Day 14 -- Abandoned by the Wife

In the morning we went to the museum and the castle that was the house of the Grand Master (and the administrative headquarters of the city) from the days when the knights ruled Rhodes. The children picked up points for weapons, writing, and eating utensils. Unfortunately, the Ottoman and Byzantine exhibits were under rennovation and the kids came up short on their quest.

I suggested to Andrea, within earshot of the kids, that perhaps if their behavior was good we could consider a consolation prize. Andrea, once we were out of the kids hearing range suggested that another year of feeding them would be a good enough consolation prize.

We decided to explore the newer part of Rhodes City and passed a "fast food Chinese" restaurant which had an odd combination of burgers and Chinese food. Andrea was unwilling to risk the Greek fast food version of Chinese so we ate traditional Greek food at a place that also offered pizza for the kids.

After lunch we returned to the hotel and saw Andrea, Joshua, and Zachary off. Ari was amazingly sad to see them go. I hate to admit it but he may miss the family more than I will.

Ari has decided that he'd like to be a game designer for Nintendo when he is an adult. I've told him that if he learns the basics of programming with me I'll get him the tools and a teacher who really knows game design so that he can build real games. So, after everyone else had left we sat down and worked on programming lessons. I have Php, MySQL, some code editors, and a webserver installed on my tablet, so we have an environment to work in. We started with a very basic game where we choose a number from one to 10 and the computer tries to guess our number. It let us cover input, output, basic syntax, and the random number function in half an hour.

After our programming Ari played video games while I caught up on e-mail and Facebook. While I was on the net I looked for dinner, searching for anything with one or two dollar signs that was not Greek cuisine. I got one result SaSaZu, a restaurant whose menu included Thai Papaya salad, Sambal, Roti, and dozens of other mouthwatering dishes. I showed Ari and we set out in search of the place.

We got lost, but a helpful man at exotic car rentals helped us out, ignoring his customers for a while and finally figuring out that the restaurant was in the Rhodes casino. In we went. When we inquired at reception they told us that it had been closed for a year and had been replaced by a Greek restaurant. Ari and I were both so disappointed that I'm surprised Rhodes wasn't lost in a sea of tears.

I explained to the kind reception person that we wanted something that was not Greek and she told us that there was one Asian place, a noodle shop, not too far away and gave us a map on which she drew directions with a pen. Map in hand we set off to find food that was not Greek.

A short walk later we found ourselves in front of "fast food Chinese." In we went. Ari and I shared a chicken in garlic sauce (spicy), rice, and a salad. I can't explain how something could be categorized as among the worst Chinese food I've ever had and simultaneously be among the most enjoyable, but it was. Ari was beaming. At 12 euros for the two of us it was also the cheapest meal we've eaten in Greece.

After dinner we returned to our favorite crepe stand, where I helped the proprietor open for the evening, putting out tables and chairs. We had crepes that couldn't be beat, left a huge tip (at least relative to the cost of a crepe), and headed back to the hotel for showers and a very early night.

I was dis

I set the alarm for 6:30 because our taxi (arranged by fell the travel agent) to the port arrives at 7:00AM and fell asleep at about 9:30 only to wake up around midnight and spend several hours of quality time with my tablet on Facebook and the New York Times.

pleased to discover that the kids had lost the cap to my tube of toothpaste, which I loaned them to replace the tube that they had lost. I had been sharing Andrea's but she took that with her so now I'll need to find a new one on Kalymnos.