With the Lehmans and Leslies on board after their long but uneventful trip from Canberra, we decided to postpone our departure by one day and do the 1 hour day trip by ferry from Marmaris Turkey to Rhodes Greece. Leaving Skipper John on board to do some more last minute captain type things, the five of us squeezed into an early morning taxi, then mastered the emigration queue, and after an hour mastered the immigration queue at beautiful Rhodes.

We hired a car and driver Sergio to take us to places of interest outside of Rhodes old town. He told us Rhodes means rose and there were certainly lots of wild flowers and greenery around, due he said to underground springs. The highlights of his tour were the temple of Pythian Apollo on the Acropolis, with its adjacent theatre and hippodrome, and the hilltop view of the Mediterranean on one side and the Aegean on the other. The Greek and Roman ruins contrasted strikingly with the brutalist architecture of Mussolini dotted around the new town.

Old town was a treat, starting with the 12 metre thick walls and nine gates, the deer sculptures on either side of the entrance to Rhodes harbour where the Colossus, at 33 metres, once stood, and on the waterfront the Greek Orthodox Church St Maria, once the Catholic Church of St Mark. In the Jewish quarter there remains the Shalom synagogue from the 1500s and a sad memorial to the 1604 Jews sent from Rhodes and Cos to German death camps in World War II.

The Knights Quarter was the highlight, with the various inns that accommodated the seven nationalities, or "tongues", of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, or the Knights Hospitaller, from 1309 to 1522, when the Ottomans drove them out. The inns' high stone facades stretch for 600 metres along both sides of a narrow cobbled street that leads up the hill to the Grand Master's grand castle. It has three massive towers, a crown placed over the draw bridge, and an imposing courtyard overlooking the city walls and the sea. The Hora or Turkish quarter has the pink domed mosque of Suleyman built in 1522 to celebrate his victory over the Knights, and the ubiquitous hammam.

After a lovely day of immersing ourselves in ancient history, winding cobbled streets, shops and their amusing owners, we returned to Trilogy and immersed ourselves in a lovely dinner at the marina restaurant in preparation for finally setting sail.