Some Final August Postcards from Symi

Zooming down on Pedi from Lieni.  I suppose one day I will have to buy a drone camera for astonishing view photographs but for the moment we will all have to be happy with my Nikon bridge camera.  That boat out in the bay is a grand old two masted gentleman's motor yacht, resplendent with a yellow funnel.  We used to see quite a few of these elegant craft in Symi and Rhodes but as they are high maintenance wood with lots of brass and varnishwork there are ever fewer owners interested in maintaining these beautiful boats.

Monday morning from the bend at the top of the Kali Strata.  

Greek flags flying brightly on the bridge in front of the town square in Yialos.  The hillside behind is called Mavrovouni which literally means Black Mountain.  The buildings at street level are cafes, shops, a pizzeria and so on.  The residential properties are on the higher tiers, connected by a maze of steps, narrow paths and ramps.  There is, however, vehicle access from above as the road from the back of the harbour that goes up to the helipad passes along the top.  Spiti Grand Helene and Villa Iris are on this hill.

The National Bank of Greece, the Ethniki for short, is in the large stone building on the left of the photograph. The ATM is just inside the door from which the man has emerged.  Further along the quay, about half way to the clock tower, there is the Alpha Bank which also has an ATM.  

Another few of Mavrovouni, showing part of the square and the cafe bars in the foreground.

One thing Symi has in abundance, apart from beautiful old buildings, is steps.  As each house was built the owners built their own access steps. Sometimes these converge to form a thoroughfare up to another level but in this part of the amphitheatre harbour they are often a piecemeal collection of narrow domestic steps where two flights may even run parallel but not on the same pattern of treads and risers.

The area outside the nautical museum at the back of the town square in Yialos has become something of an open air market. By the way, the building that now houses the nautical museum was the first building on Symi to have electricity as the owner installed a private generator. This was some time in the 1920s I believe.  The rest of the island did not have a 24 hour electricity system until the late 1970s and even when I came here in 1993 power cuts were frequent and often of long duration, particularly in the winter.  People cooked on gas rings and used blocks of ice from the ice factory at the back of the harbour to keep perishables fresh. The ice factory was still producing large oblong slabs of ice in the late 1990s, mainly for the beach tavernas as they did not have electricity.

Monday morning 7.30 a.m. rush hour on Symi.

After gorging himself on my garden all summer, a locust outgrew his suit and left this ghostly carapace on my steps.  

The grass is golden and the leaves are falling after months of high temperatures and drought.  The first rains should arrive some time in October and we hope that this winter the seasonal rains will be more reliable than the last.

Returning to the back of the harbour, this lush vegetation gives a clue to the presence of ground water in the area.  There used to be a seasonal spring at the back of the town square which fell into disuse as the water became increasingly salty. You can still see part of it embedded in the wall at the road junction where the cars park.  The local housewives used to go there every day to fill cans and jugs of water for domestic use. This is why so few houses at street level in Yialos actually have rain water cisterns.  As all the surrounding cliffs and hillsides drain into this area in the winter the water table is quite high in this part of the harbour.

The Krystallo cat waiting for the shop to open.

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Life on Symi in August

Waiting at the clock tower for the Blue Star Paros on Friday morning.  The exodus has begun and many people who have summer houses here or who have been visiting friends and relations for the August holidays are now heading for home.  It is a little odd at first, hearing people wishing each other 'kalo chimona' (happy winter) when winter is still several months away and temperatures remain steadfastly in the thirties but that is the traditional farewell at this time of the year.  Everyone hopes to be reunited, same time, same place, next year.

The tinsmith's shop building is undergoing a major restoration.  It has a new roof, new ceilings and floors, fresh plaster and lots of attractive exposed traditional stone work.  It is encouraging to see a project like this being undertaken at a time when there is little money circulating. As Symi is a heritage site and the architecture is protected a project like this requires a great deal of attention to detail, particularly as it is in a landmark position.  It is not clear in the photograph but the horizontal lines above the windows and beneath the pediment are the edges of embedded tiles, matching the ones on the adjoining half of the building.

Symi's new wellness centre at the back of the town square is another landmark building.  Activities and events are advertised on the chalkboard as well as on Facebook and visitors are welcome.

Presumably the location for this sundial was chosen for decorative reasons rather than functionality as it is quite emphatically in the shade.

