Exploring Kos Town

Recapping the events leading up to this point because there’s a good chance you’ve not read them, we’d decided to take a last-minute break from the unending tedium of the pandemic at home to visit the Greek island of Kos, staying at (and getting horribly drunk on the first night in) the Blue Lagoon Resort, and after a day to recover by the pool we’d then decided to take a shoreline walk into Kos Town.

We knew that Kos had an abundance of ancient Greek and Roman ruins dotted around so our general plan was to see if we could find a few then check out a bar that had come to our attention during the very brief bit of research into the town. However, by the time we’d reached the town one of us needed to use the toilet. We could see that there was a public toilet right in front of the bar we’d been interested in but this turned out to be locked (and possibly would have required coins we didn’t have on us to use as well, as I recall) so the only sensible option was to use the toilets in the bar instead, and since it would be rude to do that and not have a drink we were compelled to alter our general plan accordingly.

The bar in Kos Town that we stopped in – and the first visit of many to it – was Zero Café-Bar and if you’ve read any other travelogues on this site where we’ve hunted down pubs then you might understand why after a quick look at the beer list there (if it’s open) or the gallery of images of previous beers they’ve sold. We are extremely fond of real and craft ales and ciders, and when we travel we like to try anything locally-produced if possible. Many times this turns out to be lager because lager is popular around the world. People and their tastes, eh? However, Zero specialised in proper Greek ales: pale ales, golden ales, ambers, rubies, porters, and stouts from Kos or other Greek islands or the mainland. If you are fond of local craft ales and you’re visiting Kos then Zero is a must-visit bar. Drinks were served with complimentary (and lovely) nibbles.

We only had the one drink each but we promised the owner we’d be back after we’d explored a little of the streets of Kos Town and cast our eyes over some of its historical ruins.

Zero Café-Bar is directly opposite the harbour and set back from the main road along the front. Allowing for the road layout we headed away from the water and due south from the bar as the map indicated that the main place we wanted to look at was in this rough direction.

Those ancient ruins that you can find on Kos were immediately visible. It was hard to walk down a street or two and not glance across into a field to see old columns or parts of a wall. With Kos being a Greek island it would be easy to think that what we were seeing was all ancient Greek – and in a way, of course, it would be – but the style of the columns where some had been reconstructed looked to have decidedly Roman capitals on them. In fact you’ll find a mix of periods and styles and the reason for that and for the general ruinous state is simply that Kos has had its fair share of earthquakes over the centuries. When the Romans were at the height of their power in this region they would have needed to restore or build anew what might have fallen.

The Western Excavations archaeological zone that we came upon reminded us a little of Herculaneum with the ruins of the ancient site surrounded on all sides by modern buildings. Sadly, we couldn’t see a way into it and didn’t look too hard because it was clear from our vantage point that nobody was exploring it. I assume it was closed on the day we visited.

The closed archaeological site hadn’t been where we were intending to visit, thankfully, so we proceeded through the attractive streets of Kos Town.

Our walking route then brought us to the Eski Cami Mosque Minaret. The Bab-Gedid mosque was built in Kos in 1586 and stood in the Muslim quarter of Kos Town until the early 1930s when an earthquake treated it with as much respect as buildings of the Greeks and Romans had been treated. Since 1912 Kos had been under Italian rule so they used this earthquake and its widespread destruction as a reason to redesign much of the town. What remained of the mosque was torn down with the exception of the minaret that had been on the holy building’s northwest corner, and this was relocated to this spot.

A set of shallow, stone steps led in the direction we wanted so we continued on our way south.

We never get lost when we’re travelling. Instead, we take surprise scenic routes. We ended up taking a surprise scenic route to where we needed to get to when we picked the first of two possible roads that would apparently take us towards the historic site we most wanted to see. We saw more ruins and some wildlife – I’m not sure if cats and cows really count, to be honest – before finding ourselves at the locked gates of what turned out to be a Catholic Church on Kos. The tall, narrow, arched gateway mirrored the shape of the entrance to the church we could see beyond but this wasn’t what we were after.

