Rhodes Flora

When I go abroad another of the things I like to do, apart from looking at churches is looking at the different flowers and trees.

Rhodes has such a warm climate in comparison to England's so the flowers and trees do vary a lot and I see things I certainly don't at home. I live in the North East of England so there are plants and trees that won't grow there even though they do in the warmer South of England.

I love the bushes that grow all around the hotel we stay at. I have no idea what they are called but they are gorgeous and are shades of pink and white.

If anyone knows their name I'd be pleased if you would let me know.

Update - Jeanette has told me they are called Oleander, many thanks for this information.

If you click the photographs they should enlarge now. See my Update at the end of the posting to find out about this.

More white ones.

Some of the bushes grow really high and form a lovely hedge on the entrance to the hotel which has been designed along the lines of the medieval town of Rhodes. The day before I took this picture the border on the left below the trees was full of lovely flowers. Unfortunately the gardeners had taken them all out the night before to replant.

Here are some more on the left of the picture just inside the hotel grounds.

Near the entrance there's a lovely little chapel and again there are lots of these lovely floral bushes/trees around it. I didn't notice at the time but the clouds in the background are lovely. We didn't see many of those in the two weeks we were there!

I love that little chapel although I've never seen anyone there. I know this posting is about the flora but I'll show you a picture of the inside of the chapel. It's always been locked when I've been there so I had to take it from a window in the door which I pushed open to peep in. The painting is absolutely amazing, the colours are really beautiful. Just look at that beautiful evening sky painted on the ceiling.

I assume it was built for weddings at the hotel but they tend to go to other places such as the Kalithea Roman Spa. The entrance to the refurbished Spa is in the photo below. It's very nice too but it has no religious aspect to it. However I assume lots of people nowadays just want a civil ceremony.

Incidentally the Spa has been the set for a number of films. The main one I remember was Escape to Athena a comic WW11 film which had a number of stars in it, Roger Moore, Stephanie Powers, Telly Savalas, David Niven, Claudia Cardinale, Elliot Gould, Sonny Bono, Ricard Roundtree and Anthony Valentine. I've seen it a few times and although it's thirty years old I really like it. I especially love looking at the bits filmed in and around the Spa.

I've digressed yet again!

My grandchildren call these the pineapple trees. I assume they are some kind of palm.

They really do look like huge pineapples.

Look here's a pineapple forest! Lovely!

Now this one I know. I just wish I could grow geraniums like these and it was only mid May when I took this photo. Even by August mine don't look as big as this.

There were lots of plants with flowers like tubular bells.

Here are the red ones.

And here are the lemon ones.

They looked so pretty cascading down over the walls.

Now this one I think I know. It's possibly bougainvillea.

Here it is again below a "pineapple" tree.

Who says pink and red don't go together?

This looks a bit like the hibiscus that has sadly died off in my garden this summer.

Now these are really lovely trees with beautiful blue blossoms. Again I have no idea what they are.

Update - Michelle has advised me that these are Jacaranda. What a great name! She said that the ones that flower are female trees.

Here's a closer view of the blossoms.

I've seen this before on my friend's balcony on the Costa Brava.

Again I don't know what it is.

Update - Jeanette has told me this is another bougainvillea.

One thing I haven't mentioned is the gorgeous smell that greets you late evening and in the mornings, the smell of jasmine is absolutely wonderful.

There were lots of lovely bushes and plants on our patio. The jasmine I recognised but the bush next to it had red fluffy flowers. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo as soon as we got there. By the time I took this most of the fluffy bits had dropped off.

I'm missing these lovely flowers and the blue skies you see in the pictures. Well you can't have lush green lawns like we have if you have sunshine all day every day and no rain can you.

Never mind I'm sure I'll be back again before too long.

Update - Recently I can't understand why my photos don't enlarge when you click on them. I was sure that I have been inserting them in the same way so had no idea what was going on. Today I think I know what has happened but I have no idea why Blogger is so inconsistent with image insertion.

I've been having a lot of problems with formatting text and photographs and so I decided to centre the photographs when I inserted them. This resolved the problem of the text jumping about when I centred the photographs after inserting them. However I think this is stopping the photos enlarging.

In desperation this afternoon when I inserted photographs I didn't choose a layout and centred it afterwards. I had the problem with the text again but surprisingly the photos now enlarge. Eureka! What a weird system Blogger is. Why doesn't it give you any information about this anywhere?

Update to the Update - I'm just about losing the will to live with this!

Myra contacted me to say that she can enlarge her photos even if she chooses to centre them from the layout screen.

I've just tried it on a test posting and she's right, they do enlarge. So why didn't they last week when I was doing this posting and on my posting about Michelle's Mailart? They still don't on that one.

Give me strength! Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Post 102