdote to an acquaintance, Fiorella, over dinner in Venice's Rio Novo neighborhood.

"Carina la cosa," laughed Fiorella. I think what made my story so poignant for me in that moment was the spirit with which my little game had been invented. Yes, I (that is, my imagination) was highly influenced by movies as a child. Already we have references to a couple obvious titles, and perhaps two that are less so, i.e. Big Business for the prominence it gives to the Plaza Hotel, and the comedic film Blame it on the Bellboy. Blame it on the Bellboy was crucial as my first introduction to the city of Venice, for it is that which instilled in me the excitement and intrigue of such a mesmerizing-yet-hidden, and sprawling-yet-cozy city bobbing on its host lagoon; and it is exactly what I felt that evening.

A city beautifully bobbing.
(Click for bigger photos and slideshow.)

After dinner, Fiorella, who also happens to be a former Italian senatrice, ordered a cannarino. I didn't want to be a copy-cat, but after almost ten minutes of drooling at her elegant glass of hot water-lemon peel infusion, I had to have one myself. Not only was it pretty, with its serpent-like, spiral-cut lemon peel lining the long glass, but it served as a digestive and besides, was just nice to have on a chilly night, right before a short stroll to tuck back into our hotel.

Each of my trips to La Serenissima over the last 11 years has been marked by an occasion: a visit to the Peggy Guggenheim, a day trip to gawk at the sights of Carnavale, a weekend to mark the Festa del Redentore. Last May, my most recent travel there was arranged just to see the Biennale dell'Arte, which was totally worth it and then some. 

The perennial Belgian Pavilion in Venice's Giardini. (Does it remind you a little of the Justice Building in The Hunger Games?)

"All the World's Futures," the theme of the 2015 Biennale, focuses on all that is human. My favorite pavilions and exhibits were "humanitarian" in the sense that they focused on colonialism, alienation and exploitation (the Belgian and Korean pavilions in the Giardini, and the "NoNoseKnows" pearl exhibit in the Arsenale, respectively), as well as religion, with the sort of tongue-in-cheek Icelandic pavilion, the short-lived Mosque inside a former church in the Cannareggio neighborhood that was eventually shut down by the city's governing body. 

So I had my day at my first Biennale dell'Arte, and I would gladly go back to see it all again. The same evening, I wandered the first Jewish Ghetto in world history, and enjoyed another delicious meal in the chilly outdoors, not far from a canal that was beginning to flood onto the city sidewalks. So much so that I was forced to choose between submerging my Chloe ballet flats in a deep and vast, non-hoppable puddle, or finding an alternate route back to the hotel. (I chose the latter.)

The commodification of human labor at Mika Rottenberg's "NoNoseKnows," one of hundreds upon hundreds of exhibits inside the Arsenale.

But this is all part of the fun: I felt like a child that weekend, and particularly on Saturday night, having a Venetian aperitivo of cicchetti with the cool kids of Cannareggio, getting lost in the calle and feeling like there truly is some (non-threatening) mystery hiding just around the corner and waiting to be solved, catching sight of a pudgy little boy scarfing down the goods in his father's kosher bakery while his family supped in the restaurant across the street, and being swept along in Venice's stream of changing moods and occasions as if it were my playground. 

Every time I visit, I fall ever more in love with her. But this time in particular, I felt closer to both her and the child first enamored of her by way of a goofy murder-mystery. That was no doubt described on the VHS cover as a "romping good time!"

The South Korean Pavilion. This is supposed to be all of us in the future: cold and alienated. (She's kind of got a Mila Jovovich from The 5th Element attitude going on here.)

I  don't want to spoil it for you if you plan on going, but to see inside the Belgian, Icelandic and Japanese pavilions - and plenty more photos from Waterworld - visit my Instagram feed, mediterranean_moves.