Continued from yesterday”¦ We headed a few blocks north to the ancient stadium, which is now an empty field with no overt markers to indicate what it once was. As we strolled along, we enjoyed the sweet smell of figs in the air. Figs smell good.

Once we had passed the stadium, we were back in the heart of the old town. We continued one more block north we got to the bay, then followed the bay around to the fort/castle. To enter the fort, you go up a slope to the Plateia Platanou, a cobblestone courtyard with an 18th century mosque (now home to tourist shops) and one of the oldest trees in Europe.

From the Platiea Platanou, you cross a bridge over what was once a mote into the fort/castle built by the Knights Hospitalier in the 14th century. From the outside, the castle looks like it is intact, so we were disappointed when we paid the entrance fee and walked in to see that the outside looked a lot better than the inside. There are remains of a building in the center, but for the most part, the majority of the interior is dead grass with bits of broken bits of sculpture and other marble pieces strewn about. Here are some shots from various spots around the fort.

Like at the Western Excavation site, there are no signs. You can walk around the perimeter of the exterior walls, which offer beautiful views from the top.

There are little nooks within the walls where soldiers were once stationed for watches, and you can walk in and peek out of the holes for the cannons to shoot out of. There is an area blocked off where it looks like they are trying to piece together some ruins. There were a few storage areas for weapons located in the middle and near the entrance, and a few cannons and cannon balls on display. There were also assorted crests carved into the stone around the grounds. The Knights came from many European countries and each region had their own crests.

The castle covers a large area, and walking around it took a long time. It is also three levels, so we walked up and down several slopes and staircases as we went from level to level. You can definitely envision it as a working fort, but not as a castle. You just can’t envision living quarters for the soldiers based on what is left here today.

From the top of the fort wall, it looked like there were a few parking spaces open on the sea wall. When we were done at the fort, we went for a closer look, considering moving Kosmos to the sea wall from the marina. Not only were the open spaces gone, the boats all seemed to be suddenly packed in tighter than sardines, probably in an effort to cram in more boats. Almost all the boats were physically touching. We were suddenly glad we were not on the sea wall.

We walked through down town some more. Kos town had a devastating earthquake in 1933, and you can see that most of the buildings in the old town are newer, though many very old buildings do still exist. Kos has a more eclectic feel to it than any other town we have visited in Greece, due in large part to the wide variety of architectural styles that reflects all the different ruling powers over the centuries. The streets of the old town are not nearly as narrow as the streets of most of the other ancient cities we have visited (still very narrow by modern standards), probably because Hippodromus advocated wider streets. There are a few streets blocked off to cars that make up a pedestrian shopping center.

At the border of old town and new town is a modern day agora, with a large courtyard containing a small mosque, a huge Byzantine style Greek-Orthodox church, and an open air market where you can buy produce and assorted Greek made products.

In every tourist town in Greece that we have been to, there is a little train that takes tourists past all the main attractions. We had yet to take the train. The main tourist attraction in Kos is the Asklipion, the famous hospital and medical school, located 4 kilometers outside of town, so we decided now was a good time for the train ride. The cost is $7.50 USD. We were hoping to get a recorded tour guide telling us about each site we passed, but no such luck.

The train took us along a country road and dropped us off in a parking lot in the middle of what looked like an undeveloped area. You enter into a fairly long corridor that opens into a large clearing cut into a forest of pine trees on a hill. In the clearing are the ruins. The first thing that jumps out at you is the grandiose staircase, located straight ahead, that take you up to the two upper levels terraced into the mountain. The retaining wall of the first level is also attention grabbing, elegantly designed as a series of arched alcoves. Above the retaining wall, on the second level of the terrace are columns are a series of columns.

Like most of the other ruins in Kos, there is minimal signage. On the lowest level, between us and the staircase, is a series of foundations that run most of the length of the clearing. We are guessing it is a series of rooms within a larger building. Near the edge of the foundations, way to the left of the entrance is a disintegrating multi-story stone building. You can’t go into the building, which is probably a good thing. It looks unstable. Lonely Planet says that this level was guest rooms, a propylea, and a public bath house.

We headed over to the stairs for closer looks at the rest of the ruins. The building with the 7 columns is a temple to Apollo. There is a second building that has some fragments of column left around the foundation, an altar or temple of some sort. For the most part, each of the levels held more foundations similar to the first level, and we had no clue what types of uses the buildings had. The third level has a temple to the god of healing, Asclepius, but we couldn’t tell the temple remains from the other foundations on the level. The things that had jumped out at us initially were the most intact of the site. It must have been quite an impressive facility in its day.

We took the little train back into town. We had passed a Mexican food restaurant and Eric wanted to go there for dinner. Christi was reluctant, always dubious of Mexican food in non-Latin countries. We walked in and asked the waiter if the food was any good. He told us he didn’t like it. So, of course, we stayed. In all honesty, the food was not bad. It was missing the subtleties, such as cilantro, that give Mexican food the more complex flavors, and they used canned nacho cheese sauce instead of real cheese. But other than that, they got pretty close to the real thing.

After dinner, as we were walking back to the marina, we watched an absolutely gorgeous fiery red sunset.