The clouds started to creep across the sky shortly before daybreak and rain is expected later today. A perfectly clear and blindingly blue winter's day on Symi. It is about 12 degrees centigrade. The stones are slick with dew and cross-hatched with silvery snail trails. Little forests of luminous moss and frilly lichen, toppling toadstools and festoons of pale green clematis bells-who needs to buy Christmas decorations when nature does such a good job of providing her own? The wobbly lambs of Easter are already grazing on the road out of the harbour, using their mothers as wind breaks. There is one particularly fetching little fellow, all black apart from a tidy white tonsure, who lives just above the bend in the road. His mother is usually tethered to one of the benches. Purple anemones are nodding in the chilly breeze and the anise scent of crushed fennel leaves under foot evokes the icy ouzo of hot summer days.
At this stage it looks as though we may well have rain for New Year as the stormy weather that has been rolling steadily across the southern Mediterranean is expected to reach Greece in the course of Monday, bringing heavy showers and strong winds in the Ionian and the Aegean. Serious storms are not unusual this close to the solstice and if anything we have been lucky that the festive season has been so mild this year. Fingers crossed, though, that we are not looking at a repeat of the year when New Year's Day dawned with two lightning strikes that fried most of Symi's telephones, televisions and other appliances!
Have a good weekend.
Regards,
Adriana
The sky is picture postcard blue, the dew on the new grass is shining in the sunshine and the last minute grocery shopping is being done. As Christmas is a two day holiday the shops, banks and businesses will be closed tomorrow and Wednesday. Thursday and Friday are normal business days.
Christmas on Symi is becoming increasingly Western, with more decorations and lights and an increasing selection Christmas-specific items in the shops. Local tastes are becoming more exotic too, with trays of mangoes and pineapples now standard Christmas stock in even the most old-fashioned grocers in Chorio. Sotiris has cornered the market for frozen Brussels sprouts, with a freezer full of 5.5 kilogram bags of them. It is not just the Anglo-Saxon ex-pat market that is catered for though, judging by all the colourful boxes of Italian panetone and rows of German chocolate St Nicholases.
Children in party clothes are doing the rounds of Chorio, armed with triangles and purses, knocking on doors and singing the kalanda, the traditional Greek Christmas carol. According to local tradition they have to wait until 1 January for St Basil to bring them their presents, so parents have a few more shopping days in hand. The townhall has been announcing various events over the tannoy at regular intervals.
Rain is expected later in the week and New Year may well be wet but for now the sun is shining on Symi and everyone is happy.
Merry Christmas to all of you.
Regards,
Adriana
As you can see it is very quiet in the harbour these days with lots of closed shutters and no yachts. A lot of the locals are over in Rhodes, doing their Christmas shopping.Christmas is only a week away and it looks as though many parts of the country will be having a white Christmas. There have been heavy snow falls in on the main land and more is on the way. Here on Symi it is partly cloudy and becoming steadily colder. It does, however, seem as though that is it for rain for a while and with only light winds forecast down in the south those who are flying this week are not too worried about ferry disruptions. Up in the north and in central Greece it is a different story and Force 8 with snow is on the agenda for today and tomorrow. Schools are closed and rural areas cut off.
This morning’s power cut was not appreciated as every washing machine on the island is doing overtime at the moment and even fences round vegetable plots in the Pedi valley are draped with wet jeans and soggy sweaters. There is a lot of rooftop activity as cracked tiles and other leaks revealed by several weeks of more or less continuous rain are repaired. Somehow the presence of the water boat in Pedi seems a little superfluous!
Many of the television channels are still out of order after the lightning strikes last week and the mobile phone network is also a bit erratic. I was awakened by my telephone ringing me in the early hours of the morning which was a bit bizarre and messages welcoming me to Turkey come through several times a day.
Have a warm week. I am going home to light the fire!
Regards,
Adriana
Everyone is out making the most of the sunshine today. Wet carpets draped over railings and blankets dripping over balconies. If you look very carefully at the Turkish mountains in the view of Pedi you can see a white patch in the left-middle of the back row, just to the right of the highest peak - the first snows have fallen. I am hoping that Santa will bring me a decent zoom lense, but I have a feeling he is more likely to be dropping off new wellington boots! Models of caiques are a popular Christmas decoration in the islands and the one in the picture is one of my favourites.
Today is the name for the Elefterias and Elefterios out there, and that includes Symi's mayor, Lefteris Papakalodoukas. This was the scene in the rain at Agios Elefterios church in Chorio this morning.
After days and days of rain the wind has shifted to the north and blown the clouds away. A chilly breeze is whipping across Pedi Bay and, as you can see in the photograph, visibility is spectacular.
Low cloud over the Vigla as seen from Mavrovouni.
A chapel in Lieni, innundated. The source of all the water?
This gutter which collects the run off from the upper part of the road to Agia Marina cemetery and channels hundreds of tons of water over the edge of the dirt road into the valley below. The dirt road is now collapsing onto the chapel.
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A wet weekend has turned into a stormy week. Water is pooling on the terraces and seeping through the walls of the old stone houses, making patterns in the ochre tinted asvesti. Luminous green moss gleams between the stone flags. Whenever the clouds part rainbows arc briefly between land and sea.
The forecast is a wintry one, with falling temperatures, strong winds and precipitation in the form of rain or snow. The barometer is so low the fishing boats in the harbour are above street level and the sea is sloshing through the gratings.
Some of the shops in the harbour were flooded in yesterday’s downpour and there was a lot of mopping up going on at 9 o’clock this morning.
Although the island certainly needs a good wet winter to counteract the effects of an abnormally hot summer, the frustration of not being able to get on with things is taking its toll. Workmen sit fretfully in the coffee shops while the rain floods the building sites. The houses of Symi are not big and finding somewhere out of the way to hang wet washing is well nigh impossible.
Have a warm dry week.
Regards,
Adriana
The sky has cleared for the first time this week and a numbing north wind is hunting for chinks in the shutters. The Aegli came across this morning – it has been in Rhodes since Tuesday due to heavy weather. Shipping generally is quite erratic, as was demonstrated on Thursday when the Marina, which was supposed to leave Symi at 10.00, arrived at exactly the same time as the Proteus two hours later, with the result that we had two car ferries in Yialos simultaneously, one on either side of the harbour and both heading for Rhodes.
You can watch the screen grabs of the above event from our webcam here.
Another cold front with more rain and increasing winds is expected to reach us by Saturday night and next week is likely to be as stormy as this one. Many parts of Greece have had snow and the temperatures are dropping steadily. The change in temperatures combined with the recent heavy rain has precipitated a number of small rockfalls along the road out of town and motorists are tending to stick towards the middle of the road to avoid being struck by showers of falling stones. This is one of those situations where local knowledge helps!
The first wobbly-legged new lambs have been born in the Pedi valley and random sheep are grazing in unexpected places, including the Kali Strata. As we have had a lot of rain the terraces are very muddy and the ‘big hole’ in Chorio where the new undercover sports facility is being built is not a pleasant place to work at the moment.
Have a good weekend.
Regards,
Adriana
A clearer view of what you can see on the webcam at the moment. The bright lights on the right are Takis' leather shop. The ones to the left of that are Aris Taverna. There are more lights visible on Mavrovouni, around the customs house and the town square. There is an illumination of a two dimensional Christmas tree outside Mythos. If you look carefully you can also see that they have made a lot of progress with the new stone paving at the bus stop. 
Wendy Wilcox opening her birthday presents with a bit of help from Terri Baker. For more party photos see Out and About December.
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