We backtracked and selected the second road.

So, this was what we most wanted to see. The Roman Odeon dates from the second century C.E. and the reason we wanted to see it was because of its architectural similarities to theatres or amphitheatres which we’re fond of seeing when we hop around the world. An odeon (or odium) can be thought of as a smaller scale theatre and one that would originally have had a roof over it as its primary purpose was for singing rather than acting, for which the roof made for better acoustics. There’s no entrance fee and you’re free to clamber about and sit on the steps so we did.

The side entrances to the stage of the odeon were lined with decorative mosaics and in Kos you can see one of these by following the walls to the left of the rows of seats as you look at them. To see the mosaic tiling outside, only protected from the elements by a sheet, was quite surprising.

Opposite the entrance to the Roman Odeon there were more ruins on show but we headed along the road towards the shore in an easterly direction instead as not too far from the ancient site was another one that sounded interesting.

Casa Romana, a Roman villa, was what we’d seen on the map but this too turned out to be closed when we arrived. With our travelling taking place in 2020 and most of the world sensibly employing some form of pandemic precautions we were a little disappointed but weren’t too surprised that the opening hours shown on the phone weren’t accurate, but a sign on the gate did seem to indicate that temporary rules in place meant it was only shut on the day we were there. Since we already expected to make return trips into Kos Town during our week on the island we figured we would try again on another day. A spoiler here: we did try again and were successful, we can definitely recommend it, and that will be covered in a later post in this Kos travelogue series.

Since we were heading east we continued in that direction with our new plan to simply be a walk to the coastline then following the road as much as possible back in to the harbour area where we’d make for the bar again and grab another drink or two. Or more than two. It really depended on whether we’d see anything else on the walk that caused us to stop for long but we’d made up our mind that we’d be coming back to check out more of the ruins on another day so we were mostly just thinking about having a drink. We had been out for many hours by this point, most of it on our feet, it was warm, we’d finished the water we’d brought with us some time ago, and throughout the town area we’d been masked up like the majority of people so we were getting a little uncomfortable by now anyway. That’s my excuse and it’s the one I demand you accept.

There were still plenty of sights to see, as it turned out. First up was a statue of a man on a horse. This was a memorial to Theodoros Kolokotronis, a prominent leader and hero of Greece’s 1821-1829 War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. He isn’t specifically connected with Kos, though, and similar statues can be found in other locations around Greece and its islands.

I do like my architecture and frequent earthquakes on Kos means you can get to see a wide variety of styles depending on when something fell over and needed rebuilding. You can clearly guess that the somewhat unlooked-after Costel Hotel in the photos below was probably built by the Italians after the 1933 quake on the island thanks to its Art Deco design elements.

As we reached the seafront, outside the main town walls and turning towards the castle on the southern and eastern side of the harbour, I heard someone shouting from across the road. Ordinarily, I’d ignore this sort of thing but the shouting was in English and it included the sentences “Hello! You with the camera!” and “Hey, camera man!” and “Across the road! You with the professional camera!” which sounded frighteningly like it might be directed at me on account of me being a man with a professional camera who was across the road from the noise. I made sure to ignore this even more than normal because my experiences with people shouting about me and my camera to date hasn’t been entirely a good one. Some people really don’t like the idea that things that are in public view are not protected from photography and I’ve adapted my approach from raising a middle finger and swearing in response to a more moderate just pretending they’re not there over the years. However, my wife wasn’t really aware of this and just assumed that my tinnitus was preventing me from engaging with a local man so she ensured I stopped and looked across the road. Thankfully, as it turned out, it was just the proprietor of the Amaryllis Restaurant who wanted to have some photos taken. I don’t get many requests like this but I was happy to oblige without crossing the street. We didn’t go in the restaurant but the reviews are good and the owner seems friendly so it might be worth a visit if you’re in Kos and fancy a bite to eat.

