July Postcards from Symi

Looking across the Pedi valley towards the windmills on the ridge of hill that divides Pedi from Yialos. That is the top of the island of Nimos in the background.

Boats lying off Harani earlier this week.

A glimpse of the harbour between the buildings on the Kali Strata.

When a hen goes 'off piste' there is no knowing where she will decide to nest. This biddy was spotted near the bottom of the Kali Strata, just up from the Old Markets hotel.

Kokkimides, one of the oldest churches on the island. Built on the second highest peak on the island during the Byzantine era, the monastery was rebuilt in 1760.  In recent years an access road has been built up to the monastery and it is no longer necessary to climb up.  There is usually someone there and I have never known it to be closed. The church is through the small entrance on the right and has many Byzantine frescoes.

One of the oldest trees on the island, up on the top of Kokkimides.  It is propped up with stones to prevent it from collapsing.

Sunset over Panormitis monastery bay, looking down from the view point at the top, before one starts the steep descent of hairpin bends down to sea level.  There is a mini bus service connecting Yialos and Chorio with Panormitis 2-3 times a day and also excursion buses.

Looking beyond Panormitis to the island of Sesklia.

The interior of Symi is rugged rocks and conifer forests with occasional small fertile valleys and ancient terraces planted with olives, figs and vines.  

Toli Bay on the west side of the island, is a beautiful place to watch the sun set and enjoy a delicious meal at the Dafnes beach taverna, so named after all the oleanders that grow wild nearby. 

If I stay very still, maybe no one will notice me.

A Greek Orthodox priest popping into the clinic in Chorio. Unlike many parts of Britain where several parishes often have to share one priest, Greece has no such pastoral problems and Symi's priests are always in evidence to lend a hand and provide support when needed.

The view from the Symi Visitor Accommodation office this morning.

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A November Interlude

The view from Symi Visitor Accommodation today.  There  isn't much happening in Yialos this November morning. The only yachts passing through now are ones waiting to take up their winter berths in the many marinas on the Turkish coast.

All packed up for the winter.

The greengrocer in the lane is busy all year round.  I like buying from him as much of his stock is locally grown in Rhodes and he always marks the place of origin on the price cards so I know whose economy I am supporting.

A bird's eye view of the Kali Strata, or should that be birds' eyes?

There were quite a few clouds around early this morning. As you can see, the Panagia of the Kastro is still wreathed in scaffolding.  

A breakfast meeting at a popular hangout.

It is not much but it is a start - the first wild flower seeds are starting to germinate as a result of last Monday's rain and a light shower early on Saturday morning.  It is not very clear in this photograph but those are daisy seedlings you are looking at. They have tiny serrations along the cotyledons.

Shadow play over Pedi.  The footpath to Agia Marina beach goes past that old farm and through the hills.  If you look carefully you can just make it out.

The Turkish hills look very close at this time of the year.

A big poinsettia in Chorio. The bracts turn red as the days grow shorter and by the time I get back from England in a few weeks it will be quite spectacular.

There are a lot of people on Symi at the moment for the Panormitis Festival but as they are over at Panormitis, Yialos is pretty quiet.  Greeks come from far and wide on a pilgrimage to the monastery at this time. The lucky ones have rooms or beds in the communal dormitory. The less fortunate and the late comers bed down on the verandahs and hope that the weather stays dry. A lot of the locals went over yesterday in search of bargains as the stalls are all set up now. Today is a school day but tomorrow, the day of the festival itself, is a local holiday.

This will be my last blog for a while as I am leaving for England on Wednesday on the diabolically early Blue Star Patmos - even as a 'morning person' 5 a.m. is an uncivilised departure time!  I hope it is not affected by the stormy weather that is expected to reach this part of Greece by Wednesday.  Luckily my flight is early on Thursday morning so it doesn't matter if the boat is late, but it does matter if there is a shipping ban and it doesn't run at all!  Living on a small island with no airport has its drawbacks when one wants to travel in the winter.

While many of you may be fed up with Christmas already having been jingled and jollied since September, here the only concession to the season is that Yanni's poinsettia in Chorio is starting to change colour.  Now that is one of the advantages of living on a small Greek island.   There is a time and a place for everything and right now the focus is the Festival of St Michael the Archangel at Panormitis, Roukoniotis and Kokkimides.  Christmas starts with whatever comes in on the Blue Star at some point in mid-December.

Have a good month and I'll post from Symi again around the 25th of the month, depending on the ferries of course!

Regards,
Adriana

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Good bye September! Hello October!

Celestyal Cruises called into Symi on Wednesday afternoon.  With the current uncertainty regarding Turkey and Egypt as cruise ship destinations, Greece in general and Symi in particular are seeing a lot more cruise ships.  They only stay a few hours and it is good publicity for Symi.

Salamis Filoxenia from Cyprus is another cruise ship that is a frequent visitor to Symi.  In this case, however, the passengers are not in pursuit of hedonistic pleasures  and all inclusive banquets but are predominantly Greek Orthodox Cypriots visiting the main religious sites in the Dodecanese.   As Symi is home to 3 well known monasteries dedicated to St Michael, the chief of which is Panormitis,  Symi is a place of pilgrimage.  

The  colourful scene from the Symi Visitor Accommodation office balcony on Thursday morning.  As you can see, the fishing caiques are moving back into the head of the harbour now that the summer excursion boats are heading for the boat yards.

Just in case you hadn't noticed them in the previous photo, I zoomed in on the pigeons to bring them to your attention.  I don't know who is feeding them but this is a new phenomenon  Perhaps the pigeons have taken over from the lonesome duck of previous years. They certainly look fat enough.

