Lindos Acropolis

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
Ominous date, didn’t think of it at the time. After breakfast we all piled into the car and headed for Lindos, to visit the Acropolis. Once dominated by the Temple of Athena Lindia, it was fortified by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Knights of St John (Knights Hospitaller) and the Ottomans – so it’s had a chequered history. Plenty of history to absorb and a popular tourist haunt, so we were there fairly early to miss the crowds and the heat in the middle of the day. Excavations were carried out in the early twentieth century by the Carlsberg Institute, so this is probably the best Acropolis in the world haha. It’s a sobering thought that some of these buildings date back two-and-a-half thousand years.
I’d seen this woman leaning against a column and initially thought she was a bored tour group leader, then in the still of the morning there was a shrill whistle and she was calling to a couple standing on the monuments taking photos (where they shouldn’t have been). To compound their error they seemed blissfully unaware that she was shouting to them and carried on standing on the walls and taking photos. She marched across and demanded their camera, deleting the offending photos. Not someone to mess with. Plenty of interest, not least the cats which seemed to own the place – one was taking water dripping from a water bottle held by another visitor before curling up in the shade of the rock cut Rhodian Trireme (warship) dating from about 180 BC to sleep again. We headed off through the warren of streets to the shade of the villa for the afternoon, ready to return for a family gathering for a meal on the rooftop terrace, the ice-breaker before the main event tomorrow.