The back of St John's church, Symi's cathedral, in Yialos. The adjoining building with the blue windows is the Petrideon, the junior school that serves Yialos.  Out of a population of about 2800 people there are around 300 children of school-going age so there are schools in both Yialos and Chorio for the younger children and then a high school, the Panormiteon, just below the Kali Strata as well as a technical school on the bend in the road in Chorio.  Once upon a time there was also a school house down in Pedi but this is now the mini-market.

Symi has many contrasts, not least because the owners of many properties have long since emigrated to far flung places like Australia and the USA, leaving their houses to slowly crumble away.  At the time of their departure, a house on Symi had little or no value and subsequent generations may have had neither the time nor the money to return to the island. It is not unusual to see scenes like this one, where immaculately restored buildings and neglected ruins co-exist side by side.

Strutting their stuff - three pullets below the road in Lieni.  They are surviving remarkably well considering that they are living free range on the busiest bend in the road to Panormitis and can often be seen making a mad dash from one side to the other in search of some new morsel.  The origins of all those jokes about chickens crossing roads must have started in similar situations.

August is drawing to a close.  It is still hot and humid and people do tend to linger wherever there may be a fan or air conditioning.  Twenty years ago few houses had air conditioning and fans were the only method of cooling.  I was working in a taverna in those days and often had to walk home late on hot summer nights.  As I passed houses in Chorio I would pass people sleeping on their balconies and terraces or with all the doors and windows open and I would hear the whir of fans and gentle snoring.

We have had quite a lot of late bookings, mainly for September and October and it looks as though the end of the season may well be busier than the beginning. We are also getting lots of enquiries for 2017 which is always encouraging.  Remember, we start confirming bookings for 2017 at the end of October but if you have a specific property in mind you are welcome to email us now to hold it for you.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Adriana

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Midsummer Musings

We heard yesterday that the Cote d'Azur is down 40% this August so perhaps we shouldn't feel bad that Symi is similarly empty.

This discreet close of matching mansions at the back of Yialos was once the acme of elegant town living in Symi in the late 19th century.  Symi's neo-classical answer to the concept of the gated community.

A view of the Vigla mountain and one of the remoter parts of Chorio, as seen from the back of the square in Yialos.  The houses you can see on the hillside were once part of the main connurbation of Chorio and would have been accessed via the Kataraktis, the old donkey path that winds up the side of the kastro with a sheer drop to a water course on the other side, hence the name.  With the advent first of the Kali Strata and subsequently of the motor road the popularity of the Kataraktis as a road diminished and when the houses were damaged during the Second World War or fell into disrepair with successive waves of emigration, the focus of the community shifted to more easily accessible areas.

Mother and kittens playing in a ruin at the base of the Kali Strata.

A dream catcher in the window of a holiday let on the Kali Strata.  Instead of the usual swirls of wrought iron to latch the shutters open the carpenter who did this house supplied pieces of wood to wedge them open.  Simple but effective.

An old house is being cleared out on the short cut in Chorio and these old trunks caught my eye. What stories they could tell!  The top one was originally covered with some sort of striped fabric of which only a few scraps remain. These trunks are probably a century or more old.  A modern wheelie suitcase seldom lasts more than a few trips before bits fall off, zips fail and they have to be replaced. Who would ever fantasize about the life of a wheelie suitcase?

Spackling the street door probably wouldn't be my number one priority in restoring a mansion like this one but perhaps whoever is doing it thought they would start with the easy bits!

The haze is back and the opposite coast has vanished completely.  Quite a nice 3 master in the bay though, a reminder of the days when all the boats that anchored in Pedi looked like that!

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August Postcards from Symi

The meltemi has blown the haze away and the horizon is back, for a while at least.

This is a photograph of a venerable old blue Mercedes which came off the Blue Star this morning, as seen from the balcony of the Symi Visitor Accommodation office

Pedi looking remarkably empty for August.  One can must make out the distant hills of Turkey across the water.

Once upon a time all those doors were shops and the Kali Strata was a bustling main road.  The Symiots were certainly a fit lot in those days when there was no alternative to climbing all those steps except possibly riding a donkey. Imagine living near the top and having to walk down to the shops on  the steps and then carry the shopping back up in the days when there were no cars, bikes, taxis or buses.

A 'deka-okto' looking for breakfast among the paving stones.

An unusual art deco balcony support.  Most of the houses on the Kali Strata are 19th century so this was evidently a much more recent addition.

About half way down the steps widen out into a square. The large white house is actually much older than most of the other houses on the Kali Strata and has some Ottoman ornamentation above the balcony door where the sheets are drying.

