RHODES - Lemon Tree Apartments

We left Rhodes old town with a pink and white hat, a sprained ankle, swollen knee and a £200 gold ring in the shape of a dolphin.
Nick and I caught a bus not far from our hotel and the journey took about one-and-a-half hours. Along the way, the bus picked up lots of schoolchildren, plus the driver abandoned us in a village and we wondered what was going on. However a new driver got on board and off we went again. On arrival at Pefkos Centre, Nick left me sitting with the bags at the bus stop while he went into a shop to ask directions because we had no idea where Lemon Tree Apartments were - other than being quite near the sea. He was missing for a long while and I was slowly roasting in the sun. Thank goodness I had a new hat to wear.
He came back with a rather vague map and we set off in 28 degrees at a slow pace along a road that we hoped was right. After around 15 minutes we found the apartments, but they were locked. They looked pretty, surrounded by orange and lemon trees, hibiscus and bougainvillea - just like the photo on the details we'd got off the Internet, but deserted.
Once again, I was left minding the luggage while Nick went to a nearby hotel to ask for the key. He seemed to know what he was doing, so I tried not to panic and sat and waited, and waited. My only companions were the barren mountains. Eventually he returned and we discovered, to our disappointment, that our apartment was down a small flight of steps and set in a shady hollow. When we opened up the apartment, the smell of stale smoke hit us. As neither of us smoke, this was the first disappointment. The inside was also quite dark and the décor was jaded and well past its sell-by date. We reminded ourselves that we were in Greece.
It was a big room and provided no privacy unless we closed the curtains. Luckily, no one else was staying in the adjoining apartments otherwise we would really have been on view. There were three beds in the main room, which also included a kitchenette that was basic but adequate. The bathroom was pretty old fashioned and looked like something out of the 70s with it's green toilet, sink and bath.
We decided that rather than staying in and getting down about the grubbiness of the place, we would go out to eat. Once in the town, we soon realised we were in the Geordie capital Rhodes. It was swelteringly hot and we ate on the rooftop of one of the restaurants and had a good meal. I ate the local vegetarian dish and though a little oily, it was really tasty.
We were pretty tired after our long bus ride, so went back to the apartment for an early night. We had to really 'shut up shop' so to speak to keep out the relentless noise of Abba songs and YMCA, plus there seemed to be a competition going on for people to sing Adele songs. Following that, there was karioke. This was the place of our worst nightmares, so it was lucky we were tired because eventually we managed to drift off to sleep.
The following morning, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Well, we couldn't complain at that. And something else we couldn't complain about was the amazing float we found in the garden. It had been discarded by the previous occupants and was a bit of a godsend for me. It is quite hard to swim with a stiff knee (which by now was oozing - sorry!) and sprained ankle, but with a float, I bobbed around all over the place and spent lots of time in the most beautiful sea, which was warm. The beach was lovely and there were plenty of sun beds, so there was no need to be up at the crack of dawn to bag a space.
The beach was mainly sandy with a few smooth, large pebbles and rocks dotted around. We chose our spot carefully so we were in a predominantly sandy area. The water was shallow and warm and full of fish, they were several inches long. A lot of people were mesmerised by them and fed them breadcrumbs so they could get a closer look. They were quite pretty.
Once we started to survey our fellow holidaymakers, we couldn't help noticing that nearly all the younger to middle-aged men had one arm completely tattooed. It was like we had walked into a secret society and couldn't work out what it was all about. The women had tattoos down their right sides and they were all from the North of England. Everyone seemed to be smoking which, if you're not used to smoke, spoils the pleasure of breathing, so I spent a lot of time in the water.
To my enormous disappointment, on probably the hottest day of the holiday so far, I developed a streaming cold!