Along the road and past a pier (that we skipped walking along for once thanks to the wind that was whipping in) a prominent building in white and cream with crenellations and a tower and arched facades felt like it should be something more than the police station. Around this area too, according to the map, was the Tree of Hippocrates, a plane tree said to have been planted by the fourth and fifth century B.C.E. physician. We didn’t know what a plane tree looked like so took photos of any trees in general but it turns out that none of these are them and you need to get behind the building to see it. Also behind this building is the Ancient Agora which we completely missed when looking for things to see so that’s two points of interest in close proximity to take a look at should we ever return to Kos. I never claimed that this exploration of Kos Town would actually be a comprehensive or even moderately good one.

The next area we walked through was an incredibly picturesque part of Kos and, indeed, when we looked up photos of Kos Town before flying out to the island it’s shots from here that featured a lot. The castle around the harbour entrance was built in 1315 by the Roman Catholic military order of the Knights Hospitaller. It originally had a ditch around it over which a bridge ran connecting the inner and outer walls, and this bridge, known as the Fortress of Neratzia Bridge, still stands, albeit over a road now. The combination of this old, stone bridge, the fortress walls on one side, and the road lined with palm trees makes for some very attractive photography possibilities.

We didn’t dawdle along the harbour front as that already-mentioned wind was nipping at the exposed flesh on our arms but it forms another pleasant area of Kos Town that I can easily imagine is a joy to spend time in during summer months when viruses aren’t running rampant across the globe. There were some interesting-looking boats moored up, many of which would normally be available for trips out to various islands or hiring for fishing if that’s your thing.

Back to Zero we arrived and this time we opted to sit in the large garden area in front of the bar rather than the sheltered courtyard at its entrance. While my wife felt safer sticking to the one type of Greek ale she’d already had and knew she liked – a red ale from Septem – I proceeded with Operation Try Everything On The Menu. Just not all at once. Because the heat of the day was fast-disappearing we ended up having just another two drinks each, both with accompanying nibbles again, and with a complimentary ouzo each too. How can you not like this place? We knew we’d be popping back here when we returned to the town to check out more of its archaeological history later in the week.

All that remained for us to do at the end of some drinking under some lightly-clouding-over skies was to head back to the hotel.

The initial part of our walk took us from the harbour front along the main road heading north-northwest from the dolphin-decorated fountain in the centre of a roundabout. This walk back would be along all new roads for us as we’d come into town on a more scenic, shoreline route in the morning so I took the opportunity to snap a few shots of buildings on the way when they were interesting enough to do so. Some of the architectural mouldings and the paint finish on a mostly-white building gave it the appearance of being formed from plastic, and another building’s colour scheme of pea green and pale orange shades felt fabulously 1970s.

If you’ve read the previous part of this series where I covered the walk into Kos then you’ll possibly remember the significance of reaching the Konstantinos Shopping Mall/Supermarket building. We’d reached this junction from the north in the morning and had then turned east towards Lambi beach. Now we had reached it from the south and turned west because this was the shortest route back to the hotel. On repeat walks into Kos Town during the week it was this short route that we would take heading both in and out.

The road you’ll most likely walk along between the town and the Blue Lagoon Resort Hotel if you’re staying there too is Olympias and it’s lined for the most part with open fields and not so many buildings to break up the expanse. What buildings there were, though, were a complete mix of types, with some appearing old and dilapidated while others looked frighteningly huge, new, and expensive. One of the nicer things about walking this road was that because it was quiet and not built-up there was no reason to keep our masks on so we could enjoy the walk towards the western horizon in a little more comfort. Without the light cloud cover this would have been a gorgeous time to see the sun setting on a lovely day of ancient history-viewing and modern beer-consuming.

In the next post in this travelogue series describing our week in Kos I’ll cover a second full day spent around the hotel complex with a little more exploration of it in order to scope out the location of the speciality dining restaurant we’d booked.

Tags