Smiling down serenely from a pediment on the Kali Strata.

There is no way of escaping steps on Symi. This is idiosyncratic collection of random flights connects Villa Papanikola, just visible with the cream paintwork and dark blue shutters, with the mid section of the Kali Strata. The piecemeal nature of such routes is because each property owner built his own access steps when he built his house.

This flourishing fig tree must have its roots in the cistern of this ruined mansion on the Kali Strata. As Symi has no rivers, lakes or streams to provide a water supply, every house has a cistern.  Originally used to harvest rainwater from the roof in the winter, these days most houses get top ups from the municipality with varying degrees of frequency during the summer.  There are very few places where there is a continuous water supply and most neighbourhoods only receive water for a few hours a week.  Cisterns, pumps and water shortages are a fact of life here

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Meteora - Uniquely Greek

The view from my hotel room window in Kastraki, Meteora, central Greece.

The cliff monasteries of Meteora are uniquely spectacular.

Kastraki, the little village at the foot of the cliffs of Meteora is much prettier than the larger nearby town of Kalampaka and there are plenty of economical guest houses, hotels and camp sites.

Monks would go in and live in these caves for long periods of time when they wanted to do penance or meditate. There are remnants of ladders to be seen hanging down from the old platforms.

All of the monasteries are still inhabited and yes, that is a power line you can see running across to this one.

A mountain road circles the peaks behind the monastery outcrops, enabling one to look across or down at them.  If you look on the left of this photograph there is a narrow bridge across the chasm, connecting the monastery with the new vehicle road.

The sandstone formations are spectacular in their own right.

People gathering on one of the pinnacles to watch the sunset.

Meteora was a location for one of the James Bond films, 'For Your Eyes Only'.

The monasteries were built over a period of about 300 years, from the 13th to the 16th centuries.  If you think of the engineering challenges involved in building on cliffs and mountain tops with only ropes, pulleys and ladders to get all the materials up there, the achievement is truly astonishing.

Food in the tavernas is plentiful and affordable - and local.  There are plenty of market gardens and the nearby Plains of Thessaly are Greece's agricultural heartland.  This is a part of Greece where rivers flow all year round and the earth is rich and deep with  shady plane tree forests and a spectacular road network.

The Sunday after we arrived in Athens our hire car was delivered to the hotel and we hit the road, driving up to Meteora in central Greece via the city of Lamia.  Greece has a very good road network including some marvelous toll roads with tunnels through mountains and sky high bridges over plains.  Much of the route is lined with flowering shrubs, gardens, fields and the scenery is very beautiful. My only gripe is the lack of safe places to pull over to take photographs as barreling along at 120 kilometres an hour, trying to take photos through the increasingly insect-spattered windows doesn't really work! We drove through the Plains of Thessaly to reach Meteora in the foothills of the Pindus mountains.  The journey took about 5 hours with one stop for petrol at a very modern service station with the usual comforts including a good book shop and souvenir shop.  We were in good time to check into our hotel and then have a late lunch in the shady taverna over the road.  The monasteries are open to visitors during the day but the best time to view the scenery is in the late afternoon and early evening, when it is cooler and the light is better - at midday the sunshine is truly blinding.

If you ever have the opportunity to do so, I recommend taking the time to explore the mainland. One can cover a great deal of ground and see a lot of the country in a short space of time with a hire car as the road system is so good.  Flying via Athens with Aegean Air is very efficient and the Blue Star ferries that connect Piraeus with the islands are extremely comfortable.

I will have more photographs for you tomorrow, of our next stop which was Ioannina, an old Ottoman lakeside town and provincial capital on the Albanian border.

Regards,
Adriana 

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The Weather is A-Changing

Kokkimides is the second highest peak on Symi after the Vigla and the views from the monastery at the top are spectacular.

Ancient stone walls and a shepherd's cottage, high up in the mountains above Symi.

The churchyard at Kokkimides.  The church is tiny and accessed through the small door to the right of the photograph. It is believed to be over a thousand years old.

A tiny window, thick stone walls and a stone tiled roof.

At some point someone etched these patterns into the threshold.

A modern touch.  The Swiffer duster evidently failed to serve its designated purpose and was repurposed as they say.

The heavy stone walls of Kokkimides have withstood centuries of extreme weather.

Looking down at Panormitis bay and monastery from the motor road above.

A mellow September morning in Yialos.

A sure sign of impending Autumn - the peripatetic carpet salesmen are back!

The weather is a-changing with a brisk cool breeze blowing and the evenings have become a lot cooler. Day time temperatures are still around 30 degrees out of the wind but the change in the winter from warm to cool has brought about a general drop in temperatures.  Suddenly people riding motorbikes are wearing long sleeves again and more of the tourists are wearing trousers and T-shirts rather than skimpy beachwear when they stroll around the harbour.

I have had family visiting and we went for a rare drive up the mountain at sunset this week. When one lives here and is working through the season it is easy to forget that there is an island out there apart from the bits we see every day on the way to and from work.  It was quite fun playing tourists for a change.  One of the places we visited was Kokkimides, one of the oldest and most fortress like monasteries on the island.  The peak of Kokkimides mountain is the second highest on the island after the Vigla and the views are marvelous. The chapel is dedicated to St Michael and is very ancient, with wonderful frescoes including some very lifelike sheep and horses as well as the obligatory scenes from the scriptures.  It is well worth taking the time and trouble to go up there.

Have an enjoyable weekend.

Regards,
Adriana

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