Meanwhile, up in Chorio the cats and chickens are enjoying peaceful co-existence at the bend in the road.

The prickly pears continue to flourish.

And the church on the corner has a new custodian.

There aren't as many tourists around as usual for August and there's no money in the municipal coffers for big name attractions at the Symi Festival but the Symiots are adept at creating their own entertainment and it seems as though virtually every night the hills echo to the sounds of traditional Greek music, dancing and laughter.  Events start late as many people are working until 9 or even later at this time of the year.  Just follow the music!  The days of Nana Mouskouri, Mario Frangoulis, Glykeria and Alkestis Protosaltis may be long gone but home grown is just as much fun and everyone joins in the dancing.

The heat and humidity are starting to ease off now.  Midday temperatures are in the mid-thirties, falling to around 26 degrees at midnight so there is still no need for a shawl or jacket in the evenings. The quality of the light is changing and the shadows lengthening - a reminder that we are only a month away from the equinox.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Adriana

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Changing Seasons and Making Plans

As the days grow shorter the humidity rises and we are seeing occasional clouds, like this one over Nimos.  Although we aren't seeing actual dew fall it is now quite damp at night and the washing is taking longer to dry.  At first glance the gardens on the island seem pretty frazzled as no one has water to spare for irrigation but on closer examination seemingly dead geraniums are starting to make tiny shoots in anticipation of  autumn which, in this part of the world, is a second spring, particularly if the rains come early while it is still warm.

Taking a break.

Morning mist over Pedi.

A hawker, all packed up and ready to go down for the Blue Star.  This one sells cheap baggy shorts, jeans, polyester print frocks, cheerful Chinese T-shirts with incomprehensible slogans on them and a miscellany of cheap shoes and sandals.  In the 20 years I have seen the truck come and go his stock has made little concession to the vagaries of fashion and only varies slightly according to the season.  When he comes in the winter he sells camo pants, hunting boots, sweat shirts and sensible slippers - the sort with non-slip rubber soles as they are often worn out of doors.  

Saturday midday view of Pedi.  This is supposed to be the busiest weekend of the year but there wasn't much activity down in Pedi.  Closer to home, do you see the goat sheltering under the fig?  After an absence of a few years the goats are back as more Symiots are going back to the land to tide their families through the hungry gap between ever shorter tourist seasons.

The dimples on this wall are actually tiny fragments of pottery which were embedded in the original plaster when it was still wet.  When I first came here the pottery was still visible - bits of everything from willow pattern to ancient potsherds from the terraces.  It has been painted over several times since then so only the little dents from the pottery remain visible.

Grapes ripening in old courtyards in Chorio. The one on the left has green grapes, the one on the right purple so not quite so visible in the photograph.  I rather like the shadows they make on the wall.

Pedi Bay 15 August 2016 - not much going on down here.

Yialos 15 August 2016 - the view from the Symi Visitor Accommodation balcony is pretty empty too.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is usually the busiest holiday weekend in the year and normally every corner of Yialos, Nimborio and Pedi where one might be able to anchor or berth is full of boats of all sizes.  Not this year, alas, and most of the boats that are here have come from no further afield than Datca and Rhodes.  There will be the usually late night bouzouki party with live music and dancing at the Alethini on the Pedi road so the hills really will be alive with music tonight.

With only a few weeks left of 2016 to go, Wendy and I are turning out thoughts to 2017, Symi Visitor's 20th birthday.  It seems like only yesterday that we were organising the 10th anniversary edition of the Symi Visitor newspaper and the big clean up day. The newspaper is long gone, victim of the recession and changing technology, but Wendy and I are still here, matching Symi visitors up with their ideal holiday home so we hope to have some surprises for our regular visitors who have supported us over the years as well as new Symi visitors who will be discovering Symi for the first time.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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August Postcards from Symi

The view from Symi Visitor Accommodation this morning.

I rather fancy the gentleman's motor yacht on the right.  She'll never get up on the plane and probably doesn't do more than 8 knots but her arrivals and departures are always dignified and elegant.

Multi-tasking - the Windmill restaurant will be closed on Wednesday evening as the proprietor, Rhiannon Wheeler, also has a dancing school on Symi and her troupe are performing for the festival on Wednesday night.

Rehearsing their dance routines in the square.

Hanging out, Symi style.

Another desirable balcony with a view, this time on the Kali Strata.

Dove grey.

The fig season may have been something of a non-event this year, but the prickly pears are abundant.

Early morning meeting at the bins in Lieni.  

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