April Postcards from Symi

Yes, that is the Poseidon back in the water for the season. The cheerful red hull is a local fishing boat.

Yialos on a calm Wednesday morning - that is the Milos area of Chorio along the crest of the hill, so named for the row of windmills, now ruined, that you can see against the skyline.

Looking across to the Kastro and Lemonitissa church from Yialos. The tug boat is here to help with moving around the floating cranes and the barge for the commercial jetty project over at the fuel station.

This colour scheme is actually very traditional here. It is called 'loulaki', which is lilac but not quite.  The Symiots used to mix azure pigment with asvesti (lime wash) to paint their houses patriotic blue in defiance of the Ottoman Turks and on old ruins one often sees fragments of this shade beneath the layers of ochre from the Italian occupation, a colour scheme exemplified on the other half of this building. On Symi even the colours tell stories!

The Nireus hotel is unfurling for the summer.  They already have some of their tables and chair set out on the small jetty in the background.  The weather continues sunny and mild with no red rain to disrupt the preparations for the season - or for Greek Easter which happens next week.

The green barge is part of the fleet involved in the harbour widening project for the new commercial jetty over by the fuel station.  That zigzag path going up the hillside leads to the Panormition, the local high school, and to the Hotel Fiona which is the building with the powder blue pediments at the top. The folds of green slopes behind are the far side of the Pedi valley and there is the whole sprawling settlement of Chorio between the Hotel Fiona and those hills.