Get More Out of Your Holiday

It is a bright sunny day on Symi, Greece. The sky is the vivid blue of tourist brochures and the yachts in Yialos look clean and newly painted in the sunshine. A fringe of thunder clouds is building up on the horizon and a light wind is fluttering the flags left up from yesterday’s VE Day Parade. There are plenty of day trippers from Rhodes, mainly smartly dressed Eastern Europeans and Russians and mature British and Scandinavian tourists in sensible walking boots and sunhats. This may be in part due to a dramatic increase in the number of tourist arrivals in Rhodes in comparison to this time last year. The interesting thing about this article in the Athens News is that no mention whatever is made of how last year’s tourist figures were affected by the Iceland volcano eruption.

A regatta is expected in Symi harbour tonight and it is certainly ideal sailing weather at the moment. Enough of a breeze to be interesting but not so much that it is unpleasant. The long term forecast for Greece this week shows a fairly changeable picture with thunderstorms and possible heavy downpours mid week. In other words, fairly typical weather for this time of year. The weather in the Mediterranean does not really settle into its summer pattern until June and occasional showers are not uncommon in May. Down here in the south they seldom amount to much and often evaporate as they reach the ground so they have little beneficial effect on the plant life. They can, however, cover everything in a fine film of sand as these phenomena usually blow up out of Libya and it is not unheard of for ‘red rain’ and sandstorms to shut down Greek airports for a few hours. The Poseidon website http://www.poseidon.ncmr.gr/ is an interesting one to watch as it shows dust as well as cloud cover and rainfall.

In the Pedi valley the green is turning to gold as the shepherds cut the hay for their livestock and the daisies lose their lustre. Isolated clumps of poppies linger on in places where there is moisture but the cyclamens have virtually disappeared. The grass is setting seed and where it has not been cut it is often head height. The lupins are covered in furry seed pods and the sinister Dracunculis Vulgaris lurks in the shady places. The oregano bushes are in bud and will soon be covered in a haze of small white flowers. Pink bindweed and clematis tangle up the fences and the first tipsy hollyhocks are sending wobbly spires out of the stone walls.

Today’s photos are some that I took while on a Symi Dream photo walk in Chorio yesterday morning with Neil Gosling. If you want to learn some new tips and tricks and get more out of your holiday photos this is a well spent 2 hours on a Sunday morning. For more information see http://www.symidream.com/ or the poster outside the Sunflower Laundry.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana